22 September 2010

REMINDER: Univers Zero and Miriodor this weekend in DC


Don't you wish you could see these two bands on the same bill in the USA?

You can!

This is the world's first appearance of these two legendary bands performing on the same bill, and the debut performance for either band in Washington D.C.

Don't miss this extremely rare opportunity to see Univers Zero and Miriodor perform live in the USA!

Ticket details below:


UNIVERS ZERO

"Chamber music for the Apocalypse" – Keyboard

"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..." – Puls [Norway]

The Belgian group Univers Zero 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 and modern, its distinctive, dark, and elegantly beautiful instrumental music fused classical and rock musics to give birth to an unprecedented and remarkably prescient new musical genre called "chamber rock". UZ's singular sound derives from its unique instrumentation (classical acoustic and electric rock instruments, and electronics), combined with brooding gothic imagery, elements of European folk and other world musics, the iconoclasm and intensity of rock, the relentless sonic experimentation of the avant-garde, and leader/ chief composer/ drummer Daniel Denis' classically inspired writing style, influenced by early 20th Century avant-garde classical composers. The band has remained on the cutting edge of New Music throughout the course of a career that began in the '70s – it was one of the 5 founding bands of the “Rock In Opposition” movement [a European coalition for alternative music] – and continues today, stretching and disintegrating the boundaries of classical and rock music alike to create a new, vital and unique fusion.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', associated with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Kayo Dot and other instrumental rock bands – to the numerous late 20th/early 21st century classical chamber ensembles who are integrating rock into their repertoire, such as Bang on a Can, Kronos Quartet and others.

Visit Univers Zero Online:
www.univers-zero.com
www.myspace.com/universzero


MIRIODOR


"…densely packed with ideas yet paradoxically light in feel, offering up something new for the senses at every turn. The music is both entertainingly accessible and startlingly inventive…
…one of the finest bands ever to emerge from the Quebec musique actuele scene.” – All Music Guide

"…they are one of the finest exponents of the RIO sub genre on the market today. Always inventive, always surprising and always just a little off-kilter."
– ghostland.com

"…full of fire and eclecticism."– Gibraltar

Birthplace of the world-famous Cirque du Soleil, the performing arts troupe who reinvented the circus for the new Millennium, and the critically-acclaimed band Miriodor, whose genre-transcendent musical acrobatics catapult instrumental rock into the 21st Century, Canada’s French-speaking province of Quebec is an artistic hotbed. Looking internally and to Europe for inspiration while attempting to avoid influence from the entertainment industry in the United States, Quebecois artists have produced some of the most radically innovative music and performing arts to emerge from North America. Among the numerous highly original and uncompromising musical cooperatives – Ambiance Magnetiques/D.A.M.E., Godspeed You ! Black Emperor, and more– operating in French Canada in the decades surrounding the new Millennium, the key musical resource on the internet, the All Music Guide, singled out Miriodor as “…one of the finest bands ever to emerge from the Quebec musique actuele scene.”

A Montreal-based quartet, Miriodor create instrumental music that is complex, playful, visually evocative, and exquisitely performed. The band describes its sound as “like a soundtrack for a movie, a movie with weird and strange stories,” and indeed, each CD is like a book of short video stories, each differing in subject and mood. The band’s gem-like compositions, each as intricate as an Escher drawing and entertaining as fun-house mirrors, have been praised as “ominous, ferocious, and zany…complex musical mayhem” [Sea of Tranquility], exuding “a darkly comic dysfunction Tim Burton would give his eyeteeth for.” [Michigan Independent]. Miriodor’s distinctive compositions and rigorous musicianship have identified it as the main Canadian exponent of the R.I.O. (Rock In Opposition) sound with a light-hearted, unpresumptuous, and sincerely entertaining twist.

Visit Miriodor Online:
www.miriodor.com



Saturday, September 25, 2010, 7pm
La Maison Française / Embassy of France
4101 Reservoir Rd. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20007
202.944.6400
http://houseoffrancedc.org

ALL AGES
TICKETS: $45
(available online @ http://www.dc-soniccircuits.org)


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