Tonight: Double Header in Hampden

There are two great shows tonight, taking place at both Jesus Camp and the Golden West. However instead of having to choose between them, you can check them both out back to back without missing a beat or hopping to another 'hood.

The first show goes down at Jesus Camp in Hampden, and starts at 8 PM. Mississippi's Junk Culture comes to town, leading a bill with Adventure and Moss of Aura. This will prove to be a fine exhibition of electronic stimuli - as synths, glitches, bits, and beats should all have you feeling pretty good for an early evening affair. If Gerrit (Moss of Aura/Future Islands) is still offering his Still Parade CDR, you'd be a fool not to grab it. This one is upstairs at Jesus Camp, use the fire escape.

When that's all said and done, walk on down the street to the Golden West where you'll find Lizz King, The Demon Beat, and Hammer No More Fingers. This one starts at 10 PM, and should cap off a nice little Wednesday. Eat some tater tots and be musically blessed by the always wonderful Lizz King, as she returns from her first national headlining tour. If you have yet to check out her debut, All Songs Go to Heaven, get on that. You can scoop the vinyl/MP3s over at Ehse Records, and peep the love-fest review posted on Aural States yesterday.

Choose one, or choose all. Happy hump day. Videos after the jump.

Photos: Lizz King, Videohippos, Bethany Dinsick, and Holy Sheet at the Windup Space

Last Friday night the Windup Space played host to a stellar lineup, all in light of sending off Lizz King on her first headlining tour in support of her new album. Her fantastic new record is called All Songs Go to Heaven, a release that's almost six years in the works. Ehse Records is offering the album in vinyl, compact disc, and digital form.

This was as packed as I've seen the Windup in awhile, with an additional performance space set up in the back where both Lizz and Bethany Dinsick played. Lizz King began her set sitting down playing her more melodic folk pop tracks, but not without swinging her rather elaborate boots. When it was time to highlight the the more lively romps, Lizz was quick to get up on her feet and rock her typical dancing and antics.

The rest of the evening proved just as enjoyable, with my only complaint being that the crowd was way too chat-happy during another beautiful set from Bethany Dinsick. Videohippos seem to keep getting tighter and tighter as a four-piece, and Holy Sheet was a welcome and noisy change-up to the vibes. Peep the full photo set after the click.

Videohippos


Bethany Dinsick


Holy Sheet


Lizz King



Photos by Chrissy and Valerie

Clusterf*ck: Shows in Bmore This Weekend

Ever since Fall started, weekends in Baltimore have been stockpiled with stellar shows to attend. Tough choices have been made, and there are more yet to be. I'm sure as heck not complaining about living in a city where choosing between this many shows is sometimes considered a problem.

Yeah, we got other problems too, but this is a music blog. Tonight TAXLO is throwing another one of their mega parties, with Peaches, Ponytail, and Men at Sonar. Now, you won't find too many Peaches tracks on my iTunes, but I'd sure as hell go to check out what their live spectacle is all about.

Ponytail, is a band that needs no more endorsement from me. Their last show at the Ottobar was considered by some to be epic, and I thought they rocked some faces off an eager crowd. Not to mention, I'm not sure I got across off how amazing Dustin Wong was at Soft Fest. Dustin performed guitar compositions similar to what is on Seasons, an album that he had written on the back about how playing the songs live would require at least seven times the sets of hands to perform. Plus, most know Molly Siegel, Jeremy Hyman, and Ken Seeno are going to bring it just as hard.

The Zodiac also hosts a good one tonight, of the more relaxed variety. Lizz King is performing a rare acoustic set, with Andy Abelow and Golden Ghost on support. You can still snag Andy Abelow's excellent set from Soft Fest via MP3 or FLAC.

Tomorrow night the Hexagon's got a pretty kick ass show, as Imperial China, The G, and Compression all play some tunes. I got the chance to speak with Pat from The G last week, in an interview fit for a D.A.R.E. commercial. Dan Auerbach of Black Keys fame is also in town, headlining a big show at Sonar.

Saturday night is yet again stuffed, but MT6 Fest only happens once a year. This year it goes down at the Hexagon, with two stages and the usual cast of misfits. Highlights include Abiku, Bad Liquor Pond, Herioin UK, Newagehillbilly, Needle Gun, and a whole lot more.

Another event on Saturday that is totally worth stopping by is a gallery opening at Open Space. The collection is being dubbed Ordinary Spectacles, which among many others, features the works of Steve Keene. Steve Keene is responsible for a whole mess of album artwork, including some of Pavement's cover art.

Yes, there are more choices on Saturday, with Surfer Blood hitting the Ottobar opening up for Art Brut. Last but not least, Time New Vikings brings its no-fi pop to the Talking Head with Mr. Moccasin running support.

Photos: Height with Friends / AK Slaughter

Height w/Friends stormed the Windup Space last Friday, joined by the likes of Ak Slaughter, Lizz King, and Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez. We made it in time for the final three acts, along with Valerie who snapped some excellent photos that are all below.

This was the album release party for Height w/Friends' Baltimore Highlands remix album, but AK Slaughter also just dropped some love. Aran and Emily's mixtape, which you can grab here for free, is pretty stacked with all kinds of fun cuts from the duo. They killed it yet again live on Friday, and appeared to be having a grand old time doing it. They've got another show this Friday at Sonar.

Height w/Friends featured Mickey Free and Emily Slaughter backing up Height vocally, and they did a damn fine job doing so. The beats hit loud, Height was as amped as always, and Mickey and Emily were essential in weaving it all together. Look for more to come from all three MCs, including a new full length on the way soon from Emily's AK Slaugter. Peep the rest of the photo set below, or click here for the set on our Flikr.


Photos by Valerie

Interview / Mixtape / Photos: AK Slaughter

I recently had the privilege of putting together a photo shoot with local hip hop duo AK Slaughter, as their A Personal Matter's choice cuts continue to infiltrate my playlists. The new mixtape is also absurdly good, and you can download it here for free, or stream it at the very bottom of this post.

This photo shoot/interview sesh involved Valerie's super fun light writing photography, and was a whole mess of fun to help out with. No photoshop necessary, all light effects in the photos were "written" live at the shoot by Emily, Aran, Joe, and me.

I also asked Emily Slaughter and Aran Keating about the mixtape, the new album they are working on, the show on Friday at the Windup Space, and hypothetical photo shoot-based scenarios. Read on to peep the interview, pics, and mixtape.

You just dropped a free mixtape, what went into putting this together?

Aran: It's a DJ mix that I have wanted to do for a while. It is basically a vehicle for a bunch of tracks that we don't really think of as fullly-produced "songs." So we took all these tracks that we have been doing live for a long time, where the beat is really just a loop of a song we liked and I linked em all together with other tracks, acapellas, instrumentals and live stuff that we wanted to use. It is especially fun to take other people's acapellas and hear what, say, Yung Joc sounds like on an AK Slaughter beat. Then I did some new mixes of our tracks and made it all do the mashed potato and I'm pretty happy with the result.

Your mixtape ranges from sampling Elvis to Cutty Ranks to the Cardigans... who are your biggest influences and in what way have you incorporated them with AK Slaughter's music?

Emily: Aran and I both listen to a bunch of different music, I think that shows in our own music... especially our super sample heavy beats. He listens to way more rap than I ever have and I would say is more lyrically influenced by rap music than I am (is that true Aran?). When I listen to rap, I mostly listen to the old school girls having fun stuff like Roxanne Shante, her rivals JJ Fad and Salt n' Pepa. If I could write lyrics like Kool Keith I would die like a thousand times. Country ballads like The Carter Family's "I'm Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes", Tammy Wynette's "The Ways to Love a Man" and "Apartment Number 9" have a big influence on me lyrically. Any music about shit going bad basically rules and serves as fodder for my songs, like Joy Division for example. We're working on a new song that samples Bananarama, oh yes.

Aran: We are always gonna pull samples from everywhere that we can think of: if we dig it we'll sample it. So, I like to think that we are more influenced by this old-school mid 80s mindset of artists like Rick Rubin or Prince Paul who would sample a Doobie Brothers or some obscure garage rock song as easily as a james brown drum break or a rap song that was just released. I think what's great about hip-hop is that you can be really shameless about where your samples are coming from....as long as you are flipping a track in a new way, you can jack an entire song (like we've done with out Hall and Oates jams) or you can pull small bits of samples from all over the place and compose something from the ground up.

I had fun attempting to draw upside down crosses over your heads. You both dig pentagrams, apparently. Emily tells me you guys are working on your next album, are you moving in a more black metal direction with your stuff? Do you have some dark metal party jams in store for us?

Aran: Yes and yes.

Emily: I only got into black metal like a year ago. I've always listened to the more mainstream stuff, like Metallica and whatnot, but I kept hearing about these insane Nordic guys and I had to check them out. My adventures in the realm of darkness have been kind of half-assed: I read Lords of Chaos and got a friend to give me copies of Mayhem, Celtic Frost albums... etc. I really really like the way it sounds, it is exciting and kind of exhilarating, I need to make more of an effort to expand my library. I'm also really into the imagery and the history of the movement. The album and t-shirt art is amazing, we actually based our own t-shirts on that aesthetic. The contemporary history of the genre is pretty ridiculous (with the church burnings and murders and all) but the I think Norse history and folklore is very interesting.... I've been researching the pagan rituals and the gods associated with them for various projects.

As for AK Slaughter, I'd say the t-shirts and the casual use of pentagrams and upside down crosses will be about as far as we go into the dark world. I think a black metal/rap hybrid would end up sounding like rap rock and no one wants to hear that.

Yeah, probably a terrible awesome idea anyways. What was the best place you ever vomited?

Aran: I loved it when Emily vomited into my mouth. It was a happy accident.

Emily: The Roman Colosseum. It sucked. I writhed in the grass for several hours while my friend toured the ruins with his parents.

If you were climbing out of an abyss and only one of you could make it out alive, who wouldn't get sucked into the theoretical neon chasm?

Emily: Aran and I are a team. We would help each other out of this hypothetical abyss and then high five in the air.

Aran: Em and I are tighter than C3PO's underoos. We would tunnel out of that bitch with our bare hands.

You guys have a pretty rad show this Friday night at the Windup Space, whats your favorite Height w/Friends jam? Lizz King jaunt? Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez song?

Emily: Picking a favorite Height track is hard... narrowing it down to just Height with Friends songs makes it a bit easier, because there are less of them. When I listen to Mike Stone, I can't help but stomp and shake, it is totally cool in every way. I'll say Mike Stone for now (check out the video!) but tomorrow I'll probably have another favorite. Lizz King is the bomb.

Aran: I feel that AK Slaughter has a lot in common with Lizz King. Her music is part weird, part dance, part theatrics, part rock, part trad...I dig her stuff a lot. I also really can't wait to hear the new Height record. That song Link Wray and the one called Something Lagoon I've heard live a few times and are blowin my brain.

Photos all by Valerie