Results tagged “music”

By DCist Contributor Adam Mazmanian

When Kailash Kher starts talking about music, it is tempting to dismiss him as someone waxing philosophical about metaphysical concepts, without any substance behind his words. But after a few minutes of listening, it becomes clear that he is the real deal. This palpable enthusiasm comes from a man who sees music as food for the soul, and an ultimate expression of spirituality.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the Real Estate/Girls show Tuesday night at the Black Cat was an extended tribute to The Clean, an open-mic homage to the under-known but influential Kiwi punk band. Hell, the show might have been a two-set-long cover act, the way both bands indulge in heavy chorus pedal and simple chord progressions and fancy-free songs about summer love. You'd certainly be in your right mind to be excited by a show with so much surf-punk. How could Girls go wrong?

Two years have passed since we last saw Portuguese vocalist Mariza, who delivered a memorable performance at the Music Center at Strathmore. The Queen of Fado, as Mariza is known, will be performing this Sunday evening at the Lisner Auditorium. She is the world's most prominent exponent of a style rooted in history and tradition, but fado clearly has universal appeal. Over the past decade, Mariza has not only performed in most of the world's great concert halls, but also at international events such as the 2002 FIFA World Cup, and Live 8 in 2005.

Our occasional series "Secret History" features profiles of classic D.C. albums as a way of looking back at the District's contributions to music over time. In this installment, DCist speaks with members of Edsel about the band's major-label debut, Techniques of Speed Hypnosis (Relativity, 1995).

>> Chances are that you've never heard the harmonica as it's played by Frederic Yonnet. Blending disparate genres into his amazing technique, it's no wonder this cat has played with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Branford Marsalis, Erykah Badu, and Prince. Yonnet will be performing tonight at the Strathmore Mansion. 7:30 p.m. $17

From the first time I heard the music these guys make, whether together as the King Khan and BBQ Show, or in any of their other many incarnations (King Khan & The Shrines, Mark Sultan's unbelievably good solo album The Sultanic Verses, and so on,), I was in love. The nexus of garage rock, punk, and doo-wop could not be farther up my alley. In a world of electro-this and that, and sad-faced boys and girls singing sweetly, Blacksnake (King Khan's... real name?) and Mark Sultan bring a refreshing dose of pure, dirty, fun rock 'n' roll to the table.

>> DJ Stylus continues his weekly exploration into new music with "Refuge." As usual, it'll be at Tabaq. Free, 9 p.m.

>> The Boss is in town! The Boss is in town! Wait, wasn’t he just here? Perhaps that's why there are tickets available. Springsteen & The E Street Band will be rocking out the Verizon Center tonight. 7:30 p.m. $32.50, $68 and $98.

During last month's Sonic Circuits Festival, an elbow-to-elbow Velvet Lounge got to see legendary recluse Jandek perform a very intense set with dissonant guitars, creepy vocals and a lot of keyboards. It was a beautiful thing, but the people who left immediately afterward missed one of DCist's most exciting finds of the festival. Drummer Jason Mullinax, who performs as Pilesar, put on a set that completely warmed up and engaged the audience. The percussion-based songs with great melodies and interesting sounds totally won over the Velvet Lounge patrons still in attendance. Plus, he handed out kazoos and cupcakes while embarrassing his wife Ashleigh for her birthday.

From The Beatles and Ravi Shankar, to John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra, to Mickey Hart's collaborations with Zakir Hussain, South Asian classical music has long influenced western musicians. In recent times, the reverse is also true, what with hip-hop loops underpinning the latest bhangra and Bollywood grooves. But this West to East influence was less prevalent in the mid-60s, especially in the more traditional parts of South India, where a young Kadri Gopalnath had a life changing encounter.

Wow. Damn. And wow. It's hard to reconcile a concert like last night's exquisite set by Andrew Bird. As mentioned several times by the performers during the evening, Washington D.C. was witness to the final installment of Bird's tour with fellow genre-defier St. Vincent. The billing seems appropriate. Take one musically gifted, experimental, and odd male musician and combine with a female of the same description.

As the Montreal music scene has exploded with cathartic indie rock from the likes of Wolf Parade and the Arcade Fire, The High Dials have quietly spun some of the most well-crafted psych-rock of the new millennium. The group's breakthrough was 2005's War of the Wakening Phantoms, a sprawling near-masterpiece of orchestral swirl, guitar crunch, and Smiths-like delicate songwriting. Good press followed that release, and while its follow-up, the self-released Moon Country, hasn't quite gotten the same buzz, it's on par with its predecessor. Tracks like "Killer of Dragons" take cues from Yoshimi-era Flaming Lips, though with considerably more restraint, while "My Heart is Pinned to Your Sleeve" is a pure pop rush from start to finish. The band's now working on a new full-length, and on a short East Coast tour that brings them to D.C. and the Velvet Lounge tonight for their first District-area stop in several years. Lead-singer and songwriter Trevor Anderson took some time to answer our questions ahead of tonight's show.

The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz honors its namesake by hosting its annual International Jazz Competition, which since 1987, has provided a springboard to some of the genre's brightest young stars. Past winners include Joshua Redman, Joey DeFrancesco, Chris Potter, and Jane Monheit, making the competition the most prestigious in the world. On Friday, as part of its Discovery Artist series, the Kennedy Center hosts 2008's winner, up-and-coming saxophonist Jon Irabagon, the first Filipino-American to win the award.

Many times when we see that a band has more than five members, we predict certain combinations of instruments. But Gestures isn't your ordinary band, so they haven't tripled up on guitar players. They don't even have one guitar player. With two drummers (including Mark Cisneros from Medications), one clarinet, one trombone, one saxophone, and one tuba, Gestures has all the elements of a jazz band or a classical ensemble. Yet the driving rhythms and melodies clearly draw as much from punk rock as they do from jazz or classical music. You won't hear any vocals, but it's just as easy to imagine a guitar playing some of the parts that are instead played by trombonist Bob Chapman or saxophonist Kriston Capps (who is also DCist's weekend editor, so he did not participate in this interview). In fact, it's easy to hear some of the same psychedelia that permeates albums like Sookie Jump by The Rude Staircase (a band in which tuba player Jon Lebovitz was a member.) Yet, for the large variety of influences and their occasional tendency to go completely unhinged, all of their songs are actual songs, not extended jam sessions. Which is why we're eagerly anticipating their upcoming EP.

>> Inner Loop is a collective of D.C.musicians blending the improvisation of jazz with the programming and looping of electronica. They'll be upstairs at the Bossa Bistro & Lounge tonight. 9 p.m. Call 202-667-0088 for cover information.

>> Quickly becoming a favorite spot for DJs, Litlle Miss Whiskey's Golden Dollar (1104 H Street NE) will be the venue for Adrian Loving and DJ Stylus as they host a pre-Halloween party, "A Funky Space Halloween." Space funk-themed costumes are highly encouraged. Free, 9 p.m.

          

Thursday night wasn’t the first time that the Dirty Projectors have ever played the Black Cat, but it was possibly the first time that a lot of those Black Cat patrons had seen the Dirty Projectors. That the band has raised its profile in the wake of album-of-the-year contender Bitte Orca was not lost on the musicians, as they alternately rose to the occasion and second guessed their decisions. Not two songs after singer/multi-instrumentalist Angel Deradoorian victoriously proclaimed, “We finally get to play upstairs,” singer/guitarist David Longstreth pondered aloud whether the group's mixture of acoustic and electric instrumentation on "The Bride" was actually working live. Despite audience assurances, he seemed unconvinced.

Looks like bad news on the possible Jawbox reunion show front. Sean Cannon over at Buzz Grinder checked back in with frontman J. Robbins after news broke earlier this month that the legendary '90s band will perform on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in December. The planned television appearance will coincide with the re-release of Jawbox's 1994 major label debut, For Your Own Special Sweetheart, which naturally led to speculation about whether they would also reunite for some local shows. Unfortunately, Robbins' comments make the outlook not so good:

It seems like if we were ever going to do it — now would be the time. We all put our heads together, and it just seemed like — with all of us in different cities and leading complicated and over-committed lives as we do — that it would be very, very difficult for us to to dedicate the time it would take for us to live up to the standards that we want to live up to.

Continue reading "Jawbox Reunion Concert Unlikely "

When Afrobeat marvels Nomo came to DC9 two months ago, not many people had heard of their opener, Last Tide, and certainly nobody there expected a sound that drifted so far from jazzy horns and African percussion. Last Tide's atmospherics lay somewhere between shoegaze-inspired haze and dark new wave synths. This is especially noticeable when keyboardist Libby Dorot takes the vocals, recalling Tina Weymouth's Talking Heads tracks.

It's almost been a year since we last touched base with Phonte and Nicolay, a.k.a. The Foreign Exchange. They'd just released their critically-acclaimed album, Leave It All Behind, and were looking forward to promoting it. Eleven months later, they're still touring and have added another record, Nicolay's City Lights Vol. 2: Shibuya, to their repertoire.

Slate music writer Jonah Weiner has been getting a tremendous amount of ribbing on the internet for his latest counter-intuitive pop rock piece, "Creed is Good: Scott Stapp's nu-grunge foursome was seriously underrated." Weiner penned a similar defense of Limp Bizkit earlier this year, in fitting with his publication's overall reputation for being contrary just for the sake of it. For us, all of this is really just an excuse to link back to former DCist staffer Jason Linkins' classic Scott Stapp concert review, which if you've never read, you should do so now. Click here.

Our occasional series, "Secret History," features profiles of classic D.C. albums as a way of looking back at the District's contributions to music over time. This time around, we revisit Hoover's powerful debut LP, The Lurid Traversal of Route 7 (Dischord, 1994).

There are not many performance ensembles to which the word "institution" is applicable. And when it is, we are often discussing groups that rest on past accomplishments, preserve what has come before, and live on nostalgia. All of this could not be further from the truth when discussing Sweet Honey in the Rock, the colorful and world renowned African American women's a cappella ensemble that was founded here in the District, 35 years ago. Sweet Honey will celebrate this milestone with a special concert tomorrow night at the Warner Theatre, along with another artistic treasure, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

>> The Industrial Jazz Group is an adventurous 17-piece band led by composer Andrew Durkin. Bored with the haughtyness of modern jazz, and the blandness of pop, the group describes its sound as "avant-garde party music," trying to introduce humor into its eclectic sound. The band will be playing tonight at Twins Jazz. Call 202-234-0072 for set time and cover information.

              

When someone is so excited about forming a band that they write a song about the exuberance of that experience, it’s easy to see them putting on a great live show. Because let’s face it, anyone who proclaims, “Look at us! We formed a band!” is clearly the sort of pop culture loving being that would flaunt how happy they are to be in a band for as long as humanly possible. It also suggests that the person writing such a song is not necessarily someone who by conventional standards appears to be a person in a band.

>> Yacht Rockers Supreme, Daryl Hall & John Oates, will be at the 9:30 Club. $55, 7:30 p.m.

Nick Lowe titled the career-spanning compilation he released earlier this year Quiet Please, and it ain't false advertising. The softer, sadder, more introspective country-soul phase Lowe commenced with 1994’s The Impossible Bird now comprises the entire second half of his recording career, one that’s been decelerating (though not eroding in quality) for some time. 2007’s At My Age was his first disc in six years, and he’s released no new music since.

>> Japandroids and their new wave garage rock are at the Rock and Roll Hotel this evening, with New Jersey's Real Estate and Brooklyn's Neon Indian. $10/$12, 8:30 p.m.

You've probably seen them around, either practicing, performing at a community event, on local television, or marching down the street in a parade. They are hard to miss, after all. An infectious percussion ensemble comprised of a couple dozen or so colorfully dressed women isn't something one sees everyday. Of course, we're talking about Batala Washington, the all-women's drum corps that has brought smiles and the spirit of rhythm to the District since its formation in 2007.