Stolen Babies - miRthkon - Free Salamander Exhibit - July 5th in Oakland!!

[Lebofsky]

In case this hasn't been formally announced around these parts yet:

July 5th! At the New Parish in Oakland, California!

The grand debut of: Free Salamander Exhibit (featuring 4/5ths former members of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum)
Followed by... miRthkon (playing many notes in chamber-core fashion, including some new "tunes")
And then... the very wonderful Stolen Babies who will crush you.

More info about the club/event:

http://www.thenewparish.com/event/26...-free-oakland/

- Matt

[Just Eric]

Super Bump! This show is tonight! Who's going? I'll be there.

[Bake 1]

Mirthkon was high quality brain fry poop @ Seaprog... hope I can get there tonight.

[Just Eric]

Mirthkon was high quality brain fry poop @ Seaprog... hope I can get there tonight.

If you do look for me - I'll be sporting my Gojira shirt.

[boilk]

Oh, you lucky Oaklandians! What a great triple bill!!

neil

[NogbadTheBad]

Man that's a great line up, we need clips and reviews

[chalkpie]

How wuz it?

[NogbadTheBad]

[Haruspex Carnage]

They're looking like a woodsy Gwar these days...also knowing their antics IS there truly a last Sleepytime album made?

[Morpheus]

They certainly had the material for a final SGM album.
There hasn't been much word of it since early 2012 when the promised it would be out by the end of the year despite the break up, along with a DVD.
I wonder if they just got caught up in new projects and it is no longer a priority?

Nils and Dan's band from the 90s, Idiot Flesh, also had a rumored final album that never saw the light of day, and while they were in SGM they talked of finally releasing it, That never happened, hopefully the SGM album won't meet a similar fate

[Just Eric]

What a show! At least the Free Salamander Exhibit and Mirthkon portions. I couldn't make it to Stolen Babies as they didn't hit the stage until after midnight. No worries, I've seen them recently.

So, FSE is the bomb! Think SGM less the ambient bits and more consistently heavy without achieving the heaviest height of SGM. If I had to genre-ize them, I'd say Experimental Math Rock. The songs were strong and polished, even if their basket-head costumes were not, and the three guitar attack was ear-shattering. I have high hopes for this band and if they come to your neck of the woods don't miss it.

Mirthkon were astounding. I love watching this band play their intricate music with delight. I was stationed right in front of the horned-horns (woodwinds actually) strained my neck constantly glancing over at our own Matt Lebofsky, who is a mesmerizing bass player.

This is such a great time in Bay Area music with these two bands, SC3, and many many others continuously pushing the envelope.

[Baribrotzer]

Good show.

MiRthkon were their usual excellent self, although a bit loud. They're one of the few Zappa-influenced acts I've heard who manage to capture the musical spirit of Uncle Frank without actually imitating him.

Stolen Babies were, for apparently the first time, performing as just the core trio - Dominique Persi on vocals + accordion, and the brothers Rani and Gil Sharone on bass and drums. Plus sequenced keyboard parts. They sounded fine, and lost nothing in stage presence.

But you probably wanted to hear about Free Salamander Exhibit. First, they sound a lot like SGM - which is only what you'd expect with four ex-SGM players in the band and a fifth, Drew Wheeler on guitar, who was a longtime Sleepyhead. But there's a dozen subtle ways they don't sound like SGM, and that's harder to enumerate.

The biggest immediate difference is probably the lack of Carla. Her voice and violin were a huge part of the SGM sound, and the difference is so striking that in spite of having had personnel changes before, the musicians seem to feel they now needed to re-group under a new name and with new material. FSE have nothing similar to her.

What they do have is three guitars almost all of the time, plus bass and drums: Yes, Nils played a bit of flute. And Michael played a bit of trumpet, plus SGM-style junk percussion and toy piano on a song or two, plus a brass instrument like a giant trumpet pitched an octave lower (which I think was probably a bass trumpet - nobody in the band knew for sure). But usually Nils, Michael, and Drew all played guitar, and Dan and David stuck to bass and drums, with far less of the odd noisy home-mades that had characterized SGM.

That produced a big, imposing, but less-varied sound than the old band, which they partially compensated for with more guitar effects and some actual lead guitar from Drew (a rarity in SGM). The orchestrations were quite impressive - they often used interwoven parts and riffs which gave an effect a little like Captain Beefheart or perhaps an avant-garde Rolling Stones. That leads to another difference: There was noticeably less metal in their music than SGM, and almost no industrial music. And noticeably more straight-up RAWK - but an idiosyncratic, avant-prog take on RAWK, with unpredictable timing, lurching bass, and none of those guitars in quite the same key. Imagine the Stones trying to cover the Art Bears, and you might get some of the idea.

They also, unlike SGM, played several instrumentals - at least three or four. Add in Michael and Dan each singing lead on a song or two, and it had the effect of making Nils's voice not quite as much a dominant and defining presence in their music.

There hasn't been much word of it since early 2012 when the promised it would be out by the end of the year despite the break up, along with a DVD.

According to Michael Mellender, he "hasn't seen one frame of the DVD", and I guess no one else in the band has. The footage is apparently in the hands of the director, Max ("Max the Man*") Baloian, and he hasn't finished it yet. Why, I don't know.

Nils and Dan's band from the 90s, Idiot Flesh, also had a rumored final album that never saw the light of day, and while they were in SGM they talked of finally releasing it, That never happened, hopefully the SGM album won't meet a similar fate

I heard the material from that played live on stage in Idiot Flesh's final months. Interesting stuff - it was quite definitely stylistically transitional to SGM. And I agree, it's a shame it never came out.

- JH

*(On the set, I called him "Max the Man" because he was not the only individual named Max there. There was another Max, a member of Dan's household, who spent most of his time seeking out anybody who was in the process of eating. He would snuffle their pants, and then gaze up at them plaintively with his tongue hanging out and drooling on their shoes. Him, I called "Max the Dog".)

[NogbadTheBad]

Nice post - thanks!!

[WHORG]

Sounds like an excellent show !!!

~JK

[chalkpie]

Thanks Just Eric and Just John for the info/reviews. I knew there was no remote possibility this would Just suck. Sounds like this is Just in my wheelhouse.