Tuesday, October 20, 2009

DESTROY ALL MUSIC FESTIVAL


The skinny....

Saturday, October 24
at Eyedrum (Atlanta)
the

25th ANNIVERSARY
DESTROY ALL MUSIC FESTIVAL

featuring

ANDREW COLTRANE
WASTELAND JAZZ UNIT
SEAN MEEHAN
TAMIO SHIRAISHI
TRAUMA
MR. NATURAL
GRAHAM MOORE
FENTON

One night only, doors at 6 p.m., music starts 7 p.m.
It ends when all music is destroyed.
Admission is $10. Cheap!

Please forward this to any and all you think might be interested.
And thank you for your support.

The meat...

It's been 25 years since the first DESTROY ALL MUSIC FESTIVAL hit Atlanta like a brick of petrified dinosaur brain to the head. Since then, the weekly Destroy All Music show has aired weekly bringing the most adventurous of sounds and noise to its willing audience. More than a few young minds have been turned on to the dark side of music by DAM hosts over the years: Glenn Thrasher, Ellen McGrail and Tony Gordon. In honor of the 25th anniversary of that first festival and the radio show, Old Gold Records and the Butts County Humane Society are proud to bring some of the greatest, most under-appreciated, down-right righteous musicians and set-the-controls-for-the-heart-of-the-sun-style maniacs to Atlanta to celebrate the spirit of noise and freedom. The two go hand-in-hand like peanut butter and chocolate, so come out and gobble it up before it's all destroyed!!!!!!!!

ANDREW COLTRANE
The cream of the crop of the Michigan-basement-dwelling-sound-attackers. Through his own cassette label, Hermitage Tapes, Coltrane has put together over 100 releases of the most primo noise/freedom/industrial loop screw you can find. He rarely performs live, and this will be his first appearance south of the Mason-Dixon Line. He'll be performing as COLD TURKEY alongside The New Pledgemaster who rocked Atlanta back in March of this year. Here's the only clip related to Andrew on Youtube, him playing saxophone with some other guys:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtVZG4v7TDY
It doesn't do him justice, but gives you a taste of the vibe to come.

WASTELAND JAZZ UNIT
Winner of the coveted Best Band Name of the Decade trophy from Jazz Improv magazine! This duo from Ohio have been peeling the paint off souls for years. Their methodology is simple, but brilliant: amplify the living hell out of reeds and go to work. Seriously. If you are a fan of Borbetomagus (or missed them at the DAM Fest five years ago), Wasteland Jazz Unit have the same spine-shattering attack, but use a different register entirely, one that only bats, porpoises and you can hear. Awesome. First show in the south for these guys.
Here they are in action with a guitarist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvkn9QSB7Js

SEAN MEEHAN
Meehan began showing up to play his music at ABC NO RIO in New York City in the 1980s. Since then, he has stripped the drum to its very essence and found new ways to conjure sound out of a snare. Seriously, how does he do it? I want to see it, too. Anyway, his releases tend to be brilliant in that they are either CDs encased in handmade paper, wooden cassettes, or (so I hear) a candle with ball bearings and BBS in the wax to be burning on a drum (or a pot or pan?)? Come on! How ahead-of-time is that! Each Summer, he and Tamio Shiraishi perform an outdoor concert in and around New York City. Two of these performances were released on Atlanta's Old Gold Records in 2006. The DAM Fest marks Meehan's first appearance in the South.
Watch him closely:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSYOqoyJMqw

TAMIO SHIRAISHI
Truly one of the greatest saxophone players you're likely to find on Planet Earth. Not in the post-Coltrane, neo-Zorn, or out-Ayler style, but in a way that honestly takes the instrument outside of what it was meant to do and into a new world of sound. Shiraishi got his start in the Japanese music scene back in the 1970s, when he was part of the first incarnation of Fushitsusha and played in a number of other influential groups circling around the famous label Pinakotheca. Since then, he has performed alongside Alan Licht, No Neck Blues Band and other sonic luminaries. Each Summer, he and Sean Meehan perform an outdoor concert in and around New York City. Two of these performances were released on Atlanta's Old Gold Records in 2006. The DAM Fest marks Shiraishi's first appearance in the South.
See if you can find Shiraishi playing in this clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuBQQretN6A

TRAUMA
Are you familiar with Graveyards' brand of slooooow doom jazz? If not, get with it, friend. Trauma is the duo of Ben Hall, the drummer from Graveyards, and Chris Riggs, an electric guitarist who sometimes opens coffins with the Grave crew. Hall deconstructs rhythm on the drums, offering bare bones with which to propel the music. He also runs, I think, http://www.brokenresearch.com/. Riggs chokes and strokes his six strings in ways that bring to mind not a guitar, but a flock of woodpeckers trying to get at the marrow inside a steel power pole. You'd have to put your ear to the tension wires to appreciate what hat sounds like. Anywho, this should be an off-the-charts rocker that the kid will be talking about for weeks!
Czech Riggs out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaiqngKgEzA
OK, now check Hall out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uXG7_nGKcE

MR. NATURAL
Is Jon Sharpe from the great state of Tennessee. For the last, oh, 25 years, he's been building his own instruments and microphones. Last time I saw him perform, he had mic'd a ficus tree and was creating an audio tornado inside the old Dotties/Lennys. Even the pool game stopped to check it out. Mr. Natural has toured Europe and Japan and the US of A, and returns to Atlanta to teach the trees a thing or two about magic!
He's the guy closest to you in this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue5tuB-gAs8

GRAHAM MOORE
Mr. Moore is the head honcho behind Blossoming Noise the most wildly successful and well-put together noise label in Atlanta (albeit OTP). In addition to releases works by Merzbow, Francisco Lopez, Dead Machines and Thurston Moore, Graham carves sound out of the air using an array of effects boxes and amplified dulcimer-looking thing. Full speed ahead noise guaranteed to fry your hair.
This not him, but you need a break by now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5eLp9bMt9c

FENTON
Is Stephen Fenton, the man behind Friction on WREK-FM. At the last DAM Fest, he set up an audio/visual installation in a room off to the side and it rocked about as hard as Emil Beaulieu did. I've also seen him make banana fosters while a video of radio antennas at night is played behind him. Bottom line: Lord knows what he'll be up to this time around. Wrap yourself in plastic if you sit in the front row just in case.

EYEDRUM is a not-for-profit art and music space in Atlanta that has been the premiere spot of experimental music for the last 10 years. Find out more about them, how to get there or whatever else you need at: www.eyedrum.org