“Baltimore” (Used 54 times)

One of my favorite records so far this year and one that's been in heavy rotation at WFMU comes from Amrita Kaur Dang. Hukam seems to draw as much inspiration from Bollywood and North Indian classical music (she's trained in both voice and sitar) as it does from the fertile sounds of Ami Dang's native Baltimore (home to everything from Nautical Almanac to Scottie B).

Ami Dang eases into her debut release with the stripped down sitar + voice of "Interlace," to which she soon introduces electronic loops and an ominous square-wave drone. The next track, "Manali," blossoms into a layered avant-pop song replete with an Amen Break. Hukam's seven expansive tracks were primarily composed and produced by Ami Dang herself, but also feature a handful of seasoned collaborators. The one who caught my eye was Ilya Monosov (21st Century Punks, Monosov/Swirnoff, Shining Path, Hedonic Islands), whose mixing & production methods are perfect for this unique strain of uncategorizable sound-melding.

Hukam is out on CD, Vinyl, and mp3's via Ehse Records, whose Baltimore-centric catalog also includes records by folk Ric Royer & G. Lucas Crane (Woods), Harrius (Chiara Giovando + Jenny Sheppard of Metalux), Leprechaun Catering (Jason Willett + Tom Boram), and Little Howlin' Wolf. Ehse has an incredible year planned with releases by FMA favorites Angels in America, as well as Dog Leather (a collaboration between DJ Dog Dick and Swen Leather that Nat Roe was just ravin' about on the WFMU blog).

Keep an ear out for more from Ehse and Ami Dang, and/or dig a bit deeper right now, here's a recent profile from the Baltimore City Paper.

Jitters, beauty, and blissed out guitar loop magic all converged on my radio program this week, when Baltimore musician Dustin Wong stopped by for a live set.

Scenes from Dustin's illustrious past include playing guitar in two of my favorite bands of recent years: high-energy spazzers Ponytail and intricate dualing guitar melodists Ecstatic Sunshine. That's one hell of a resume! Amazingly, Dustin's new solo material is equally fantastic as his work in other projects, and it even takes his talent in a new and exciting direction.

Dustin Wong's lovely new album of looped guitar orchestrations is called "Infinite Love: A Square Defining A Circle" (Thrill Jockey); it's a variety pack of sorts guaranteed to earn brownie points with any date, featuring two LPs/CDs entitled "Brother" and "Sister" (which start out the same, but then diverge), plus a DVD.

His performance on my radio show (excerpt below) mirrors the style on "Infinite Love." Layers are added to a simple theme and gradually, pauses are filled with playful harmonies, building a complex and beautiful piece that effortlessly transitions into the next idea. When Dustin performs live, you can almost see a miniature symphony of phantom guitars playing along above his shoulders.

Be sure to catch Dustin live in a city near you -- he's on tour with Avocado Happy Hour and Holy Ghost Party (both of Baltimore), playing everywhere from Vermont to California, and then coming back to the East coast again at the end of November. Tour dates/venues here. Also be sure to check out Dustin's bilingual (English/Japanese) blog. Baltimore music fetishists and those interested in the city's latest "soft music" scene, should swing by Bmore Musically Informed for tons of songs/photos/videos.

The archive of Dustin's full live set on WFMU is available as streaming audio here, along with a short interview.

I try not to repeat myself too often, but after hearing the new Future Islands album, learning their Danzig channeling vocalist was fresh off knee reconstruction surgery (stemming from an injury he sustained while moonlighting as a hype man for the Dan Deacon Ensemble), and hearing that they were hitting the road with new Thrill Jockey labelmates and Baltimore homies Double Dagger, I had to drop them a line. I was then doublely stoked after they asked if Double Dagger could come up as well. We had to make it happen.

Both of these three-pieces go after, destroy and rebuild any kinda label you might want to try to put on them. Future Islands constructs these amazingly pretty, tranced out, intense pop ballads that would move Robert Smith to tears of joyous sadness on the dance floor. Double Dagger somehow manages to whittle down and jam pack every sound you loved form 90’s post hardcore into a two liter bottle of drums & bass power punch, and add in Nolen Strals’s curiously strong vocals and we have an explosive combination that you maybe tempted to compare to Fugazi (but do so at your own risk).

The fact that we actually got these sets recorded was amazing! We thought it would be a good idea to schedule the session at ten a.m. the morning after the New York release party for Future Islands’ new album In Evening Air. Let's just say getting up after a record-setting night for Death by Audio’s bar and then having to fight though an army of cyclists on a five-borough tour did not make for the timeliest arrival... but big ups to both bands for powering though and delivering great performances and big thanks to Dave Mambach for manning the audio controls and making everything sound great and to my boss for letting me come into work an hour late.

Hope you enjoy the sets!!!
Double Dagger  |  Future Islands  |  WFMU Playlist & Stream for Marty McSorley 5/5/2010

At a Monday night Death By Audio show a couple years back, Greg Fox, one of Teeth Mountain's four percussionists, passed along a sampler from his new Infinite Limbs label. This hand-painted cd-r introduced me to so much good music from the likes of Prince Rama of Ayodhya, Twisty Cat, Liturgy, Ducktails, and one Willy Weird...

Willy Weird, now known as Thick Business, is the solo project of frequent Infinite Limbs collaborator Tyler Dussenberry. Take a listen to the bad acid electro-surf jam "French Beach" (off that Infl comp), and the aptly titled, trance-inducing layered minimalism of "Smoothest Runes" (originally posted by 20 Jazz Funk Greats)!

The Infinite Limbs compilation also featured a track from Greg's solo project 5 Limbs, now known as GDFX. Greg's early solo stuff applied a percussionists' approach to loop pedals and sequencers to create hyper-active beat-oriented composition. Take a listen to the epic Altered Ego -- especially the 23rd and 24th minutes...

Lord, this one sounded too good to be true when I heard it was in the works a few months back.  And it also helps confirm my suspicion that all the stuff on Judge Judy, Maury, Springer, what have you, are totally made up.  On Monday's episode of Judge Judy, Teeth Mountain's Kate Levitt accused Jonathan Coward, AKA Shams, of killing her cat by throwing a TV on top of it.  The witnesses are Andrew Burt from Teeth Mountain and Narwhalz, who unfortunately doesn't speak much in court but who distinctly refers to Judy as "Mama".  For you animal lovers, this story is not true - although Shams does fuck around with dead birds on stage and burn them as part of these...like...satanic rituals or something.  I'm not sure if they're dead when he finds them.

Teeth Mountain are on tour right now in the Northeast US, making their way to Mexico in March -- tourdates here. More Teeth Mountain on the FMA here