CUNEIFORM ARTIST NEWS
January 2009 New Releases p. 2
Artist News:
Beat Circus p. 5
Bill Brovold p. 5
Birdsongs of the Mesozoicp. 6
David Borden / Mother Mallard p. 6
Cheer-Accident p. 7
Cosmologic p. 8
Doctor Nerve / Nick Didkovsky p. 8
Fast ‘N’ Bulbous p. 8
Forgas Band Phenomena p. 9
Peter Frohmader p. 9
Gutbucket p. 10
Richard Leo Johnsonp. 10
Mats/Morgan Band p. 11
The Microscopic Septet p. 11
Planeta Imaginario p. 12
Revolutionary Snake Ensemble p. 12
Roswell Rudd p. 13
Roger Trigaux / Present p. 13
UpsilonAcrux p. 13
Volapük p. 13
Cuneiform Artist Tours p. 13
Cuneiform Artist Websites p. 15
5 NEW CUNEIFORM RELEASES (RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 20, 2009)
CHEER-ACCIDENT / FEAR DRAWS MISFORTUNE / CUNEIFORM / Rune 276
Genre: ROCK / POST-ROCK / AVANT-PROGRESSIVE
GUTBUCKET / A MODEST PROPOSAL / CUNEIFORM / Rune 281
Genre: JAZZ / PUNK-JAZZ / ROCK
FAST ‘N’ BULBOUS / WAXED OOP / CUNEIFORM / Rune 277
Genre: ROCK / JAZZ / BLUES-ROCK /
“THERE AIN’T NO LABEL FOR THIS BOTTLE”-DON VAN VLIET
FORGAS BAND PHENOMENA / L’AXE DU FOU • AXIS OF MADNESS /
CUNEIFORM / Rune 282
Genre: JAZZ / JAZZ-FUSION / JAZZ-ROCK
UNIVERS ZERO / RELAPS / (Archives 1984 – 1986) / CUNEIFORM / Rune 280
Genre: ROCK / CHAMBER ROCK/ EXPERIMENTAL / NEW MUSIC / CLASSICAL
CHEER-ACCIDENT – FEAR DRAWS MISFORTUNE – CUNEIFORM – Rune 276
Genre: ROCK / POST-ROCK / AVANT-PROGRESSIVE
For its first release on Cuneiform, Cheer-Accident created Fear Draws Misfortune, a CD featuring 9 tracks of astonishingly beautiful, lush and captivatingly complex post-rock/art rock. On it, band members Thymme Jones, Jeff Libersher, and AlexPerkolup team up with 15 other musicians and vocalists from the rock/jazz/improv/avant-classical undergrounds of Chicago and beyond (contributing violinist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt hails from Oakland’s Sleepytime Guerilla Museum). A coherent and cohesive artist statement, the CD interweaves superb musicianship, stunning vocals, and an epic and panoramic range of ideas, styles and studio techniques to create masterwork of creative art rock, that should bring the band attention well beyond Chicago’s shores.
Widely recognized as “Chicago’s ruling experimental collective” [Punk Planet], Cheer-Accident are the elder statesmen of and the provocative catalysts behind Chicago’s fertile and stylistically-diverse music scene – a scene that gave birth to post-rock, math-rock, post-punk and other important late 20th Century indie rock genres. At the helm of the Windy City’s underground since the early 1980s, Cheer-Accident have remained ceaselessly innovative while releasing approximately 15 recordings, playing countless concerts, collaborating with numerous other Chicago players, and creating a weekly Chicago cable TV show since 1993, the Dada-esque Cool Clown Ground. Led by drummer/composer/ vocalist Thymme Jones, Cheer-Accident may well be the most fearless and defiantly independent band of musical provocateurs on America’s so-called ‘independent’ music scene. Mixing and juxtaposing musical elements to create unprecedented combinations, introducing familiar ingredients to unfamiliar contexts, Cheer Accident push, prod and probe at the boundaries of musical conventions, genre form, audience/artist interaction, and, at times, good taste, with a combination of devil-may-care bravura, intellectual seriousness, the iconoclasm of Frank Zappa and unbridled, child-like creativity and naïveté. By “cheer accident”, the results of these daring boundary-bursting experiments are brilliant, and bold.
In a December 2008 cover feature on Cheer-Accident in Signal to Noise, America’s premiere magazine devoted to experimental music, writer Hank Shteamer describes the band’s music as:
“Imagine a confluence of the grandeur of Yes, the range of This Heat, the irreverence of Ween, the poignancy of Elliott Smith and the mischief of Andy Kaufman, and you’ll be getting close to the net effect of Cheer-Accident’s musical output”
“…a band that’s required listening for anyone seeking an education in underground music ” – Punk Planet
GUTBUCKET – A MODEST PROPOSAL – CUNEIFORM – Rune 281
Genre: JAZZ / PUNK-JAZZ / ROCK
Having blown out Carnegie Hall with an orchestra (“a density worthy of... a Led Zeppelin epic,” raved The New York Times), been proclaimed accidental forefathers of the death jazz movement by The London Guardian, and called “clearly out of their minds” by Guitar Player, it is perhaps not surprising that Gutbucket's new album should be about eating babies. A nod to Jonathan Swift's 1729 satirical treatise on classist cannibalism, A Modest Proposal is the Brooklyn quartet's fourth album. Slowing down occasionally (as on the opening Head Goes Thud), the band's interests are as far-reaching as ever, peppering songs with cosmic-skonk guitar (Carnivore), double-quartet call-and-response (Side Effects May Include), and string quartet arrangements now re-done for bass clarinet and band (More More Bigger Better Faster with Cheese).
A Modest Proposal solidifies Gutbucket's place at the forefront of a revitalized avant-garde music scene in New York, where sparkling new venues pack in 20-somethings at Steve Reich gigs and Bang on a Can's all-night music marathons draw crowds for 'Stockhausen at Sunrise'. In orbit around the venerable Bang collective--for whom Thomson composed seasonal.disorder, performed at their 2008 People's Commissioning Fund Concert--Gutbucket's downtown pedigree is vast. Founded by Rockwin, saxophonist Ken Thomson, guitarist Ty Citerman, and drummer Paul Chuffo between shifts at Columbia University's vital radio station, WKCR, Gutbucket built their live rep in New York clubs before spreading across east coast college towns ; trips to Europe soon followed, with over a dozen tours in 19 countries.
The group attacks their music with the ferocity usually reserved for punk, and the humorous abstraction of art-rock, despite having earned their jazz bona fides. Though the band might seem rooted in the genre exploding of New York’s downtown (their 2001 debut, InsomniacsDream, was released on the Knitting Factory house imprint), their shift to louder sounds began with their controversially titled Dry Humping the American Dream (released in 2003 in Europe on Enja and domestically in 2004 on Bang on a Can's Cantaloupe). Such releases have brought the band critical acclaim – as have the band’s live shows. While their shows are legendarily frenzied (“Keep all limbs, drinks and small children well clear of manic sax dervish Ken Thomson,” Time Out New York warned), they are also events unto themselves.
“There is something smart, sleek and assured about Gutbucket, and when they begin firing on all cylinders it makes for an exhilarating, intelligently performed racket." – The Guardian (UK)
“A classic case of a band that defies categorization.” – The Washington Post
FAST 'N' BULBOUS – WAXED OOP – CUNEIFORM – Rune 277
Genre: ROCK / JAZZ / BLUES-ROCK / “THERE AIN’T NO LABEL FOR THIS BOTTLE”-DON VAN VLIET
Captain Beefheart's music is the quintessential 'outsider art music' of the second half of the 20th century. Fast 'n' Bulbous offer a unique slant on the songbook of one of contemporary music's most idiosyncratic figures.
Fast‘N’Bulbous is a Captain Beefheart repertory project led by two innovators of the new music scene: rock guitarist and improvisor GaryLucas, who was guitarist for CaptainBeefheart’s MagicBand in its latter years (1980-82), and composer, jazz saxophonist and improvisor PhillipJohnston, who co-led the renowned MicroscopicSeptet, widely regarded as one of the best jazz bandsof the 1980s. In 2005, Cuneiform released Fast’N’Bulbous’ first-ever CD, Pork Chop Blue Around the Rind, which received a torrent of praise worldwide from both the rock and jazz press – and from both Beefheart fans and those who did not like Beefheart’s music the first time around.
Waxed Oop is Fast 'N' Bulbous’ second album. As on Pork Chop, most of the tunes are orchestrated with a horn section used in lieu of Beefheart's gritty vocals and with improvisation incorporated into the fold. On Waxed Oop, the band energetically revives the spirit and sound of Captain Beefheart’s music, cart wheeling through tunes that are as gutsy as they are cerebral, as drenched with soulful blues as they are filled with abstract sound. To celebrate the releases of Waxed Oop, Fast’N’ Bulbous will tour Europe in March 2009.
Waxed Oopis part of Cuneiform’s “Contemporary Masters”series, featuring groups whose repertory includes the works of such groundbreaking composers/artists/bands as Albert Ayler, Miles Davis, Captain Beefheart, John McLaughlin / MahavishnuOrchestra, and Frank Zappa. None of these groups are tribute bands attempting to replicate the original material; all treat the Masters’ original music in new, highly original and often enlightening ways.
“Fast ‘N’ Bulbous are no next best thing; They are the big brass band [Captain Beefheart] never had. With bellowing horns arranged by saxophonist Johnson and pinpoint swordplay vbt ex-Magix Band guitarist Gary Lucas, Fast’N’Bulbous ignite the R&B gunpowder inside the tanged surrealism…”
– Rolling Stone
FORGAS BAND PHENOMENA – L’AXE DU FOU • AXIS OF MADNESS – CUNEIFORM – Rune 282
Genre: JAZZ / JAZZ-FUSION / JAZZ-ROCK
Composer/drummer PatrickForgas has been hailed as “the French answer to the Canterbury scene” ever since his debut 1977 release Cocktail (recorded with members of Magma and Zao). Since the late 1990s, as leader of the ForgasBandPhenomena, he has helped ignite interest in Canterbury-infused jazz-rock among a new generation of young French jazz musicians and fans. Besides Forgas, most of the musicians in the Forgas Band Phenomena are in their 20s or 30s, and they enliven his compositions with an energy and verve that make the music sound fresh. For L'Axe du Fou / Axis of Madness, his 4th Forgas Band Phenomena release, Forgas leads an 8 piece instrumental ensemble (dual saxes, trumpet, violin, guitar, keyboards, bass and drums) through epic-length, complex and melodic compositions that mix ambitious progressive rock structures and intense jazz soloing.
L'Axe du Fou / Axis of Madness is the Forgas Band Phenomena’s 4th release, and its second on Cuneiform. In 2005, Cuneiform released Soleil 12; a dynamic fusion of jazz soloing and rock structures, and of music from the 70s and the current day, it received critical acclaim in both the jazz and the progressive rock music press.L'Axe du Fou / Axis of Madness is a studio recording of new material written in the past three years, with the sole exception of the intro to "La Clef", dating from the late 1990s.
“Listening to the wonderfully diverse, panoramic Soleil 12, assorted aspects of jazz, rock, classical (19th and early 20th styles), film music come to the fore. …The four lengthy tracks…feature distinct melodies and tight, urgent, almost suite-like arrangement recalling Frank Zappa and Carla Bley, which nonetheless give each player chances to strut their formidable stuff. There’s restraint, ebb and flow. Forgas BF can be as diabolically busy as electric-era Bill Bruford, as groove-y as Brian Auger and soar with easy grace as Jean-Luc Ponty. …This dandy platter proves there’s plenty of possibilities left in the fusion realm. “ – Mark Keresman, Jazzreview.com
UNIVERS ZERO – RELAPS (Archives 1984 - 1986) – CUNEIFORM – Rune 280
Genre: ROCK / CHAMBER ROCK/ EXPERIMENTAL / NEW MUSIC / CLASSICAL
The Belgian band UniversZero is legendary for its ominous, unsettling and uncompromising musical vision – a sound and stance that Keyboard describes as “Chamber Music for the Apocalypse”. Simultaneously medieval & modern, its distinctive, dark and elegantly beautiful instrumental music fused classical and rock to give birth to an unprecedented and remarkably prescient new musical genre. Today, several decades after Univers Zero first forged its unique “chamber rock”, critics cite its oeuvre as the precursor to the best avant-garde rock and classical music of the present day, from post-rock to the numerous late 20th/early 21st C. classical chamber ensembles integrating rock into their repertoire. When Cuneiform recently released a remastered reissue of the band’s self-titled debut album, critics who heard the band’s music for the first time called it a “revelation”, “..the hidden source for every one of today’s avant-garde rock bands”[Organ].
Back in the 1980s, however, in the band’s second decade of existence, Univers Zero stood very much alone, its music well beyond and outside that time. Featuring rock and classical instrumentation and sophisticated, passionate compositions, its dark and daring instrumental music stood in bold contrast to the artistic and cultural wasteland that characterized much ‘80s rock music. This new Univers Zero CD, called Relaps: Archives 1984-1986, is an archival project that documents the band in live performance during the mid-late 1980s. The band’s 11th CD, it is the only release of live material from the period during which Univers Zero recorded the two studio releases UZED [1984-Cryonic, 1988-Cuneiform], and Heatwave [1987-Cuneiform]. During that time, with Denis at its helm and some of best musicians from Europe’s avant-garde at its instruments, Univers Zero created what was perhaps the boldest, most sonically powerful and above all, most overtly ROCK-oriented music of its lengthy career. The stellar performances and astounding music on Relaps are proof positive that Univers Zero was one of – and perhaps the – most adventurous rock band then playing on the international rock stage. Relaps captures the live band that caught Cuneiform’s ear more than 20 years ago, leading it to sign Univers Zero and release its 6th album, Heatwave, thus beginning a fruitful relationship that continues to the present day.
“…one of the most important groups of the 1980s ..Univers Zero conceptualize the Europe of the late 20th Century... dense, desperate and dark; …above all beautiful and dramatic, strongly marked by the cultural traditions of Europe…Univers Zero may be classified somewhere between Bach and Bartok, Magma and Stravinsky…They represent something new, monumental, and important… a stirring lament over a European continent in physical and cultural decay … a rare, intense, and magnanimous piece of work, and it is absolutely compulsory for everyone who’s...played their Magma records to shreds, and/or who would have wanted there to be a bit more electric bass and drums on Bartok’s string quartets.”
– Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Puls [Norway], Feb 1989
“Univers Zero…forged a genre of music that might appropriately be dubbed post-rock, had the term not been coined 15 years too late. “ – Popmatters [USA]
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ARTIST NEWS:
Beat Circus
January 2009 Tour with Larkin Grimm
We're doing a short tour in January with singer/songwriter Larkin Grimm, who is touring on her new album Parplar on Young God Records. Earlier this year Brian Carpenter and Jordan Voelker recorded on Parplar. Last week Larkin sang on several tracks on the forthcoming Beat Circus album Boy From Black Mountain.
THU 01.15 Cambridge, MA - Middle East Upstairs +#
FRI 01.16 Providence, RI - Jake's Bar & Grill +
SAT 01.17 Portland, ME - Space Gallery +~
SUN 01.18 Hamden, CT - The Space +
SAT 01.31 Brooklyn, NY - Union Pool ^
+ with Larkin Grimm
~ with Chriss Sutherland (Fire On Fire)
# with La Strada
^ with Nervous Cabaret
Dreamland and "The Ghost Of Emma Jean" rank among Best Of 2008
The critics weigh in on Dreamland...Avant Music News and Scaruffi rank Dreamland among the best of 2008.LimeWire lists "The Ghost Of Emma Jean" in the top ten songs of the year. Stewart Masonof All Music Guide called Dreamland "a wonderfully imaginative record." The New Yorker wrote"an ambitious new Brechtian concept album with rich and tight orchestration." Time Out New York wrote "Dreamland realizes a lushly imaginative American mythology...a surreal melange". Mark Jenkins of the Washington Post wrote"Beat Circus evokes a period so distant that it might seem like a Dreamland, transporting listeners to a world that's alluring and eerie." Dreamland is available NOW at our online STORE and at Cuneiform Records.
Bryce Goggin mixing Boy From Black Mountain
Thanks to all of you who came out to our October shows with Wovenhand. We've finished the majority of voice, strings, and brass overdubs for our forthcoming album Boy From Black Mountain and we're now mixing with esteemed NYC producer and engineer Bryce Goggin (Apples In Stereo, Sean Lennon, Angels of Light, Akron/Family, Larkin Grimm). Special guests include Larkin Grimm (Young God Records), cellist Julia Kent (Antony & the Johnsons), and multi-instrumentalist Bill Cole (a specialist in non-Western wind instruments such as the Chinese suona). We've posted photos from the recording session here.
Bill Brovold
Bill Brovold and Virgil Moorefield have joined forces to combine their unique views on both composition and improvisation.
They will be adding a floating third member to keep a power trio concept.