Tonight: Help a brother out

I don't have health insurance anymore either, as I'm sure a lot you don't, so I'm, certainly sympathetic. And it's always nice when the Brooklyn music community come together to help out one of their own. Plus, I love the White Suns, and when are you going to get to see Genesis Breyer P-Orridge at Dea,th by Audio? Probably never.

Maze's End

The last night of the Maze came in bursts of rain and color, while the Dome Theater denizens hoisted a red umbrella to meditate on themes of politics and religion, Reagan and Jesus in a reinvention of participatory theatre, perfectly unexpected and perfectly suited to the unexpectedness of the Maze.

As were the face-painters, and for the record, I was surrounded by genuine painted indie-rock revelers, all in glittering silver, red and gold.
Emcee BJ Rubin seemed to appear out of the ether after every act, filling the dead air between sets with rambling anecdotes.

One of these was the ethereal Sarah Lipstate, who performs her one-woman act under the name Noveller. A former member of longtime Brooklyn noise legends Parts and Labor, her album "Red Rainbows" came out earlier this year. Her music is full deep, alluring layers guitar noise, stacked harmoniously over each other like some magnificently organic landscape of trees and bushes. Live, she plays her guitar alternately like pedal steel or like a violin, baffling the rapt crowd, who equate the beauty of her music with the mystery of her person.

"What makes her so alluring?" a painted girl asked her male companions, but they had no answers -- they were too busy staring.

Mick Barr (of Connecticut metal band Ocrilim) has the endurance and speed of a superhero on his guitar, delivering a 20-minute set, fraught with layers of crushing distortion, his fingers flying over the fretboard in what I would call a post-modern version of classic metal shredding.

I asked DBA's Edan what would happen at the place after the Maze closed, since I found his upcoming shows page, when I looked at it on Thursday, rather disturbingly blank.

"I'm going to bed," he said. It's not exactly what I meant, but it seemed somehow apt. (By the way, in case you were worried, the page has been updated since then. Whew.)

Mp3 - Noveller - Brilliant Colors

The late show: It's a-Maze-ing, uh, so a-Maze-ing

By the way, in case you were thinking the Maze is just a name, and that it's probably just another art installation, you could not be more wrong. It is a Maze in every sense. You will turn wrong corners, you will get lost. You will not know who's playing next or where they are playing. You will not know what the hell is going on. At one point in the night I turned around a corner and met a wild-eyed guy who asked me if I knew whether White Suns had played yet.

Also I am NOT the first person to come up with the clearly brilliant and original pun used in this post's title. That was all Nicole Schneit, whose set with Air Waves was so breezily beautiful and laid-back that I couldn't believe I wasn't missing something pretentious somewhere in there. Schneit's pop songwriting is enigmatic but revealing, showing slices of a rich inner life you know she has.

Poor Emma Kupa of Standard Fare needs a pat on the back and a reassurance that had, in fact, an absolutely brilliant set. I was informed by her rep at Bar None records that it was one of her first-ever solo shows, which explains why seemed a bit upset afterward. She doesn't have anything to worry about should she choose to do more in the future. Her confessional songwriting, tongue-in-cheek humor and Dido-esque singing voice, with songs about such things as missing long-distance friendships and sleeping with younger boys (how old is she, 25? She should know I can totally relate to that).

Of course the showmen-and-women of the night were Eskalators, a pack of about ten or more people in farm animal costumes, literally bombarding everybody with their pop-punk-ska-jazz insanity, consisting of songs entitled "Hand Jobs?" I was informed later by DBA's Edan that they were lucky nobody was killed, being that the flimsy Maze walls aren't designed to support the weight of a full-grown cow-man.

If you haven't gotten lost in the Maze, yet, you've got one more shot: tonight at 8, with Zs, Excepter, Mick Barr, and no doubt a bunch of weird shit it would be impossible to try to predict. Let's get lost.



Mp3 - Air Waves - Knockout