Orion Progressive Showcase: Uz Jsme Doma and Inzinzac on 9 October

8:00pm Saturday Night, October 9th
The Baltimore Progressive Rock Showcases at Orion Studios
http://www.orionsound.com/schedule2.htm
2903 Whittington Ave, Baltimore, MD 21230
present:

Uz Jsme Doma
(from the Czech Republic)
with guests:

Inzinzac
(from the Republic of Philadelphia)

Please join us as we welcome Czech legends Uz Jsme Doma back to the Orion Studios stage on Saturday night, October 9th! Below is a link to complete information regarding this show - which also contains a complete Orion Studios Fall 2010 Showcase Schedule with links to each band's website or MySpace page. Because the PE forum software has trouble with large postings I'm breaking this one into several posts. Hope you can make it - this is going to be one hell of a show!

Uz Jsme Doma

http://www.myspace.com/uzjsmedoma

Be here as we welcome back Czech rockers Uz Jsme Doma to the Orion Studios stage! Uz Jsme Doma is a living, fire-breathing alt-rock rock legend: one of "the two great Bastions of the Czech alternative scene," said the Prague Post, which ranked them in importance beside the Plastic People of the Universe. In 1989, when the Velvet Revolution ended Czechoslovakia's communist rule, Už Jsme Doma burst like a fireball from unlocked doors and began taking siege of every public stage worldwide. Since then, the band has blazed across multiple continents to perform literally thousands of concerts (they will celebrate playing their 2000th concert in March 2011), and played 50 to 60 shows annually for fans back home. To these audiences, Už Jsme Doma's music - rooted in punk's DIY ethic and driven by progressive and avant-garde musics' post-modern scavenger aesthetic - was the symbol of artistic freedom: the freedom to create without boundaries or restrictions.

For 25 years, the band's music has ignored genre walls, absorbing varied influences from punk rock (the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Damned), from avant-garde and avant-progressive bands (the Residents, Pere Ubu, Chrome, Fred Frith, Henry Cow and the Rock in Opposition movement), and even from folk music of its native land. It has also transcended artistic media. The band's leader Miroslav Wanek, who is also its composer, lyricist, and lead vocalist, maintains that Už Jsme Doma's music is "three parts: music, pictures and lyrics," and that artist Martin Velisek, who designs all band artwork, is a full band member whose "instruments" are brushes and paints. This multi-media emphasis allies the Czech band with the Residents and Sleepytime Guerilla Museum, two bands whose members have collaborated with Už Jsme Doma in the past. For its newest project, Caves / Jeskyne¡, Už Jsme Doma collaborated for the first time with the American label Cuneiform  to release its 7th album in North America and Western Europe. The CD is accompanied by a 12-page booklet featuring Velisek's artwork and English translations of Wanek's lyrics. The album's 11 songs create a potent and improbable mix of avant-punk's power, aggression, and urgency, and progressive rock's compositional complexity and thematic integrity. In Caves, Už Jsme Doma mines a motherload of rock music, extracts fragments of gems from both East and West, and forges the fertile ore into its own unique sound. Forged in Prague amidst that capital city's 21st C. renassiance, from choice elements mined locally and in the West, Už Jsme Doma's dynamic and confident new music heralds the dawn of New Europe as it emerges from the shadows to its west.

INZINZAC

http://www.myspace.com/inzinzac

Inzinzac (named after a small town in France) are a alt-jazz/rock trio from Philadelphia formed by French guitarist/accordionist Alban Baily. Joined by saxophonist Dan Scofield (Shot x Shot) and Normal Love drummer Eli Litwin, the band plays a rough-edged cerebral music that shares common elements with Balkan, jazz, free improvisation and rock. Their music includes traces of Soft Machine, Ivo Papasov, and even a bit of '70s Miles Davis. Imagine "...Albert Ayler and Dave Lombardo stumblin onto a gypsy caravan and jamming with the locals under the influence of a full moon." (Shaun Brady - Philadelphia City Paper)

Shawn Persinger/Jack Dupon at Orion Studios tomorrow night (Baltimore)

This show should make a nice appetizer for those heading to DC the following week to enjoy the Sonic Circuits Festival, major portions of which will be held at the French Embassy. So it's entirely appropriate (and completely coincidental) that we are featuring a French avant/progressive band in the form of Jack Dupon.

8:00 pm Saturday, September 11th
The Baltimore Progressive Rock Showcases at Orion Studios
2903 Whittington Ave., Baltimore, MD 21230


JACK DUPON
-----------
http://www.myspace.com/jackdupon
http://www.jackdupon.net

The music of Jack Dupon is yet another "impossible to describe" experience. They are a French experimental-avant-progressive rock band whose music is sometimes flavored with an absurd sense of humor. And don't look to find anyone named Jack Dupon - there is no such person. Instead Jack Dupon is a collection of four young, fairly unhinged individuals; phlegmatic adventurers of the imaginary - improvisers and storytellers, polite and rude. Full of oppositions and contradictions, they will taunt you with their outrrrageous music! Influences include Zappa, Primus, Caravan, Morphine, and King Crimson. Listening to their music I hear a bit of old-school progressive in songs like "L'Homme a la Jambe qui", some silliness in "Cousine", and checking out some of the videos of live performances I get a sense of some almost punky prog. I'm wondering if they were able to bring those crazy costumes along with them?

SHAWN PERSINGER is PRESTER JOHN
-------------------------------
http://www.myspace.com/persingermusic
http://www.PersingerMusic.com

Likewise don't look to find anyone named Prester John - it's a performance moniker adopted by our old friend Shawn Persinger, formerly the guitarist for Boud Deun. In the past decade or so Shawn has circled the globe a couple of times, traveling to and performing in seldom visited regions of distant lands, acquiring a wealth of life experience and enriching his musical palette. His newest album, Desire for a Straight Line, is an all-instrumental album including the usual (for Shawn) varied yet cohesive mix of smart and whimsical tunes, 16 in all. Both on the record and in concert Shawn is joined by David Miller on mandolin. Expect a mix of new and old Prester John tunes, a Boud Deun song or two, as well as perhaps a classic proggy cover!



DA RULZ:

All-ages show - BYOB - SMALL folding chairs welcome.

Cover: $15

Driving Directions:
Take I-95 to exit 50A - Caton Ave., South. If you are coming from the south BEWARE - there is no merge lane at the end of the exit ramp to get onto Caton Ave., so BE CAREFUL!! Take Caton Ave to the third traffic signal and turn left onto Washington Blvd. Take Washington Blvd. about 1/4 mile to the large "U-Haul" sign on your right. Turn just before the sign onto Inverness Ave. Take Inverness to its end and turn left onto Whittington Ave. Take Whittington to its end and turn right, into our lot. Enter through door "B" in the building on your right as you enter the lot.

Orion Sound Studios: Post Rock weekend this weekend

(NB: the birthday referenced throughout is not Yr. Obd't Blogger's...I may be in the twilight of my youth but I haven't reached that much of my majority yet...)


What a great way to kick off the Fall 2010 showcase season! We have two shows on consecutive evenings planned, for Saturday August 28th, and Sunday August 29th. On Saturday night we welcome back Kuan, a band from Dayton, Ohio, who helped me to forget my 58th birthday earlier this year. Appearing with them will be Matta Gawa, from DC, and Nick Millevoy from the band Many Arms. Then on Sunday we have an "afternoon matinee" show featuring Baltimore's ...soihadto... (the dots are part of the name), along with The Water and Contra.

The unifying thread that links all of this weekend's music is that it is heavily influenced by the "post-rock" movement, a term that is about as nebulous and as frequently misapplied as "RIO" (and just what is post-rock, and why don't more women dig it....) So please take my descriptions with large blocks of salt - in fact just ignore them completely and visit the links for each band and listen for yourself. Be an informed consumer - but by all means do come and consume!

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8:00pm Saturday, August 28th: $10 cover

KUAN are a quartet (two guitars, bass, drums) from Dayton, Ohio. Those who were at my birthday bash last spring might recall Kuan as they were the third band that evening, basically playing for free just to have the opportunity to play their music in front of an appreciative audience. They kicked butt that night so I'm really happy to welcome them back. Their music is very much reminiscent of the likes of domakesaythink and Explosions in the Sky. They claim those bands as well as Tortoise as major influences. Their show last spring was an eye opener - a cut from that performance can
be seen here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC00NNVMd0A
www.myspace.com/kuankuankuan


MATTA GAWA is a drums and guitar duo whose music, largely improvisational, is influenced by music ranging from Sun Ra to Mahavishnu Orchestra to Tortoise. They have jammed and collaborated with the likes of Marshall Allen (Sun Ra Arkestra), and Acid Mothers Temple. Think dark, moody, post-rock flavored spacey jams.

www.myspace.com/mattagawa


Opening the show will be a set by Nick Millevoy, guitarist with the Philadelphia-based trio Many Arms. He may (or may not?) be joined by a mystery guest. If so we'll all play "What's My Line" to see if we can figure out who it might be. And if you remember "What's My Line" then you, too, should try to forget your birthdays.

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5:00pm Sunday, August 29th: $15 Cover

Our Sunday afternoon show will feature Baltimore-based ...SOIHADTO... You can tell they're a post-rock band by the seemingly arbitrary use of extra punctuation in their name. Thing is they aren't so much "post" as they are "rock". They can get all moody and such, but definitely rock it out. And Food Network aficionados will likely recognize drummer Duff Goldman as the star of that network's "Ace of Cakes" show. ...soihadto... released their second album, "Adventure Stories (not based on fact?) earlier this year, and have toured extensively throughout North America, and recently played at the Meadowlands sports complex in New Jersey.

www.myspace.com/soihadto


Opening the show on Sunday will be The Water, a drummer (who also plays numerous electronic gadgets) and guitarist/keyboardist duo. These guys generate a seriously lush and otherworldly sound. Their compositions

www.myspace.com/thewatermusic


Rounding out the set on Sunday will be Contra, an Annapolis-based duo (or is it trio? Their pictures show two guitarists but their MySpace only shows two names) who play a sort of progressive-tinged epic metal.

www.myspace.com/contratheband