- Roger Hampson
- GODFLESH
(Neumos) How about a potent dose of extreme music from England from veterans of the underground Godflesh and Cut Hands? Headliners Godflesh cut eight albums from 1988-2001 that influenced scores of industrial-metal bands. Justin K Broadrick and co. brought a strong emphasis on rhythm to this ultra-heavy style, flaunting hiphop and drum ’n’ bass beats as prominently as their feedback-streaked guitar riffs and bludgeoning bass riffs. The imminent release of a new album and EP has prodded Godflesh back to the live circuit, and it’ll be great to bask in their annihilating ballistics. Cut Hands (William Bennett, the catalyst behind power-electronics innovators Whitehouse) threads complex, battering percussion matrices inspired by Congolese and Ghanaian rhythms through calamitous noise force fields. It’s some of the most intense, nerve-shattering music on the planet. With La Fin Absolute Du Monde and House of Culture. DAVE SEGAL
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(Chop Suey) The last few albums by the Men sound a lot like The Basement Tapes. Part of that similarity is stylistic—the prolific Brooklyn group’s latest full-lengths, Tomorrow’s Hits and New Moon, combine standard rock motifs with bits of country, folk, and soul in a laidback and economical capacity that mirrors those old Woodstock home recordings. But tonalities aside, the Men also currently sound a lot like Dylan & the Band in that they come across as established musicians testing out old classic sounds that might not sit well with their initial (or even secondary) fan bases. We know Dylan’s story, but we’re still not sure why the Men strayed from the skuzzy punk sounds of their early years. But with songs as solid as “Different Days” and “Open the Door”, we’re not complaining. With Gun Outfit and Lures. BRIAN COOK
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(Columbia City Theater) Improvisational guitar whisperer Bill Horist works strange magic on the instrument in ways that I was not aware you could or should do; his prepared guitar works create soundscapes that would be hard to pin as simply “guitar” if you couldn’t see him jamming a cymbal between the strings or playing the instrument with a bow flat on his lap. Seattle bands Pocket Panda and Secretary are the definition of indie music if there ever was one (was there ever one?). Panda’s is a bouncy and melodic folk-skewing kind; Secretary make a more understated and vast version with sweeping and swooping harmonies like chilly forest ghosts. Last but definitely not least, we have the melodic adventures of Half-Breed, a duo whose uncomplicated alt-beach jams are buoyant and highly danceable. EMILY NOKES
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(Chapel Performance Space) One of America’s preeminent culture jammers and sonic pranksters, Negativland member Mark Hosler makes a rare Seattle appearance tonight. He’ll reportedly be using a device called the Booper, which Negativland band mate David Willis created by adding transistors to an FM radio receiver, enabling it to send its output to its input. The resultant sounds from the Booper vary wildly, and combined with Hosler’s other DIY electronic gear, the music generated should be strange and unpredictable. A performance captured on video from last year found Hosler unleashing a torrent of zonked, slapsticky frequencies. Opening is Soulgazer, aka Afrocop keyboardist Noel Brass Jr. His solo material delves into blissful ambient territory, fluttering and brooding in a meditative zone redolent of Spiritualized’s mid-’90s beatless passages, the Necks’ tensile yet placid space jazz, and the quieter stretches of Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way. DAVE SEGAL
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Usually we have to wait till Decibel Festival to get a bill with two lewd muthas like this on it. Montreal’s Tiga DJs and produces tech-house tracks that should come with birth control—which is why it makes all kinds of sense that he’s collaborated with Audion/Matthew Dear. In his best work, Tiga combines the lascivious with the lysergic in order to keep the dance floor humid. Green Velvet (aka Cajmere, aka Curtis Jones) is also a trippy house-music savant with over two decades of delirium-inducing tracks to his credit. His material often features proselytizing moral pronouncements about sex and drugs within songs that inspire off-the-chains hedonism. This makes for some very funky cognitive dissonance. Q Nightclub, 9 pm, $15, 21+. DAVE SEGAL
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And check out the rest of Data Breaker here »
(PONCHO Concert Hall) Young MacArthur “genius” Claire Chase performs her entire new solo album, Density, her third, as a 75-minute continuous performance in collaboration with sound designer Levy Lorenzo. It features works by Steve Reich, Alvin Lucier, Philip Glass, Marcos Balter, and Mario Diaz de Leon, as well as the seminal 1936 flute solo Density 21.5 by Edgard Varèse. JEN GRAVES
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And here’s all our recommended music events—tonight, tomorrow, this weekend, and beyond!