Thursday, May 13th, 2010 – $10
w/
CHARLES STANYAN (member of Concert Silence)
WHEN TIDES COLLIDE myspace.com/whentidescollide

For most listeners, instrumental ambient music is all about sinking into new surroundings. The best ambient music is a completely transporting experience, music to swim in, when you listen to it closely. At the same time, it can roll on in the background as part of your environment, adding texture to what’s going on around you. That was the idea behind Brian Eno’s brilliant ambient series, recently reissued on Astralwerks. As he wrote in the liner notes to Ambient 1: Music for Airports, “an ambience is defined as an atmosphere or a surrounding influence: a tint.”

The best of the contemporary musicians following in this tradition is Matthew Cooper, who records under the name Eluvium. His debut album, Lambent Material, released in 2003 by the progressive, Brooklyn-based record label Temporary Residence Ltd., attracted attention for its haunting, beautiful atmospheres. Feeling more like a cloud than a ‘record album’, Lambent Material was built from guitars that were looped, treated, and whatever-ed until they sounded nothing like guitars. Each track shimmered along with grace and beauty, but also a lot of emotion, not just surfaces.

Two definitions…

“Lambent” = 1. Flickering lightly over or on a surface. 2. Effortlessly light or brilliant. 3. Having a gentle glow; luminous.

“Eluvium” = Residual deposits of soil, dust, and rock particles produced by the action of the wind. from Latin eluere, to wash out

To some extent, these definitions do more to describe Eluvium’s Lambent Material than any human being could. They get at the way the music feels like a force, and hint at a description of what the music sounds like. With Eluvium, though, nothing is easily summarized. Even the relationship to ambient music is complicated the more you listen.

Eluvium’s music contains a whole lot of melody; this is an important component, and something you might not expect from the talk of textures and moods. At the center of his most light-as-air and dreamlike soundscapes are melodies that are intermingling and wrapping their way around your mind. They progress slowly, but carry with them serious emotions. At first listen, an Eluvium song seems almost static, like many ambient compositions; yet as you proceed you’ll feel forcefully pushed along in very emotional directions. Feelings of awe and wonder will be generated inside, but also loneliness, fear, happiness — all of the feelings that many pop musicians rely on lyrics to convey are here, cloaked inside of sonic clouds.

Friday May 21st, 2010 – $7

Supporting Acts:
WHETHERMAN myspace.com/whetherman
THE EASTERN WAVE myspace.com/theeasternwave

Biology says: That people who live at high altitudes must develop physiological adaptations to the decreased amount of oxygen available in order to maintain homeostasis. The list of adaptations includes a heart that is proportionally larger than that of a person living at sea level.

Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw have hearts huge, questioning hearts full of music that mixes elements of soul, rock and gospel into a gauzy cocoon of smalltownsound.

It began as the Basket Ride, a few years ago, when the idea began to come to a head. Then, without intent, Cotton Jones became the core. A new flexibility comes from a new name. These days Nau is making music very differently than he did in Page France. The original paranoia that haunted him has dropped off. ‘This feels like a new leaf to me. I’ve learned to let the music happen, rather than trying to invent something,’ says Nau, ‘I’m still sifting through someimaginary thesis, but it makes more sense now.’

The result of his personal revelation is Paranoid Cocoon: the debut fulllength for Suicide Squeeze. It’s an album full of quiet, wooden psychedelia that reflects the duos’ casual pursuit of comfort and freedom under the mountains of Cumberland, Maryland, where creeks zigzag in the lonesome dark of the forest, and a red moon hangs overhead. These are songs of leaving, of dreams both good and bad, sung from surroundings they’ve known their whole lives. In ‘By Morning Light,’ Nau and McGraw’s voices draw each other out of a contemplative melancholy and into a state of amazed gratification; the music here shimmers, always the snaredrum cracks against the tug of the guitar reaching the sublime crush of Yo La Tengo’s ‘And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out.’ It’s simple, understated perfection: they soundtimeless from singing together forever.

Shake me up, shake me up, shake me up, shake me up… I’ve gotta get to something new… Gotta move, gotta move, gotta move… gotta get on outta here… According to Nau, ‘There’s no intentional theme behind these songs. Cocoon didn’t span a lengthy duration of time, so headspace and moods tended to remain threadlike throughout. I believe there’s a familiar mood from start to finish…the lyrics work like visuals of such moods.’