#mediumpenis

[mellamame]

[warmgospel]

December 19

The Basement

8pm

Five Dollars

Columba Fasciata

Columba Fasciata’s music is either noise music at its pristine best, or something like freak folk at its most mechanical. The Chicago duo rides one of those indistinct lines that leave you without at least ten “reminds me ofs” but none of them really stick. Their 2013 tape, Enemy Eater, on Chicago’s Lillerne Tapes label, was a psycho-enchanted hypnotic waltz through the dregs of industrial foundations. The landscapes hit peaks of echo-ridden enormity, and valleys of the most minimalistic keyboard plucks.

DJ DJ TANNER

“Whose job should it be to listen all day to dirty records?” asks a man through the delayed crackle of vinyl over the intro to the new DJ DJ TANNER tape split with Iowa City’s SEEZUREFACE. Has there ever been a better vocal sample culled from/for that reduce, reuse, resample culture pioneering electronic music? The familiar crackle of vinyl cuts in and answers that sampled question. Thing is, you can buy $40 records for one drum break, or you can dust off the overlooked cardboard box of records in the corner and the beauty in even the worst music of decades past. It’s a collage, really. Just cut out the grooves you want from each album, and melt it all back together into something that resembles a record, a loop, the strum of a hand over the coiled strings.

mediumPENIS

When it comes to the rotating crew that comprise medPEN, once can always expect the following things:

A)      Loudness

B)      The smell of sage

C)      A bed of radio static screaming through strings of effect pedals

D)     Beards

E)      Perpendicular frequencies oscillating like hurricane wind currents crashing against the coastline

Incan Slums

I love watching the db indicator lights on noise band mixers while they play. All I see is red.

Incan Slums played his first Des Moines show at the end of November at Tiny Loud Fest, and it had me recalling all kind of past shows. Specifically, looking over tables and tables of equipment in noise bands. It’s a maze really, with walls of effect pedals and mixers, tape machines and equalizers, cords and microphones. That’s part of the experience. Looking at it all, what can you possibly trick your head into expecting? If you’re staring at a drum kit and a couple of guitars leaned up against Fender amps, at least that is a starting point for expectation. That uncertainty is part of the Incan Slums sound, which morphs back and forth between layers of tape noise and feedback loops, viscous with the weight of sound.

Poster and Band Descriptions by Trey Reis

[warmgospel]

October 2

8 PM

Racquetball Court, Des Moines Social Club

Five Dollars

Bob Bucko Jr. (Dubuque, IA)

“Perhaps more so than any other musician living under the #experimental umbrella, Bob Bucko’s scope of variety from release to release is vast. It’s an idea that’s hinted at in the musician’s label, Personal Archives, itself used as a kind of categorization and documentation system for Bucko’s own artistic output. Just hit the “more releases” link on the label’s Bandcamp page, and you’ll notice 26 of the 64 entries in the discography involve Bucko in one form or another, whether it be a single for a comp, a collaborative set of recordings, live improvisation, or simply a BBJr album. And the list of instruments, electronics, software used are about as different from release to release as you could possibly imagine, jumping from vocal manipulation to minimal guitar improvisation to a kazoo run through a table of effect pedals.” –Tiny Mix Tapes

Moulttrigger (Des Moines, IA)

Moulttrigger finds 4/4 beat pop songs in the throbbing low end of harsh noise. Though the changing nature of the feedback happens below the surface, the subterranean swells still manage to bubble over at times, and the rarity of those moments are what keeps his music breathing.

mediumPENIS (Des Moines, IA)

The last time I saw mediumPENIS play was on the balcony in the entryway of the Vaudeville Mews. Until walking into the venue and hearing the buzz of radio noise billowing out over walls of distorted drone cascading from above, I wasn’t really aware that the entryway had a balcony. The impromptu nature of the performance was a fitting one for the band, which seems to pull its waves of noise from the very movements of the Earth itself, channeling radio waves and vibrations through whatever machines seem to communicate its vastness most closely.