Klang: artists

310

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

Charter friends of Klang. See [www.310.org](http://www.310.org)

Black History Moth

2006-08-11T07:11:44-04:00

Born of a typo and a desire for unfettered, yet somehow rocking, noise, the moth flings itself on the flame until the butane runs dry.

Black Twig Pickers

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

Exploring the stringways of our corner of the mountains, eternal one-song and Turkey in the Straw.

We're reeling from the death in December of our longtime pal Jack Rose, with whom we made a record and toured the UK (and played some Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina shows in the States) last year.

We're playing some memorial shows in February, and really, we'll be playing memorials for a long, long time.

We've about completed the next Black Twig album and hope it'll come out this year. And we're talking about a pontoonload of shows with Charlie Parr, and aother trip to the UK. And we're honored to be continuing the monthly dance gig at the Floyd Country Store. It'll be the final Friday through at least October, with our slot starting at 7:30 p.m. We're also delighted to continue our monthly bar gig at the Cellar. Check the schedule page here or over at Myspace, and come out if you can.

BOOKING/PROMO: Download the (very old) Black Twigs' one-sheet. There'll be a new one posted someday, yep. And here's some larger photos: one, two, three. More of these soon too.

There are more photos, including some with Jack, over on the downloads page.

Some MP3s from "Hobo Handshake":

There are new songs from the Black Twigs album with Jack Rose, more songs from "Hobo Handshake," more pics and other such e-ephemera on the always (ahem) recently refreshed Black Twig Pickers Myspace site.

And VHF Records has sound samples up here and here and here.

Contact the Black Twig Pickers at band@blacktwigpickers.org.

From 2009: NEW ALBUM OUT w/Jack Rose: Black Twig Pickers and globe-trotting, Virginian-turned-Philadelphian six-string finger-picking ace Jack Rose team up for a full album of guit/harmonica/banjo/fiddle/washboard fury, building on (and demolishing, frankly) the work Mike and Nathan did with Jack on his Dr. Ragtime & Pals album. Working with Jack stretched us in some new directions and we're delighted with the results. Album is a long-playing LP available right here in the catalog.

And from 2008, the Black Twig Pickers "Hobo Handshake" CD (vhf 108). A few accolades:

-- "Exciting old-time music at its finest" -- Bluegrass Unlimited

-- "One of southwest Virginia's best old-time acts, yet they might as well be playing balls-out boogie rock." -- Justin Farrar, Strawberry Flats

(To order, click here for VHF Records.)

Charalambides

2008-03-11T17:24:22-04:00

We've been trying to get a Charalambides record released for years. But guess what? We finally acquired sufficient quantities of circular tuit and actually released it!

Donald Miller Trio

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

A conflagration of Donald Miller, Charles Curtis and Michael Schumacher, channeling their LaMonte associations and feedback visions into 18 stroked and hammered strings -- a brief comet across the dronescape whose passage was criminally under-noticed, though thankfully captured in at least pinhole/wormhole form on a handful of recordings.

Dredd Foole And The Din

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

Pelt members Patrick, Jack and Mike were the ecstatic hired guns called to shoot it out with Sheriff Foole in a Din that included Chris Corsano and Thurston Moore for the recording of The Whys of Fire.

Gospel Midgets

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

Gospel Midgets (not to be confused with Gospel Midgets) were post-rock ante litteram---pre-post-rock, if you will. The group existed a few levels below the fecund Richmond rock scene of the 90s, but still employed people who had played with Pelt, Ugly Head, Kingdom Scum, and Friendly. Putting aside the traditional structures of indie rock music, the quartet instead unwittingly channeled influences ranging from John Cage to LaMonte Young to Lee "Scratch" Perry into a sort of shapeless, formless, yet very much present type of noise---not bassy enough to be dub, not distant enough to be ambient, not regimented enough to be rock and not beboppy enough to be bop. Day jobs, higher education, and the waxing crescent that was then Pelt kept the Midgets' output minimal; following an appearance at the inaugural Klang festival in 1994, and a reunion at Harrisonburg's Toaster Museum in 1995, the Midgets did not play again for eight years, until a short, more beat-oriented opening set for Pelt in Baltimore in 2003. Their sole recorded output remains Side One, Two, recorded in a Richmond basement on New Year's Eve 1994, and "Toaster Museum", an excerpt of the 1995 show on the Umlautted V comp. There also was a cassette titled "Outer Space High School Fight Song," a tape of the 1994 show, floating around, but it's not clear if it was ever duplicated or that anyone associated with Klang kept a copy. There are no definitive future plans for the Midgets at this time, but keep your eyes open, as they occasionally dress as Knights of Columbus and infiltrate local parades.

Jack Rose

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

Top shelf steel string strumming and flumming. Ace fingerpicking. Zoner slide hoohaw. Plus ragtime. We miss you so much.

Mike Gangloff

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

born Kentucky, mid-20th century

Mikel Dimmick Spiral Joy Band

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

more from Mikel at his myspace site and at another site he's set up to handle longer recordings.

Nights of transport, with the shuttle-saucers scheduled to pick up from the XYZ Gallery, a sonic exhibition by and of the Mikel Dimmick Spiral Joy Band. The program is for an ecstatic evening of strings and no-strings, scales and no-scales, amps and no-amps...all-encompassing, all-eveloping, seen and unseen...cascading under-, over- and through-tones -- toward new tones, true tones, and ...... Pluton-ians. The music of fire and floes, incinerator wheel and white fang, Harry Truman and Ernest Shackleton. Likely a request for some minor sting of your wallet to lighten the purchase of more and larger gongs. Celebration of new metal, requieum for lost seasons, the eternal one-song continues with a dirge for new gongs. The hum of consternation and no-consternation, the dance of slow shifting and lightning stasis. "Pleasure is the headlight on the black diamond train." "Hello, friends," as John McLaughlin intones at the start of some Shakti record, the sheer baked-ness of his voice outdoing any of the nonsense to follow. In such a spectrum of vibe, the musickal doings of Spiral Joy fall in those first three syllables, rather than among the thousands of tabla beats to follow. But however blown the intros, however strained the comparisons, it is the music that matters amongst the Plophouse logs: a rendering of fire and air, of Salamander signs that play behind the eyes, a Rosicrucian's sack of liquid gold oozing past all knowing into all-knowing. Join in, friends, cast your ears asunder. Groundhogs in milk. Upcoming journeys of spirit and flesh, of the path burned over the road and through the corn, perchance to beckon forth from these ridges and hollers, perhaps to prompt a still-deeper burrowing, an early warning, with probably more to follow: and that, that of note is more than enough, is it not, "pursuing ... like the Shrouded Traveler on the plain." Two upcoming sunset ragas: pluck-and-saw, dewdrop-through-the-bean-sprouts take on sounds traditional and less so, recordings of fields and the six strings that drew mud. Unfurl the great moth wings that flap everlasting in the houses of the moon; the yowl begins. A long evening of sounds improvised and installed, a ritual commemoration of Cinco de Mayo and more nebulous creation myths, alternating performance and standing tones, and the states of waking and super-waking, which is often mistaken for sleep; the subtle workings of subjective science. Programs may be provided. "The old ones inside us, the collective consciousness, the many lives, the senses and parts of the brain that have been ignored. Those parts do not speak English. They do not care about television." An exposition of plucked, sawn, stirred and otherwise summoned sound, beamed-from-beyond meditations, a mission to lift the infinite veil. Rumor of fiddle. A methodical exploration of the frequency spectrum; this week: 220 Hz. Throughout: Aether transmissions made temporal and pursued by agitated novitiates, hoisting aloft their bottles and crying, "Halt, lightning!" as wiser heads, as always, drink it all in -- fnord.

Miscellaneous

2006-08-11T07:13:15-04:00

Things not directly related to any Klang family artist. Or perhaps related, directly or otherwise, to every Klang family artist. (Photo Casa de Musica, © Carlos Oliveira)

Nathan Bowles

2009-01-17T13:59:43-05:00

Pounding, paddling, rasping, brushing: full service percussion for all seasons

Objects In Mirrors

2006-10-20T06:31:46-04:00

The first official biography of Gospel Midgets, created with tongue embedded firmly in cheek, stated that the band was founded in 1981 as a "power pop" outfit (such as was popular at the time) called Objects In Mirrors. According to the story, they released one LP, Objects In Mirrors Are Closer Than They Appear, which quickly went out of print, but was later re-issued as an obscure Czech bootleg following the Velvet Revolution. An earlier edition of the Klang web site contemplated a twentieth anniversary re-release in 2001, but the general slowdown in Klang releases (as well as the fact that the record never actually existed) prevented this.

In 2006, the first (and, actually, only) episode in former Friendly drummer/eggbeaterist Mark Cornick's "Remote Listening" podcast series was, for a time, credited to Objects In Mirrors.

Patrick Best

2006-08-11T08:56:36-04:00

Hatched from a gourd.

Pelt

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

Check the Pelt Myspace site for info, too -- mourning the loss of Jack Rose, playing memorial shows.

Red Cabin

2007-02-16T14:05:44-05:00

alas, the Red Cabin is no more, although something may yet be gleaned from the myspace site.

rhBand

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

West Coast drone titans drawing instruction from early rocket mystics.

Ugly Head

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

Heard in its element, on the small stages and below ground parties where most of the band's playing occurred, Ugly Head's sound had a physical dimension that was more akin to a motorcycle race or a landing strip than what many people connect with the idea of music. This was never truer than during the two years or so when the lineup of Dave, Dave, Patrick and Jack reigned as sullen kings in a Richmond scene that didn't know how to handle them. Dave and Dave (and Matt Rose) are now in [the Gepetto File](http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=107953637)

Various Artists

2006-07-27T14:35:00-04:00

Shown below are Klang-affiliated compilations that lasted long enough to make it onto an online listing. Some of the ones that didn't: "With Pure Hell Raying From Our Sacs" cassette (1995: Pelt, Ugly Head, Gospel Midgets, Ron T Curry Acoustic Band, more); "Sampler for Presnell" cdr (2005: Spiral Joy Band, Black Twig Pickers, Gangloff); "Summer Sampler for John" (2006: Spiral Joy Band, Black Twig Pickers, Thornton Family, N. Bowles); "A Night on the Slopes of Mount Infinity, Vol. 1" (upcoming). Has anyone mentioned we're open to offers on a case of "Dixie Flatlines"? Please?