Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

Apparently a computer program translates the screen's glowing circles into a mosquito buzz. The interactive part comes when your brain tunes into obvious auditory changes and projects them onto the imperceptibly changing circles. "You think it's changing because your hearing is much more acute than your vision," Chartier explained.

I don't know if that's true, but the longer I stared at the circle and its auras, the more it seemed to shift color and shape—as much the result of my eyes' rods and cones burning out as the mosquito accompaniment, I'd venture.

Perceptual mechanics aside, "Tone Pattern Transactuality"—like all the pieces in "Data/Fields"—invites visitors to listen to, rather than just look at, drawings, sculptures, and other visual art.

Caleb Coppock's piece, "Graphite Sequencer," makes the most literal link between vision and sound. Visitors can literally play his pencil drawings on a special turntable. If you were wondering, an elegant tree-and-branch drawing translates to noise like a radio transmission from outer space. A bar-code-like drawing sounds like a typewriter, and a series of Mondrian-esque lines produces accelerating bursts of static.

My favorite piece in the room, a work by Ryoji Ikeda called "data-scan," consists of a horizontal screen that projects a series of three, increasingly abstract versions of the same information—something about the positions of the stars in the galaxy relative to the human body, according to Chartier. If that isn't clear, don't worry. You're not really supposed to locate Alpha Centauri as the computer quickly targets stars in the night sky. Rather, the piece mines data for its aesthetic, not informational value. That becomes increasingly clear as the display shifts to rows of lines and shapes moving at different speeds (it looks a lot like Frogger traffic), and, finally, a screen that appears to be television "snow," but turns out to be a matrix of quickly changing numbers. It's unintelligible, but our minds are meaning-making machines, and if you spend long enough with it, you begin to hear the music of the universe.

Do social workers really make more money than musicians?

I don't think so. I don't know what information/misinformation I was working off of, this whole thing about going to school to achieve more financial stability. As it turns out, social workers don't make any more money than people who piece it together than music. But I guess social workers are more traditionally employable. Hopefully I can make a nice part-time job about it, and I can stick with the music thing. Social work is as noble and worthwhile a profession as you can think of, but being away from D.C. has been hard.

Isn't New York a great place to be an artist?

So they say. I am trying to keep an open mind and an open heart about it, and many of my music friends have defected to New York, so I definitely have an equally good music network as I had in D.C. But New York is hard—it's so loud and so dirty.  I am learning a lot being there; it felt like an accomplishment learning how to work the subway and having overcome those logistical challenges of living in the city. It really is a melting pot of humanity—but I feel like, when I come back to D.C.,  I take a deep breath and a deep sigh of relief. It's urban, it's cool, there's a lot of stuff to do, but I don't feel like I am choking.

How is the music scene different there?

In New York, I meet a lot more openly ambitiously people—musicians who want to make it big, or at least be able to say, "I really tried." There's a lot less shame in saying who you know, who you are going to work with, what your game plan is.  That doesn't really seem to exist in D.C. My musical experience in D.C. is very familial, very amicable, everyone is really laid back. It's un-Washingtonian, in a way.

Has going to school full time slowed down your songwriting?

I write a lot of songs in class. Really, nothing has changed since high school. I try to pay attention, but then I think of some lyrics, or a drum part—and then rush back to my dorm room and record it on garage band. I'm lucky because some of my oldest musical collaborators are in New York now. My guitarist, Ed Donahue, has been living there for the last five years, and I get together with him couple times a week to hang out and work on new stuff.

How do your new songs fit into the Olivia Mancini oeuvre?

I feel like most of the stuff we do is steeped in oldies. My new single, "For Rickey," is a song about someone who is out of reach because of their social status, and musically it has a '50s rock feel to it. I thought putting it out in vinyl would be the right kind of tangible representation of the kind of song it is. No one likes to talk about class; it's not a polite subject, but it exists and pop music keeps it in our minds with songs like Frankie Valli's "Rag Doll" or "Uptown Girl."

Do you think you'll move back to D.C.?

I think I will definitely come back to D.C. New York is, as they say, a great place to visit, and I am gaining a lot of living there, but it's not a place I want to spend the rest of my life. I feel a sense of obligation to come back. Most of my generation has deserted D.C. for different places, and I think D.C. has a lot of potential as a city for people to stay more than three years after college. I see D.C. getting better and better and cooler and cooler every month, and I want to be a part of that.

Olivia Mancini and the Mates perform with Tom McBride at 9 p.m. at Black Cat. $10.

This is what an angklung looks like.

Right now, a hall in the Indonesian Embassy is filled with boxes containing a total of 5,000 angklungs—an ancient Indonesian instrument that, when played en masse, might remind you of your elementary school bell choir. On Saturday at 4 p.m., Indonesian Embassy officials will hand them out on the National Mall just north of the Washington Monument and attempt to set the world record for the largest gathering of angklung players.

What song will the ensemble play? "We Are the World"—that treacly Michael Jackson/Lionel Richie fundraising classic.

"That song reflects … the theme of Indonesian Festival, which is celebrating multiculturalism," says embassy spokesperson Heru Soebolo. "We are different people with different nationalities and different kinds of languages and cultures, but we are one world."

We also have different musical languages—with traditional angklung tuned to a five-note Indonesian scale that sounds rather foreign to Western ears. Saturday's angklung choir, however, has been tuned to the eight-note Western scale. That's because our scale, for better or worse, has become music's lingua franca. "It's the international standard," says Soebolo.

Though only about 1,600 people have signed up so far, smart money is on the record being set Saturday—as it's never been attempted before. To participate, just show up in a red or white shirt, or sign up by emailing indofest2011@embassyofindonesia.org. You'll receive a batik scarf or bandana, and you'll get to take home your angklung.

The world record attempt is part of the Indonesian Festival, which includes cultural demonstrations and, for some reason, a performance by the '80s soft rock duo Air Supply.

Image via Flickr user asfarian, creative commons generic 2.0

Economist Richard Florida argues that a high concentration of musicians is not only good for individual neighborhoods, but boosts the economy of entire cities. I wonder if D.C. neighborhoods, by pushing go-go venues to the 'burbs, could actually be depressing, rather than protecting, their property values. After all, go-go is perhaps D.C.'s biggest export after bureaucracy. (On the other hand, a rowdy club down the street does have a way of repelling prospective home buyers.)

In any case, I'll be tuning into the Kojo Nnamdi Show today at 1 p.m., to hear their report on the history of go-go.

Generally, it’s a bad idea to return to the scene of your crime.

It’s also inadvisable to allow a videographer to tail you, or to let passersby take your picture. But don’t tell that to the street art duo known as Inkognito.

“Most people go out at like 3 or 4 a.m.; we do it at, like, 11,” says M, a wiry 18-year-old with curly hair.

“We’ve had some close calls,” adds M’s partner, J, also a thin, shaggy-haired 18-year-old.

One recent close call: M was keeping watch while J applied homemade paste to a squat building near the Duke Ellington Bridge. M then pressed a picture of an American Indian holding a Starbucks cup to the wall, next to a decal they had placed there a few weeks earlier.

Though the two wore dark clothes, they were easy to see—since they were working beneath a spotlight cast by American University film student Sareen Hairabedian, 21. Attracted by the scene, another woman stopped to take pictures. “I won’t catch your face,” she promised.
Unperturbed, M methodically pressed air bubbles out of the decal—until a bus driver paused at a green light and peered out his window.

“That bus driver is staring us the fuck down,” said J.

“All right, let’s roll,” M concurred, and they scampered into the darkness, leaving their videographer behind.

That’s a typical evening for Inkognito, which until recently was known as Stranger Crew. The two teens, who are still in high school, are on a mission to become D.C.’s most prolific street artists. They spend almost every evening creating decals and plastering them on alley walls and abandoned buildings. Now, in what they’re calling their “100 Rooftops Project,” they’re geo-tagging pictures of their work and posting them online. (Also on Washington City Paper: A slideshow of Inkognito's work.)

“We’ve hit basically every neighborhood in Northwest below Friendship Heights,” says J. “We definitely want to hit up Southeast at some point. Currently, we haven’t had the time to make the trek across the city to hit it up, but we have every intention to.”

—

Inkognito’s work ethic has made its calling card—a long-haired man wearing a fedora and sunglasses—ubiquitous in Adams Morgan and nearby neighborhoods. Many people, however, aren’t quite sure what to make of it.

“He looks like a pirate,” says Reston, Va., resident Ben Schenker. “Nah, I take that back. He looks like a criminal.”

“He looks shady, with the mustache and the fashion glasses,” says Amanda Carroll, an Adams Morgan resident. “He looks like he’s hiding something.”

“If he had an earring, he’d definitely be a pirate,” adds Schenker.

According to M, the character is supposed to be a hipster, but he doesn’t mind if people mistake it for a pirate. The worst, he says, is when people think it’s Mr. Brainwash, the street artist of dubious talent who’s the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Before that film, the D.C. street art scene was dominated by older artists, says M. Now, he’s seen more teens wheatpasting. Though M has been writing on walls since age 6 and tagging since he was 15, he’s not irked by the newcomers. “It’ll never be really popular because it’s illegal,” M says.

Eric Shutt, editor of the D.C. street art website Mixed Media District, thinks M is probably right. D.C. is, after all, a city with more than a dozen different police forces and plenty of security cameras. But it wasn’t always so unfriendly to street artists, Shutt notes. Once upon a time, even downtown was prime for tagging.

“L’Enfant Plaza used to be the main spot in the city for graffiti in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s,” he says. “After Sept. 11, the federal government came in and closed it off and put up cameras.”

A 2001 law imposing stiff fines for tagging—up to $1,000—and making property owners responsible for graffiti removal also dampened the D.C. street art scene. However, Shutt has noticed a resurgence in the last few years, especially in the form of stickers and decals. This may be because adhesive art is easy to put up and usually easy to remove, so it doesn’t attract police attention like spray paint, he says. (Indeed, many of Inkognito’s works are now gone.)

With their energetic campaign of hipster heads, giant hummingbirds, and accordion-playing girls, M and J are major players in the scene’s D.C. renaissance, says Peter Krsko, a street art aficionado and founder of the mural-making non-profit Albus Cavus. “They bring attention to places that are hidden or broken or abandoned, or empty and lifeless, and bring the life back to these places,” he says.

Another reason Inkognito stands out is its lack of a political message: Not having an axe to grind is pretty radical in a place like D.C., Krsko says. “It’s refreshing to see something on the street that’s just a girl playing a musical instrument,” he says.

At least one homeowner is also a fan of Inkognito’s whimsical work. Last summer, Adams Morgan resident Ted Fields discovered on his garage a large image of Albert Einstein gleefully riding a bicycle. He has no plans to take it down. “I’ve appreciated it from the moment I saw it,” says Fields. “It’s fascinating. I have no idea who did it.”

—

M and J’s paste-first-think-later tendencies irked some viewers last fall. On Sept. 8, a drunk driver crashed into the Ethiopian restaurant Keren near 18th and U streets NW, injuring two women, one of whom later died. After the restaurant’s owner boarded up the smashed window, Inkognito decorated the plywood with an image of a car and a “No Parking” sign.

Many people were mystified by the art, “a funky car” with NASA emblazoned on the hood, says Dan Silverman, who wrote about it on his blog, Prince of Petworth. “It was pretty tasteless, and not very appropriate given the fact that people were seriously injured,” says Silverman.

"Somebody removed the wheatpaste and a number of flowers and other remembrances were put in the area. It was a far more appropriate use of that space.”

What was the meaning of the NASA car? It was just a funny decoration, M says. “It looked like she had parallel-parked her car inside the restaurant, so we were making fun of it,” says M. “We put it up before the girl died.”

NASA, he adds, was an early crew name. M and J briefly dubbed themselves “Not Another Street Artist,” before they discovered NASA is also an acronym for the U.K.’s National Association of Street Artists. Then they became Stranger Crew, but abandoned it for a similar reason. M and J aren’t really married to the name Inkognito, either, and haven’t bothered coining individual monikers. That’s because, in many ways, Inkognito is a work in progress.

“We’re still working on developing our own style,” says M, who names street artists SWOON, DECOY, and JR as inspirations.

Next year, M will go to art school in New York, leaving J— currently a high school junior—in D.C. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” says J. “I’m going to visit every weekend.”

When Inkognito decamps to New York, our streets may be noticeably less lively, says Shutt. But, he thinks their work is “a little basic,” and that they could benefit from the opportunity to refine their style and message. “It’s great they are going to art school,” he says.

M won’t be leaving until the fall, though, and as the weather gets nicer, D.C. pedestrians can expect to see a fresh crop of Inkognito’s work. They plan to put up plenty of hipster heads, and may try making more decals with political leanings.

But what, exactly, were they trying to say with that Starbucks Indian? The two teens weren’t sure—so they asked a friend, who said, “Starbucks is, you know, the biggest symbol of capitalism and our throwaway society, and that is in complete contradiction with the Native Americans, who used every part of the buffalo,” recalls M.

“I’m glad you remembered,” J says, “because I forgot.”

Photos: A slideshow of the Inkognito oeuvre

Photos by Darrow Montgomery.

The hardcore band Sick Fix’s last show was a disaster.

On Feb. 16, the group was booked along with four other bands at Hole in the Sky, an Eckington group house and show space that’s become a fixture of the local punk circuit. Toward the end of Sick Fix’s set, police showed up, and when the house’s residents couldn’t produce a Certificate of Occupancy or show they had a second fire exit, the bands and around 100 fans dispersed.

“I felt personally guilty when we got caught and had to shut down the show,” says Jaime Leclerc, 26, who lives at Hole in the Sky. “Those poor bands and those poor fans had to come pay for the show and then leave. I was like, ‘We really should have gotten our shit together before now.’”

But Lerclerc was surprised by the turn of events: Hole in the Sky had been putting on shows—with punk and hardcore bands, mostly, but also indie rock and experimental music—for 10 months before it was busted by the Metropolitan Police Department. Leclerc and her roommates don’t know why it finally happened. Maybe it was bad luck: There was an unrelated arrest in their alley on Feb. 16. Or maybe it had something to do with fact that four days earlier and just two blocks away, another impromptu music venue was quashed hours before it even opened for its first show.

Caveyard was to host a show featuring the groups T.O.B., T.E., and four other acts, but nearby residents called the police and fire marshal, who shut it down by citing—you guessed it—no Certificate of Occupancy and insufficient fire exits.

So why did the punks last longer than the go-go bands?

The fact that Hole in the Sky promoted its shows primarily through punk and hardcore websites while Caveyard put racy posters all over Eckington probably had something to do with it, says Leclerc. And certainly, go-go shows are seen as conduits for violence, unfairly or not.

Racism might have played a role in the debacle, says Hole in the Sky resident Garrett Underwood, 21. “Go-go is still seen as a threat to some sort of establishment or order maybe, and punk is a fashion,” he says.

Before Feb. 16, police had shown up at Hole in the Sky twice, but left both times without incident. “Until now, the police have been largely positive about us,” adds Leclerc. “It was weird. People were like, ‘Oh you’re cleaning up the neighborhood.’”

Underwood observes that the perception of go-go fans as dangerous and punks as harmless (or even helpful) is probably a function of punk fans being mostly white and go-go fans being mostly black. That discrepancy is especially stark in light of punk’s anti-establishment ethos. “I think go-go has this huge youth movement behind it and has a lot of energy,” says Hole in the Sky resident Lucas Severn, 20. “It has this really grassroots power even though they aren’t sitting out there saying, ‘We are going to smash capitalism,’” like some punks might say.

One thing punk and go-go bands have in common, however, is a tendency to host events in venues that may not be quite legitimate, and Eckington has adaptable space in spades. On 5th Street NE, near the Rhode Island Avenue-Brentwood Metrorail station, a wedge of auto-repair shops and cab depots abut increasingly pricey fixer-uppers. “We are a weird industrial block embedded in a neighborhood, so it’s ideal for us,” says Leclerc. “Otherwise we’d be way out on New York Avenue, next to club Love.”

But what’s good for music venues isn’t necessarily good for the neighborhood, says Eckington resident and Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Tim Clark. “Our community is turning that corner between violent crimes to become a more safe, stable community,” he says. “I don’t think go-go is what our community needs at this time. We need stable retail and to attract people to our community who want to build lives.”

So when Caveyard posters—claiming go-go shows would take place “each and every Saturday”—began turning up in the neighborhood, Clark was concerned. Neighborhood e-mail message boards lit up with parents criticizing the poster, which depicted a woman in a bikini licking a lollipop and dubbed the event, “She Taste Like Candy.” Spurred by constituents’ outrage, Clark paid a visit to the warehouse and met with representatives from the group Pep Rally for Peace in the Streets, who, he says, attempted to assuage the commissioner’s concerns.

“The occupants of the building explained to me that the event was to raise revenue for the work they were doing with inner-city youth,” Clark says.

Gary Clark (no relation to Tim Clark), the head of Pep Rally for Peace in the Streets, denies sponsoring the event. One of the bands listed on the flyer—T.E., for Tru Expressionz—also denied any connection to the event. Their manager, who identified herself only as “Ms. Shannon,” says lots of go-go flyers claim Tru Expressionz is performing. “Most of the time they do it to build up customers,” she says. (The other alleged Caveyard organizers and performers did not return phone calls and e-mails for comment.)

Though Gary Clark claims not to know about the Caveyard event, Pep Rally for Peace in the Streets does stage concerts to attract teens to educational events, such as black history programs. “We use the go-go groups, the younger go-go groups, to bring in the attention of the youth,” he says. “We have to have a way of getting them involved, getting them to see the positiveness. It’s a win-win situation,” he says, adding that it’s unfortunate that many people associate go-go music with violence. “Music doesn’t cause shootings. It’s a positive force.”

Eckington resident Steve Campbell, 59, agrees. “We have too many vacant buildings. Let’s turn these places into something liveable, and give young people something to do. We really don’t have too much for young people to do around here,” he says.

Currently, teens in Eckington travel to Virginia or Maryland for their nightlife, says Tiara Stone, 19. “Most of my friends are in college, but it’d be nice to have somewhere nearby to go to when they come home.”

Stone and her friends may soon have their wish—assuming they don’t mind hanging out with the mostly white Hole in the Sky crowd. While the Caveyard organizers seem to have disappeared, Hole in the Sky is going legit.

The house’s residents, all renters, installed an iron staircase from the roof to function as a second fire exit, and they’ve applied for a Certificate of Occupancy. They’re also painting, building a rooftop garden, and investing in a backline so bands don’t have to bring their own drum sets and amplifiers.

“We are doing all these things to not just re-open and be the same dingy Hole in the Sky, but re-open with a new face...and be a legit art space,” says Leclerc.

To fund the renovations, Hole in the Sky aims to raise about $5,000. They launched a website, holeintheskydc.org, to collect funds, and are applying for non-profit status. This has rankled some members of the punk community. The first response to Leclerc’s donation request on the D.C. Hardcore message board was “Get a job.”

“A lot of people are in denial that something like Hole in the Sky needs money, but it just does in order to be sustainable,” Leclerc says. “I don’t want it to be a capitalist venture. I just want it to be sustainable and not just scraping by.”

Leclerc also hopes that by going legit and ending all shows at 11 p.m., the group will garner neighborhood support. Tim Clark, however, reserves judgment.

“If they comply with D.C.’s laws, I support it. But if there are numerous venues coming in at the same time, that changes the atmosphere of the neighborhood; that creates a club or a party culture,” he says. “If they are just popping up, it creates a real hassle for the community and the MPD as well.”

When mandolin player Tara Lynette traveled to Nepal during college, she found people playing eerily familiar songs on banjo- and fiddle-like instruments. "Some of their melodies are almost exactly like old time Appalachian tunes," she says. In 2006, she returned to Nepal with a fiddle-playing friend, eager to jam with the locals. A film crew caught the fusion on tape, and the resulting documentary, The Mountain Music Project: A Musical Odyssey from Appalachia to Himalaya, will have its first local screening tonight at Sidwell Friends. The film will be followed by a live performance of traditional Nepalese and Appalachian tunes by musicians from both cultures.

Jamming with Nepalese musicians had its challenges, says Lynette. For instance, while modern fiddles and mandolins hold their tunings fairly well, the sarangi—a bowed, four-string instrument—might drift up several notes by the end of a jam session. Additionally, Nepalese musicians are used to a more complicated song structure than the AABB of traditional Appalachian music, and they had trouble remembering the old time pattern, she says. But most of the time, playing together was startlingly easy.

"They use a scale that's really similar to ours, and the serangi players use drone strings just like Appalachian fiddle players," she says.

There's no historical reason for the similarities between Himalayan and Appalachian mountain music—Clarence Ashley wasn't making secret treks to land-locked Nepal, as far as anyone knows. Instead, it seems to be a case of convergent evolution, says Lynette.

"The themes in the lyrics—harvest time, love, murders, farm animals—are all about life in the mountains," she says. And, since record players are rare and electricity is spotty in Nepal, traditional musicians provide the accompaniment for dances and other gatherings. However, that may not be the case for long, Lynette says.

"In Nepal they are facing the problem that our traditional musicians faced 50-60 years ago," she says. "How to you capture the attention of a modern audience, and how do you preserve your musical heritage? If we can let the two groups know about each other, maybe the Appalachian musicians can show the Nepali musicians that there is appreciation and marketability for traditional music forms."

So bad that when one percussionist leaves, three bands call it quits. At least, that was the case when Greg Gendron decamped for Japan last March. His departure spelled the end for Lejeune, The Courtesans, and Secret Pop Band—three long-running groups that regularly played at the Black Cat and other major venues.

"We are not looking to grind out records and play innumerable shows.... We are trying to get as much enjoyment out of the band as possible," says Lejeune frontman Sam Bishop. "And Greg was a big part of that."

Few would accuse Lejeune of playing innumerable shows. Over the group's seven-year history, it played around two dozen shows, says Bishop. Perhaps that's because the first gig, for Lance Armstrong's "Tour of Hope," was such a bust.

"Lance Armstrong was supposed to ride in with Lejeune playing in the background, on this huge stage on the Ellipse, with a Jumbotron and everything" recalls Gendron. "We sound checked the night before and were excited to play through those huge speaker stacks."

The whole event got rained out, and, as a consolation prize, the band was offered a meet-and-greet with Armstrong.

"I don't think any of us went to that; we were so bummed," Gendron says.

The band's final show was a bigger success, albeit on a much smaller stage. Last winter, Lejeune fans packed into Galaxy Hut for an epic, 90-minute set encompassing the band's full catalog of folksy indie pop.

"Two years lapsed between our penultimate and our ultimate show," says Lejeune keyboard player J. Forte.

What were they doing during all that interim time? Practicing, says Gendron.

"Lejeune is the most well-rehearsed band in the world. We practiced at Barco Rebar in Falls Church, and they charge a ridiculous amount of money," says Gendron. "We probably paid for that guy's retirement, over the five years we practiced there."

All that practice paid off last winter, when Lejeune went into the studio (well, its bassist's basement) to record its final album—"Adieu," released last month, and the subject of this week's One Track Mind column in Washington City Paper. They only had a few hours to record four songs, and they nailed it, Gendron recalls.

"It's our best work; it's a shame it took us seven years to get to that point," he says. "Not to diminish our other albums — they are good too. But on this last one, we finally got to where we always wanted to be. It's a good resting place for Lejeune."

Gendron now lives in Iwakuni, Japan, in a home with paper-thin walls. In deference to his neighbors, he hasn't practiced much, though he hopes to start a band in the future. "Japan doesn't have a Craigslist—or if it does, I haven't discovered it yet," he says. His former bandmates, Forte and Bishop, are working on respective solo projects. "I don't think any of us are going to hang up music," Bishop says.

The first time I saw Matthew Hemerlein perform, I thought he had some major nervous tics. As he chatted with the audience, his hands ranged over his violin, thumping on the fingerboard, plucking strings on the wrong side of the bridge. But as Hemerlein launched into his performance, I realized he was recording the entire time. He used a foot-pedal-powered loop station to mix those thumps and plucks into a polyrhythmic background track—all while I was settling into my seat.

This casual display of musical dexterity is typical of Hemerlein, a one-man indie-rock band thanks to his loop station, laconic voice, and virtuostic playing on an assortment of string instruments. While not always challenging, Hemerlein's music is often gorgeous—melancholy arpeggios overlaid with plaintive melodies and witty lyrics.

He's also not stingy with his talents—Hemerlein performs the third Friday of every month at SOVA wine bar the last Thursday of every month at the Gibson Guitar Artist Showroom in Chinatown and is a frequent presence at BYT events. Tonight, however, is special: At 9 p.m., at the U Street Music Hall, Hemerlein will be releasing his second album and playing all nine songs from it. (It's also his birthday.)

"I chose to have nine songs because I'm releasing the album on my 27th birthday, and I'm obsessed with certain numbers," he says. "Nine times three is 27, so it made sense in my own little mind."

On the album, Hemerlein plays all the parts on every song with the exception of some samples and drums, but tonight he'll be accompanied by cellist Katie Chambers, beatboxer Christylez Bacon, bassist Dennis Turner, pianist Jeremy Teter, drummer Jon Laine, violinist Matvei Sigalov and DJ Chris Nitti. Tickets are $10 and proceeds go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

DOWNLOAD: Matthew Hemerlein – "Gyllenhaal Sandwhich"