The Bowery Presents

The Bowery Ballroom upcoming shows

Part of CMJ Music Marathon

Rain Machine (Kyp Malone of TV On The Radio)

Sharon Van Etten / Violens / Imaad Wasif / Threes And Nines / Stricken City

Venue:
The Bowery Ballroom
Date:
Sat 10/24
Notes:
18+
Doors: 6:00 PM / Show: 6:00 PM
$15
Tickets
Rain Machine
myspace
Kyp Malone’s much anticipated solo project Rain Machine is set to be released September 22 on Anti-records. The provocative album art, created by Malone himself, is an appropriate indicator of the unique and defiantly personal music within. Rain Machine features ten unflinchingly original and emotional songs mixing elements of modern jazz, blue-grass and blistering guitar driven rock into a refreshing new sound. As singer and guitarist for celebrated band TV on the Radio, Malone proved himself both a captivating and delightfully unpredictable musical force. On Rain Machine, he shows himself a singer and a lyricist of startling talents. Malone recently described Rain Machine as “a nearly full spectrum of frequencies audible to the human ear, a reflection of a variety of emotions and situations real and imagined - some rhythm some rhyme.” In most instances such a statement could be dismissed as nothing more than playful hyperbole. This is not one of those times. Rain Machine is the sound of an extraordinary artist emerging into his own.
Sharon Van Etten
official website
myspace
Sharon is from New Jersey with strong roots in TN.
She now lives in Brooklyn, NY where she plays shows often and records at home in her bedroom.
Her songs are available on myspace (myspace.com/sharonvanetten)
and her website (www.sharonvanetten.com)
She went on her first UK tour with Meg Baird in January 2008.

Sharon will be opening for Great Lake Swimmers on their European tour in May, kicking it off with a show in London with Beirut and Shearwater.

She has a new album coming out on Language of Stone called ‘because I was in Love’.
Violens
myspace
When Violens (vy-lenz’) began plotting their winter tour, they decided to create something to share with the audience overseas while working on their debut album. The New York band has explored a myriad of sounds and styles this past year on their self-titled EP (Cantora), a 7” for the track “Lighting Lightning” (Chess Club, UK only), and a slew of remix collaborations with the likes of MGMT, The Very Best, Lansing-Dreiden, White Lies and many more.

Violens wanted to help new fans piece together a complete picture of their diverse influences from 60’s pop psychedelia to the slick studio production of 80’s new wave, from punk and metal to the dance club bass they were raised on in Miami… The result is their Winter Mixtape, and it is available for free at http://www.violens.net

The mix introduces four songs from Violens’ forthcoming album alongside some wildly unique mash-ups which blend their own performances with music and lyrics of My Bloody Valentine, The Byrds, and Wire among others. You'll also hear remixes of tracks from their debut EP, Violens’ own remixes of White Lies’ “Unfinished Business”, a new collaboration with Caroline Polachek of Chairlift, and a gorgeous acoustic cover of Saint Etienne’s “Avenue”.
Imaad Wasif
official website
myspace
In another life, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Imaad Wasif might have been a poet or a priest. He draws inspiration from beyond the veil, seeking connections and cosmic patters in the hopes of expressing the simplest but most profound message to his listeners: We are not alone. The urgency of that communication, and his need to convey it, give both his delicate guitar ballads and his fervent rock songs a ferocity and focus that resonates with every note.

Wasif goes far beyond the here and now in his music, but he is very much of this time. He is a rock musician who came of age in the Coachella Valley of the 1990s, during the days when the members of stoner rock bands like Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age incited drug-fueled musical decadence with their now-notorious generator parties. His musical sensibilities were birthed on the sound of hard rock bouncing through the vast desert night. At the same time, he discovered Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, giving him his first introduction to rock ‘n’ roll, and showing him a whole world of sonic possibilities beyond the traditional music on which his East Indian parents raised him. Studying at the alter of the guitar greats during the summer he turned 14, he locked himself in his bedroom with a ‘60s sunburst Teisco Del Ray guitar purchased at a garage sale and a determination to master Zeppelin’s “Bron-Yr-Aur,” and Hendrix’s live Monterey Pop version of “Killing Floor.” When he emerged, having grasped the song structures and riffs and improvised his own leads in the place of solos he couldn’t follow, he formed his first band and began playing out at the generator parties.

Moving away from these formative influences on his first musical outings, Wasif kept his sound stripped down in his revered indie rock outfits lowercase and alaska! During these early years, he also played live and in the studio with Lou Barlow’s Folk Implosion. In 2006, Kill Rock Stars released Wasif’s self-titled solo debut, an acoustic psych gem, which had a lean, hushed intensity. Around the same time, he was enlisted as a touring guitarist and opening act for Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

All of these varied influences finally began to reveal themselves in Wasif’s second solo album, “Strange Hexes,” which he recorded with his band Two Part Beast (Bobb Bruno and Adam Garcia) and self-released in March 2008. That album was the first to hint at the distinctive sound Wasif has ultimately crafted for himself; a blast of post-modern psychedelic rock that is at once potent and refined. The album, which will be re-released by Tee Pee Records in 2010, manages a feral yet delicate beauty on tracks like “Wanderlusting,” a melodious love song that builds to an intense climax with a spider web of guitar, and the lush ode to longing, “Oceanic.”

The theme of love in its many guises, both as redemption and call to arms, is one that Wasif returns to again and again in his songs. Its mythical quality becomes a springboard from which he explores the mysteries of life and the universe on his third album, “The Voidist.” Recorded with Two Part Beast, plus guests Dale Crover (Melvins) and Greg Burns (Red Sparowes), by Chad Bamford (Weezer) with additional recordings by Mathias Schneeberger (The Obsessed, Gutter Twins), the release is due from Tee Pee Records in October 2009. Album opener “Redeemer” is a mid-tempo rocker that seems to capture the very nature of amorous obsession with its hypnotic intensity, while “Fangs” is a rapturous statement of romantic purpose, and the darkly quixotic ballad “Another” ruminates on the nature of fidelity.

“The Voidist” is much more than just a rock record. At once regal and exuberant, its unique sonic tapestry is sprinkled with East Indian ragas, blues rock and something totally new that exists at the apex of these varied influences. It also bridges the full range of Wasif’s musicality, from gentle acoustic numbers like the lilting lullaby “Widow Wing” to the sprawling, fuzzed out rocker “Razorlike.” During the year that he was writing songs for “The Voidist,” he found himself drawn to spiritual tomes, which grapple with questions about existence similar to those he was exploring in his own life. “There’s a lot of people I talk to that come from a background where they felt like they were some sort of misfit, or some sort of alien, and not completely connected to others,” he says. “My music is like a passageway to that feeling. It is a way for me to understand my own self, but then also a desire to share with other people and show that I understand that feeling.”

Having gained a reputation for his intense live shows while opening for RTX, The Raconteurs, Neko Case, Arthur Lee’s Love and Sebadoh, Wasif has plans for an extensive tour in the fall of 2009. He can also be found playing guitar on “Little Shadow” from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ latest album, “It’s Blitz!” and Lou Barlow’s forthcoming solo album, “Goodnight Unknown.” His collaboration with Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter, and “Little” Jack Lawrence of The Raconteurs and Dead Weather on the score for the Spike Jonze-directed film adaptation of “Where The Wild Things Are” hits theaters in October.
Threes And Nines
myspace
Stricken City
official website
myspace
When Iain Pettifer (guitars) and Rebekah Raa (vocals/keys) first met in math class they were wearing exactly the same clothes and quickly coupled over a mutual appreciation of introverted, romantic guitar music; not to mention a palpable sense of detachment from the cool kids. Rebekah spent her entire student loan on a guitar and 8 track recorder while Iain educated her with his extensive music collection including of a full set of Twisted Nerve 7”s and the complete works of Richard Hell. Soon joined by Kit Godfrey (drums) and Mike Hyland (bass), our heroes holed themselves up for hours on end, making and breaking songs about life and loss, love and desperation, hatred and hunger.

Defined by their clattering guitars, the scattergun pounding of the drums, basslines bursting with hooks and the strikingly voiced melodies of otherworldly front woman Rebekah Raa; SC produce an indie-pop of hitherto untapped gems drawn from influences Talking Heads, Sonic Youth, Young Marble Giants and The Slits as well as those lost sources of alternative melodica Life Without Buildings, The Sundays and Bow Wow Wow.

"Loose limbed guitar-pop magic... manna to the ears and a ctrl-alt-delete on the musical torpor that is always so close at hand. Stricken City have a floppy, just-short-of-fully-formed form that is beyond endearing and reaks of tiny record labels, the Festive Fifty and musty record shops down back alleys. Tak O Tak effortlessly unfolds as a gorgeous three minutes of lens-flare pop, made all the more palatable by Raa’s voice, which achieves the perfect balance of being exemplary without drowning in its own excellence. Restore your faith in indie with this fab, slightly ramshackle four-piece. More please." The Times
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