MONDAY: Sweden is a gorgeous country that turns out some of the ugliest music. Marduk is one of the most hideous examples — and that's a huge compliment. The black-metal band's 11th album-length assault, "Wormwood," is filled with bleak and powerful ragers with happy-go-lucky titles such as "Chorus of Cracking Necks." It all may seem kinda silly, but just wait till the first double-bass-drum blast caves in your chest. Welcome to the dark side, True Believer.
Witness some of Marduk's sonic blasphemy after the jump.
» Sonar, 407 E. Saratoga St., Baltimore, Md.; with Nachtmystium, Mantic Ritual, Merrimack, Tyrant's Hand, Mon., Nov. 23, 7 p.m., $18; 410-783-7888
Photo courtesy SureShotwork
PERHAPS IT'S A good thing bachata boy band Aventura grew up in the South Bronx rather than the Dominican Republic.
While the bachata Latin genre is popular in the DR, it was considered hick music for older folks due to its origins in the rural countryside. But there were no stigmas attached to the music in New York, where Dominican-Yorkers like Aventura's lead singer and heartthrob Anthony "Romeo" Santos could sing enchanting and soulful love ballads to his heart's content.
"Many people thought that bachata was for middle-aged guys who would kill themselves if their wife didn't come back for them. It's sad stuff, man."
IN SEPTEMBER, the Jesus Lizard played its first show in a decade, and David Yow was so nervous he was throwing up. It seems like an incongruous idea — one of rock's most dynamic frontmen suffering stage fright — but as soon as the music started, Yow "was more on autopilot than ever.
"I had planned on not taking my shirt off, but 15 seconds into the set, my shirt was off and I was in the audience. Swear to God, I didn't do that. It just took me."
Formed in 1987, the Jesus Lizard developed a reputation for extreme and energetic live shows, with Yow prowling the stage shirtless as the band — drummer Mac McNeilly, guitarist Duane Denison and bass player David Sims — pounded out the sludgiest punk-metal riffs imaginable.
THURSDAY: French DJ and producer Guetta gets the party started at Fur on Thursday night. This sought-after turntablist spins a nonstop set of grooves, beats and vibes that have made him the funkiest guy in France. OK, so there's not a lot of competition, but you get the drift. Tickets are limited, so get there early to shake what ya got.
» Fur Nightclub, 33 Patterson St. NE; Thu., Nov. 19, 9 p.m., $25; 202-842-3401.
Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images
SATURDAY: Improvisatory trio Anorak works with sound, sure, but also texture, atmosphere and history. The Baltimore-based piano-drums-cello outfit joins the D.C. Improvisers Collective for a free-ranging and mind-opening concert at ArtDC on Saturday.
» ArtDC/Lustine Center, 5710 Baltimore Ave., Hyattsville, Md.; Sat., Nov. 21, 8 p.m., pay-what-you-can; artdc.com/art-space.
Photo courtesy Jonathan Morris
DAPOSE FROM VVEREVVOLF GREHV (sound it out) wants to make you into a zombie.
But the guitarist/bassist/keyboardist behind the one-man band that plays Sunday night with Skinny Puppy at the 9:30 Club isn't interested in getting you to chomp on brains. Instead, he's attracted to that vacant, glazed-over look — the one that shows you're really enjoying his metal-meets-electronica music.
"A mind-numbing metalhead that's really mono and one-track-minded — that's really what I wanted to create with my music," Dapose says when explaining the name for his 2008 album, "Zombie Aesthetics."
Continue Reading "Hearts, Minds and Braaains: Metal-Electronica Maven Vverevvolf Grehv" »
SUNDAY: Blues-rock revivalist and self-conscious hipster Jon Spencer started a side project with Matt Verta-Ray that is a metric ton less annoying than Spencer on his own. Heavy Trash is all fun, no ostentatious posing — nasty-minded desert-road psychobilly with a bottle in its jacket and one thing on its mind. Succumb to the sleazy sonic assault at DC9 on Sunday.
» DC9, 1940 9th St. NW; with Elliott Brood, Sun., Nov. 22, 9 p.m., $12; 202-483-5000. (U St.-Cardozo)
Photo courtesy Heavy Trash
LEIF OVE ANDSNES WAS winning piano competitions at an age when most of us were competing only in the confines of the school gym. The Grammy Award-nominated Norwegian classical pianist is no less ambitious now that he's 39. His latest project is a multi-media stage rendering of Modest Mussorgsky's notoriously difficult suite "Pictures at an Exhibition." For the production, titled "Pictures Reframed," Andsnes has partnered with South African visual artist Robin Rhode, who created a series of films to go along with Andsnes' live performances. "Pictures Reframed" premiered at New York's Lincoln Center last week and stops in D.C. on Friday.
» EXPRESS: How did the idea of a collaborative series of concerts come about?
» ANDSNES: I've had a wish for years to try to do a different kind of concert — and it was also partly inspired by the Lincoln Center having a program combining different art disciplines. They had talked with me for years about the possibility of doing something like this. I was playing Mussorgsky's piece a few years ago and I thought maybe this is something we could bring to visual art somehow. Then I met Robin three years ago and we decided to do this together.
Continue Reading "Old-Fashioned Modernity: Leif Ove Andsnes" »
WITH HIS THIN frame, throwback wardrobe, flowing beard and wispy delivery, Devendra Banhart was the freakiest of the freak folkers, that wave of lo-fi acoustic strummers who prized the weird, offputting intimacy of off-the-map '60s folk. He's also arguably the most successful: the Houston-born, Venezuela-raised musician has opened for bossa nova legend Gilberto Gil, remixed Oasis, exhibited sketches in museums and dated Natalie Portman.
Success, however, seems to have left him a bit aimless. His 2007 album, "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon," sounded as formless as a cloud of marijuana smoke, delivering only a mild contact high. "What Will We Be" improves on that sedated haze, indulging a range of sounds and styles over the course of 13 tracks. The fragile "Angelika" breaks for a trippy bossa nova interlude, while "Baby" melds R&B rhythms to one of Banhart's most straightforward compositions. "16th & Valencia" thrums electronically, as if he's covering the Strokes, and "Rats" forays into a dark, Doorsy jam.
At some point, however, that diversity becomes the main point of "What Will We Be," suggesting a willful scrambling of influences rather than a natural synthesis.
Continue Reading "In a Funk: Devendra Banhart, 'What Will We Be'" »
TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY: Honestly, we didn't expect to see R. Kelly anywhere near the Daughters of the American Revolution, but tonight and tomorrow he'll be performing at Constitution Hall.
We're keeping all our fingers and toes crossed for a live rendition of "Trapped In the Closet," his sweeping hip-hop opera about a one-night stand — except that the opera is so long that we'd be struck there till the next American revolution.
» DAR Constitution Hall, 1776 D St. NW, Tue. and Wed., Nov. 24 and 25, 8 p.m., $65-$85; 202-638-2661. (Farragut West)
Written by Express' Sarah Mimms
Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post
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