All Tomorrow's Parties

(photo left: Abbey Braden) It was most rewarding to see that All Tomorrows Parties gave Portland OR's Grouper (AKA Liz Harris) the larger room for her September 12th set from Kutsher's resort in the Catskills; the glacial, elegant movements of her solo performances (armed only with guitar, voice, and FX) were befitting of a past-its-prime ballroom where the spectres of 1950's-1970's entertainment loomed large. That and the fact that a large room's acoustics were perfect for her; in front swirling projected images Harris projected murky, oceanic melodies, lumbering overtones and dreamlike drones, all a seemingly symphonic creation all at the hands of one person and a guitar. It sounded very controlled yet completely vague and very much non-digital sounding. Surrounded by this, you feel completely transported by these dense yet never-overpowering clouds of sound, always distant, but directly connected your cortex in a way I think even My Bloody Valentine could not quite accomplish with their live barrage last year. Comparisons to Arvo Part meets Throbbing Gristle are definitely accurate; there's an epicness about Grouper's music that never quite releases its sense of foreboding while at the same time aims to sooth the soul. (full set after the jump)

Starting out with a paranoid alien greeting, the set from Black Dice at All Tomorrow's Parties quickly broke down into a full-on intergalactic party. Feedback, bleeps, bloops, lasers, tractor beams, funky robot warfare, and even a glitched ho-down snuck its way into the set, which is presented in full below.

Originally a by-product of RISD, Black Dice currently reside in Brooklyn and just released the noisy dance album Repo earlier this year (on Animal Collective's Paw Tracks label). Band member Eric Copeland has created some fun, spazzy audio collage solo work as well, including the appropriately-titled recent LP, Alien in a Garbage Dump (also on Paw Tracks).

Submit to your new noise overlords already!

This set originally aired on WFMU and was engineered by Richard Rusincovitch. For more highlights from WFMU's All Tomorrow's Parties broadcast, stay tuned to the FMA's ATP-NY-2009 collection. Thanks to ATP and Akron/Family

More sonic souvenirs from the Sept 11-13 All Tomorrows Parties from Kutshers resort in the Catskills, broadcast over WFMU. The Melvins. A lone blog post can't sum up all there is to say about these guys, except theirs is a world so universal that only these musicians could be the common thread between Lustmord and Gene Simmons (both of whom have made music with them). Simply calling the Melvins the godfathers of Northwest grunge shorts them on many accounts; their beauty, brutality, and enormous palette for experimentation and forward-thinking has never stalled out. It's no wonder they were a handful for Atlantic Records in the mid 90's, but thankfully their post-majors career sees the Melvins invigorated and making some of their awesomest sounds on stage and in studio. Their latest release "Chicken Switch" (Ipecac) finds them remixed by the likes of Merzbow, Eye, Sunroof, Christoph Heeman, Matmos and more.

Their Saturday, September 12th set at stage 2 of ATP was the first chance I've had to check out the post-2006 lineup of the band, with 80's mainstays King Buzzo (guitar/vox) and Dale Crover (drums) actually merging their band with Big Business (Coady Willis on second drums, Jared Willis on bass). To say they slayed would be an understatement, and in all truth this is the only band that could have one of its members perform in a Snuggy and not lose one fraction of heaviness. We've got two approved MP3s from the set: "Zodiac" and "Kicking Machine" (after the jump) engineered during WFMU broadcast by Scott Konzelmann.

Earlier this month, WFMU brought an all-star crew up to Kutsher's Country Club for the second annual NY installment of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival. For everyone who missed the live broadcast, we'll be archiving many of them for on-demand listening on WFMU's blog and Free Music Archive, starting this week. We've lined up a post a day from the likes of Deerhoof, Deerhunter, Atlas Sound, The Melvins, Grouper, Akron/Family, Black Dice, the Dirty Three (w/ Nick Cave!), and more surprises await. You can follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to RSS feeds for Recent Adds and Features to keep up!

Let's start things off with the 16-person Caribou Vibration Ensemble, which featured Marshall Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra for this special festival performance. The heart of Caribou is Dan Snaith, a Canadian mathematician, who started his musical project back in 2000 under the name Manitoba. Following the success of the 2003 album Up In Flames, "Handsome Dick" Manitoba of the Dictators claimed ownership over the name Manitoba and threatened legal action. Snaith decided to change his name to Caribou "while on an LSD trip with friends in the Canadian wilderness" (source). Caribou sounds a lot like an LSD trip in the Canadian wilderness, led by a mathematician with a PhD and a penchant for laptop IDM. Snaith has taken an increasingly organic approach to live performance leading up to the formation of the Vibration Ensemble.

Taking the stage at the Stardust Ballroom on Sunday September 13th, the Vibration Ensemble included every musician who has ever been a part of a Caribou live performance -- from frequent collaborators like John Schmersal (Enon, Brainiac) and Kieren Hebden (Four Tet), to the one-off special appearance of the legendary Marshall Allen (current leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra). All-in-all, the ensemble includes four drummers, a 5-piece horn section, and a choir to bring every thunder and peak of Carbou's music to vibrant life. Engineer Rob Christiansen did a fantastic job mixing this set, we hope you'll enjoy these four selections (after the jump):