Back in 2007, French ambient guitarist Richard Pinhas, accompanied by longtime collaborator Jerome Schmidt on electronics, played to a packed house at the Velvet Lounge. Tomorrow, Pinhas returns, this time at La Maison Française with another collaborator twiddling knobs (or staring at a laptop screen): Masami Akita, better known as Merzbow. This kicks [...]
Sonic Circuits announced part of its 2010 festival lineup today, and the headliners may come as a surprise: French giants Magma (whose drummer and bandleader, Christian Vander, is pictured above) heads up the bill. Magma are legends in prog-rock circles, essentially creating their own indescribable genre of rock music, "zeuhl," in the early 1970s. Zeuhl [...]
Where 2007 was my love-affair year with free jazz, 2008 saw my affections turn to extreme metal in all its varied forms. The sad departure of Transparent Productions meant a dearth of interesting avant-garde jazz in the District, and I replaced concertgoing expeditions to Sangha (RIP) and Twins Jazz with rather different expeditions to places [...]
