01. Children of the Skull Defekts
02. Beyond Within
03. Embryo
04. Oyrbme
05. Nihtiw Dnoyeb
06. Stkefed Lluks eht fo Nerdlihc

Sands of Time: The deserved retroactive deification of Baltimore art-punk weirdos Lungfish continues! On Pitchfork, Aaron Leitko reviews Dischord's reissue of the band's 1999 album The Unanimous Hour. If any Lungfish record is a good one to start with, it's this one: "It's a pivot point between the band's early years and the laser-guided minimalist riffage that would predominate its final three records," Leitko writes.

Today on Arts Desk: Vince Gray goes to the movies; the worst Washington films; weekend plans.

Former Lungfish guitarist Asa Osborne has continued to plumb the meditative depths of the universe with his solo project Zomes. Four years after Zomes' eponymous debut, Osborne has a new single called "Openings" from the album Earth Grid, out on Thrill Jockey. It's a repetitive instrumental in the same overdriven Casiotone vein as before, which means it doesn't disappoint. This is not mass-market music in any sense, but the minimal, distorted keyboard accompanied by sparse kick-drum hits creates a hypnotic, trance-inducing mood much like Lungfish did for so many years. It's subtler than the Dischord vet's previous band, but it retains the same ceaseless focus. With patience and an openness to the unknown, you may find your head swaying back and forth to the warm, slow groove.

LISTEN: Zomes – "Openings"

I'm No. 12. Dischord's been steadily remastering its catalog and reissuing it on vinyl and mp3, but it hasn't yet gotten to Baltimore's gnostic rock weirdos Lungfish. Former WCP contributer and Austin American-Statesman reporter Joe Gross has put out the call on Facebook. Meanwhile, frontman Daniel Higgs' recent solo record on Thrill Jockey, Say God,  offers at least seven or eight conversion moments.

There's more to life than gigs.

A handful of area musicians are keeping that notion in mind this weekend, stepping outside their comfort zones for collaborative, one-night-only performances. There's Zomes, the drone-y project of Lungfish's Asa Osborne, which performs tonight at the Writer's Center in Bethesda as part of the ongoing Story/Stereo series. For the performance, Osborne will collaborate with two local artists, the fiction writer Dylan Landis and the poet Brian Gilmore, who will both read from their work. The performance starts at 8 p.m., and is free.

Then, for tomorrow, Sockets Records' Sean Peoples and Panda Head Magazine's Melissa Krodman have organized an experimental program called District Calling: Freedom. The evening, which includes two performances at the District of Columbia Arts Center in Adams Morgan, features music (members of the Cornel West Theory, Hume, and Noon:30), visual and video art (Ayo Okunseinde), and theater and dance artists (Carmen Wong and Heather Doyle). The evening's theme is freedom, and the artists have been collaborating on the project for several weeks. As for what it'll sound like, Arts Desk has no clue, but consider our curiosity piqued. The shows are at 7:30 and 10 p.m., and tickets are $10.

More cross-pollinated performances after the jump, including randomly assembled dance, strange maracas, and classic Warholian acid tests!

Radiohead, Sigur Rós, and Merce Cunningham Dance Company: Merce Cunningham's contributions to dance are incalculable, and he participated in a host of fascinating collaborations—most notably with his romantic partner, the great avant-garde composer John Cage. Split Sides was a work in which every element—choreography by Cunningham, music by Radiohead and Sigur Rós, design, costumes—was created in two parts, and matched up by chance immediately before the performance. The dance troupe first performed the work with both bands at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2003, and Sigur Rós released its half of the music, some of which was played on a xylophone made of dancing shoes, as the Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do EP. A bootleg of Radiohead's half, meanwhile, is out there in the ether.

Lucky Dragons and the audience: This experimental duo from L.A. makes lengthy, ambient compositions that basically sound like Christmas in Hyrule: See Little Dragons live, and don't be surprised if someone shoves a magic stick—an instrument not far off from a maraca or rain stick—into your hands, or likely something weirder. Few bands are so Zen. Also: Want Lucky Dragons to make music in your living room this winter? Write them.

Sonic Youth and Gossip Girl: Kidding!

The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol: Perhaps the classic example. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable productions paired rock's original hipsters with Warhol's art films and performances—well, "performances"—by members of his Factory retinue. Also, lots of seizure-inducing lights.

First, Asa Osborne—formerly of Baltimore gnostic/punk quartet Lungfish—will perform with his guitar/organ project, Zomes. Lisa Selin Davis will read. That's kind of a tough gig, though, considering the last person to put words in or around Osborne's music was Dan Higgs.

Then, in February, J. Robbins—fresh from reissuing the late ’90s masterpiece For Your Own Special Sweetheart and performing on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon with the reunited Jawbox—will perform his first ever solo show. Marianne Villanueva and Steve Fellner will read.

Dates and details after the jump:

December 4, 2009
Readings from Lisa Selin Davis (Belly)
Musical Performance by Zomes (Asa Osborne of Lungfish)

February 19, 2010
Readings from Marianne Villanueva (Mayor of Roses)
and Steve Fellner (Out Loud)
Musical Performance: J. Robbins Sings J. Robbins
(First ever solo show! New interpretations of Jawbox songs and other works from his canon)

This is a free event.
Program Begins at 8:00 PM
The Writer’s Center is located on the Red Line
at 4508 Walsh Street, Bethesda, MD

Alemayno Eshintay
"Love is Love"

From the Mississippi Records compilation Love is Love.

Lungfish
"Love is Love"

From the record Love is Love, out on Dischord.

One more after the jump.

Culture Club
"Love is Love"

From the EP Love is Love.

Several months ago the series' blog posted an open call for book proposals and on Sunday they finally ran a list of of the submissions, all 597 of them. It was only out of sheer sloth that I neglected to turn in my own proposal for ZZ Top's Eliminator and I'm really regretting it now (although maybe there's still a chance for my Billy Gibbons-in-West Berlin screenplay?).

The list varies pretty wildly, but it's interesting to see which records were pitched by multiple times. Four pitches for Duran Duran's Rio and four pitches for Dinosaur Jr's You're Living All Over Me. More surprisingly, seven people pitched Slint's Spiderland! Really? Is a deep reading of "Nosferatu Man" really that necessary? I suppose that at least one of those proposals must have a pretty good argument for it.

It's nice to see that DC (or at least DC 1984-93) is very well represented–Unrest, Half Japanese, Nation of Ulysses, Pussy Galore, four pitches for various Fugazi records. I'm very pleased that somebody wanted to do a book on Lungfish's Sound in Time, which is among my all-time favorites, but in order to turn a profit the book would probably have to move more copies than the album ever did.

But sales figures aside, that's not nearly as weird a bizarre and idea as flash-in-the-pan boogie-rock band Black Oak Arkansas' The Definitive Rock Collection. I remember that when I was a kid I tried to pick up a copy of that during a road trip and my parents, who rarely made any attempt to censor my music tastes, flatly prohibited me from buying it. Maybe they had seen this video and just decided that if there was any chance that their son would grow up to chicken-strut around on stage in white spandex and fringe, that they would play no part in it.

Dischord folk write:

We are currently stocked on many Dischord titles on Vinyl that have been unavailable for months and in some cases years, including Dag Nasty, Can I Say, which is now available for the first time on blue vinyl. We are also fully stocked on the following releases:

Minor Threat Out of Step EP
Minor Threat, First Two 7"s EP
Minor Threat, Salad Days 7"
Minor Threat, First Demo Tape 7"
Rites of Spring, S/t
Fugazi, Seven Songs
Fugazi, Repeater
Fugazi, In On The Killtaker
Fugazi, End Hits
Fugazi, Instrument Soundtrack
Fugazi, The Argument
Pupils, S/t
Lungfish, Feral Hymns

And notes: "All these Vinyl albums come with a complimentary MP3 download when purchased from our website."