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Bring
On the Noise Car horns and alarms, ringing cellphones, barking dogs, music blaring from car windows: Noise permeates our urban lives. From June 16-18, DIVA will host the Eugene NoiseFest, which raises this question: Why would you pay money — not much money, to be sure, but still — to hear ... more noise?
Noise music is a catchall term that encompasses a range of sounds, from the descendants of industrial rockers like Art of Noise or Throbbing Gristle to free jazz to avant electronica — any music that uses unexpected and/or discordant sound sources. But its roots extend back a century to the Italian Futurist painter/polemicist Luigi Russolo, who contended that the inescapable clangor of industrial society had broadened our sense of what music can be. In 1914, he staged a concert that horrified the audience by using an orchestra of noisemakers. But the real progenitor of noise was the French composer Edgard Varese, who saw that Stravinsky's Rite of Spring had opened up new sonic possibilities for what he called "organized sound." Varese's percussion pieces directly influenced Lou Harrison and John Cage in 1930s San Francisco, leading to their famous "junkyard percussion" ensembles of tuned flowerpots, brake drums and other instruments. Cage then took the concept farther, writing pieces that combined sources like recordings, random radio stations and percussion to make sonic tapestries. Cage's experiments were picked up by European composers such as Pierre Schaeffer (who called his tape-generated sounds "musique concrète") and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and later, Japanese noise artists. Punk rockers, the Velvet Underground and its New York avant garde predecessors and other musicians welcomed the new sonic possibilities. Today an underground noise music scene extends around the world. Noise music has found a Eugene home at DIVA over the past year or so, and this month's festival will include more than a dozen artists from Los Angeles, Vancouver and points betwixt (including Eugene's Warning Broken Machine and more), as well as video art. Portland's Pulse Emitter uses old modular synthesizers to produce murky soundscapes, while View uses old electronic medical equipment to generate sounds. Some of the performers are teenage girls, which shows the breadth of the movement. Not all the sounds will be harsh — some are relatively ear-friendly sonic tapestries — but they do emerge from unexpected sources, making NoiseFest an opportunity to stretch your musical horizons. Another source for new sounds in Eugene is the University of Oregon. Some of the school's irrepressible, forward-looking music students have created the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble to play contemporary and 20th century music, including works by UO student composers. This last show of the season, 1:30 pm on June 10 in Beall Hall, features a major work by today's leading living composer, John Adams. "Gnarly Buttons" is an utterly delightful romp for clarinet, which was Adams' instrument as a child and teenager, and chamber orchestra. It draws on his memories of his father (a swing clarinetist), shape note hymns, folk tunes (its hoe-down movement includes banjo, mandolin and guitar and samplers that play accordion and cow) and more. The concert also includes the world premiere of Luke Carlson's "Eternal Horizon" for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion and piano. Music by the influential early 20th century composer Anton von Webern, Alfred Schnittke, one of Europe's most important postwar composers, and a 1986 wind quintet by Montana-based composer David Maslanka round out the program. None of these pieces are easy to play though they're all easy to listen to, and I applaud these intrepid UO students for bringing some of today's most fascinating sounds to Eugene's ears. World music fans have been spoiled with good Indian music this spring. On June 14 the Dharmalaya Meditation Center (a sustainable straw bale building at 356 Horn Lane) brings the Mishras, a prominent father-and-son sitar and vocal duo from Benares, to play classical Indian ragas, accompanied by tabla and tamboura. Bring a pillow, a donation and a meditative spirit.
CD Review Released: 2006, Columbia Records Genre: Little bit of this, little bit of that Since he last sat in a recording studio in 1992, T Bone Burnett has scored movies and plays, produced albums, helped steer the course for dozens of artists and assiduously avoided stepping back behind the mic.
Now, 14 years later, the drought has been ended in spectacular fashion with The True False Identity, an epic journey through a twisted musical landscape that seems frighteningly close to reality and yet strangely ephemeral. "This version of the world won't be here for long / it is already gone, it is already gone," he sings in the song "Palestine, Texas." In turns loopy, lyrical, thought provoking and mystifying, the album has Burnett unveiling a new sound and cryptic lyrics, all flavored with Burnett's sly brand of sidelong humor. Consider this take on the illusion of control in "Zombieland": Machines always do just what you tell them to do / As long as you do what they say. Burnett's lyrics are poetic in the way I find most interesting. Read them on the page and they make no sense, and yet hear them in their musical context, and you just know, or at least think you know, exactly what the song is about. Of his new sound Burnett explains: "All instruments are drums really ... they are all resonating chambers that you attack in some way." The sound on TTFI is oversized and percussive. The musicians slap guitar or bass strings or thump the piano just half again heavier than is deemed normal. Thus even melodic lines seem to serve double duty as a rhythm section. The technique and mixing helps create the illusion that the musicians are in the room with you. The album is released as a CD disc or as a dual layer disc with the CD on one side and a DVD on the other. The DVD contains enhanced versions of the audio CD. In the video portion, Burnett plays three extra songs linked by more of his poetic musings. This is definitely going to be one of the year's best albums. — John Ginn
No Sense Missing This Show
To really get a feel for Toby Koenigsberg's new CD, Sense, you have to hear it. It's smooth jazz piano that, to my ears, is reminiscent of early Miles Davis transcribed for piano, bass and drums. Koenigsberg is assistant professor of jazz piano at the UO, where he earned his undergraduate degree in music before furthering his education at both Eastman and the Peabody Conservatory. He formed a new group in January, after the recording of Sense was complete, but the CD release performance features the same guys as on the CD, drummer Jason Palmer and bassist Tyler Abbott. Koenigsberg has two tracks on Sense called "Stellaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! (one)" and "Stellaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! (two)." I got Koenigsberg on the phone and asked him about those songs plus his love for musician Elliott Smith. "There's this jazz standard called "Stella By Starlight" and shorthand among jazz musicians, it's referred to as "Stella," Koenigsberg said. "We had this version where we would improvise freely at the beginning from elements of the song, and that would be an intro to the song. Then we would play the song, then at the end we would play a vamp, which is a repeated short phrase. So both the beginning and the end didn't sound like the tune on their face, but they were using elements of the tune." When they recorded "Stella" for Sense, they felt the beginning and end worked, but "Stella" itself didn't. "So we cut off the beginning and the ending and made them those two tracks," Koenigsberg explained. He has plans for a future CD of jazz renditions of Elliott Smith's music. "He's one of my favorite musicians," Koenigsberg said. "His music really works well in a jazz sense, because the harmonic material is really rich . . . and jazz tends to have harmonic material that is also really rich, so it's easily adaptable." Koenigsberg promised to play some of that material at the show. Toby Koenigsberg Trio plans a CD release party at 8 pm Friday, June 9 at Luna. $5. – Vanessa Salvia
The Lonesome Diva Throughout her ten years in the Seattle music scene, Carrie Clark has simply been known as, well, Carrie Clark. Even with her band in tow, she was always, simply, Carrie Clark. If you think about it, it sounds lonesome.
So Clark has decided to share the lonesomeness with band mates Dayna Smith on bass, Greg Fulton on guitar and Michael Cotta, drums, by dubbing them The Lonesome Lovers. Hopefully, everyone will be happier now. Currently touring in advance of the release of their new CD, Seems So Civilized, Carrie and crew will bring their "alt-country cabaret" stylings to a June 10 stop in Clark's hometown of Corvallis in preparation for a national tour. Yes, we know Corvallis is 45 minutes from Eugene. But we're here to tell you Carrie Clark and her lonesome crew are worth the drive. Raised on the classic Americana of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Crystal Gayle, Clark is self-taught on piano and guitar. Her winsome voice is expressive and versatile enough to take her through plaintive love songs to old chanteuse standards. Most of the band's songs are contemplative meditations about one-night stands, love lust divas and other dark lullabies. "I am a generally happy person," Clark says, "But songwriting seems to bring out the dark side of my emotions. You have to have both, so in order to stay happy, the darker side of me is given to the songs I write." Carrie Clark and The Lonesome Lovers will cry out in the wilderness at 9 pm Saturday, June 10 at Bombs Away Café in Corvallis. $5. — John Ginn
Only Slightly
Hey kids. Do you like pre-sellout 311? How about smoking weed? How about Telephone Free Landslide Victory-era Camper Van Beethoven? Never heard of them? Well, they never heard of you either. But if you never heard of Slightly Stoopid, you should go to the McDonald Theatre in a few days. These guys were teen prodigies discovered by almost-legendary deceased Sublime frontman, Bradley Nowell. Now they've been touring hard for ten years, resisting artistic pressure from mainstream labels and selling a few albums along the way to hippies, hipsters, gangsters, surfers, Rastas and Pizza Pockets all over the country. You know Pizza Pockets. Those vacant-eyed, twitchy-thumbed basement dwellers who subsist on cheese-filled microwave pastries and Grand Theft Auto? But despite Slightly Stoopid's appeal to the lowest common denominator ("they sing about spliffs … dude, that's cool"), their longevity and the technical expertise of their music manages to elicit respect from connoisseurs in the punk, reggae, funk, hip hop and even acoustic scenes. You have to be able to put up with fusion and you have to be tolerant of improvisational jams. But if snarky, self-important music critics like myself can see past their moniker (is it irony? God, I hope so) and enjoy their latest offering, Closer to the Sun, chances are you might like them too. My bet is Miles Doughty and Kyle McDonald can fill the room with more than testosterone and second-hand smoke. Now go buy a ticket and that old Camper album while you're at it. Slightly Stoopid plays 8 pm Saturday, June 10 at McDonald Theatre. $15 adv./ $18 dos. — Adrienne van der Valk
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