It is now one week after Mittenfest. The five-day local music festival raised another several thousand dollars for 826Michigan’s non-profit projects in creative and expository writing education for local students.
In Mittenfest’s ten-year run funds raised for 826Michigan have reached far above $100,000 and that’s endearing as hell. But, from a music fan’s perspective, Mittenfest can be an opportunity to discover a band amid its vast lineup, band that might have been making music right under your nose (…or just out of ear range?) and now, now, their songs are all you wanna hear.
Now, Detroit-based Blood Stone don’t have a show coming up this week, but they are back in the studio working on new material. So, if you’re digging their blend of sweet, dreamy indie-pop and fuzz-garbled dark psychedelia, then you can keep your ears peeled (yeah, I said it,) for their upcoming release.
But what about this weekend?
Saturday
Some people just won’t give industrial-music the time of day. They’ll find it scary. Startling. Disturbing? There’s beauty in the harshness, there’s transcendence in the drone, there’s a trip to be taken and it’s not going to be a smooth one. But, I say when that label’s usefulness or aptness has disintegrated; let’s broaden it. I think this music is just expansive. Not merely “mind-expanding” as the cliché may suggest, but expansive in its essence, because these strange sounds meticulously arranged by its composers can seem to fill a room, like a calming ghostly vapor. It’s elemental, maybe like a sustained gale or a cresting tide coming in, an avalanche set to the pace of a spring morning’s drizzle.
Hopefully you’re as intrigued by ambient/”industrial” as I am, and hopefully you’ll consider Dominic Coppola, Saturday night, at Arbor Vitae.
Now, I say “industrial,” because that was the tag often clipped to Ann Arbor/Detroit project Wolf Eyes back in the early 2000’s. Members from that band formed Clay Renderings, a blend of post-industrial, ambient drones and black metal, supporting their latest release Snowthron. Also on this line up are Ann Arbor’s own Evenings, a solo ambient artist with two recent releases, Grey Days I Have Not Yet Seen and La Religion de la Souffrance Humaine.
Saturday
Clay Renderings, Evenigs and Dominic Coppola, with DJ Matthew Billings
Arbor Vitae (336 S. State St) Ann Arbor
8:30 pm
$5
Saturday
New Dodge Lounge
If you’re up for a trip over to Detroit, then you could catch Grand Rapids-based Valentiger halfway through their Good Friction Tour. The power-twang trio are joining up with a Detroit-based quartet of comparable folk-rock re-inventors called Woven Tangles at the New Dodge Lounge in Hamtramck. Space-pop quintet Honeybabe are also on the bill. Put it on your calendars.
Saturday
Valentiger, Woven Tangles, Honeybabe
New Dodge Lounge (8850 Jos Campau) Hamtramck
9 pm
Next Friday
Ann Arbor Art Center
The gig poster. The concert photographer. The image of chaos captured, crisply and carefully. The mystique of live music rendered through illustration and graphic design. Life In Michigan has curated an impressive lineup of local artists and photographers for an exhibition called GIG: The Art of Michigan Music. Jen Harley, Doug Coombe, Mark Arminski, Chris Betea, Scott Boyink, Carl Lundgren, Jena McShane and several more names that probably sound familiar because you’ve read them in caption lines or under about pages for design web sites or credited for show posters will be featured. Jeremy Wheeler (of The Bang) will not only be featured but also DJ-ing the reception this upcoming Friday, from 6-9pm. More info
Jeff covers music for Current, posting weekly show previews and highlighting new bands in the area.
