SUSANNA BOLLE

Booked solid

SUSANNA BOLLE — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:23:29 GMT

A week of deconstruction, dubstep, and drones

!!!!!!!!!!!!

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:00:38 GMT

Exclamation Point! diversifies its portfolio
The Exclamation Point! series started as an informal gathering of local poets, writers and theater folks, but this Saturday its organizers, the Fort Point Theatre Project, have broadened their scope and gone seriously eclectic.

School daze

SUSANNA BOLLE — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:55:53 GMT

Sonorous studies at Oxfam
The shows that Tufts University’s Oxfam Café has hosted over the past year-plus are not your typical sweat-drenched college rock shows.

Decisions, decisions

SUSANNA BOLLE — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:37:12 GMT

Excited strings, Swiss sound art and utter mayhem
Sometimes even when your cup runneth over, life still isn’t fair.

Up-tempo, downstairs

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:09:17 GMT

Beat Research’s DJ Flack goes underground
In the past year and a half, there’s been a small explosion of club nights in Boston devoted to bass-centric genres first spawned in the clubs of London.

Disc drive

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:52:24 GMT

Semata Productions goes on record
Over the past year and a half, Semata Productions’ Coup d’Etat music series has become one of the go-to venues for new and unusual music in Boston.

Audiophiles unite!

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:16:11 GMT

The New England Phonographers Union + the BSC
This Tuesday marks the debut of the New England Phonographers Union.

Chance and dance

SUSANNA BOLLE — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:38:52 GMT

Tim Feeney + Eats Tapes
For the past three years, one of the prime centers for experimental, improvised, and new music and jazz in Boston has been the Open Sound series in Somerville.

Drone warrior

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:49:49 GMT

Greg Davis returns to Boston
Davis first made a name for himself in the local electronic-music scene and beyond for his sweet, melodic mix of guitar and computer processing.

One last waltz

SUSANNA BOLLE — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:33:41 GMT

Goodbye Conversions; hello Hair Police
Even under the most amicable of circumstances, breaking up is hard to do.

Accidents happen

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:03:32 GMT

Pole revisits a golden error
It all began by accident, when Stefan Betke’s Waldorf 4-Pole filter fell to the floor and began to malfunction, its broken circuitry producing strange, intricate patterns of snaps, crackles, pops, and hisses.

WHOOPS-A-DAISY: When Stefan Betke’s Waldorf 4-Pole filter fell to the floor and began to malfunction, Pole was born.

It all began by accident, when Stefan Betke’s Waldorf 4-Pole filter fell to the floor and began to malfunction, its broken circuitry producing strange, intricate patterns of snaps, crackles, pops, and hisses. Rather than discarding the damaged filter, Betke decided to use its subtle phantasmagoric rhythms in place of four-on-the-floor beats in his bass-rich ambient techno experiments. And thus Pole was born.

In the latter half of the ’90s, Betke released three mesmerizing albums of crackle-filled abstract dub under the Pole moniker. With beautiful monochromatic covers (in blue, red, and yellow), these numbered records were both spaciously minimal and, with their sinuous, ultra-deep bass lines, sensuous as hell. The influence of these three records — the cinematic Pole 1, the dub-heavy Pole 2, and the techno-inflected Pole 3 — continues to reverberate, surfacing everywhere from minimal electronics in Berlin to the dubstep experiments out of Bristol.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the release of the first Pole album in 1998, Betke’s own Scape imprint is reissuing all three early Pole records in a box set with four bonus tracks from the same period; it’ll be out August 5. Over the phone from his home in Berlin, the affable Betke (with much giggling over the course of the interview) explained that the rise of dubstep had produced a resurgence of interest in these early recordings with their cavernous spaces and phenomenal sub-bass. “It’s kind of an archive situation to provide access to this early work, so people can learn from it, understand it, or make it different. With the 10th anniversary, it seemed like it was time to do it. Last but not least,” he laughs, “I thought maybe I could get a little bit of income.”

The first three Pole records were the product of a fertile period in electronic music, one that saw a flowering of minimal, glitch and ambient techno, as well as now oft-maligned genres like IDM. By contrast, Betke’s assessment of the current situation is measured, tempered by age and the view on the ground. “With electronic music, almost everything has been said at this point. You can’t really do anything new. In the ’90s, techno itself was not that old, so there were spaces where you could sneak in and do your own stuff. Ambient was just becoming popular, and it was possible to find something new by accident — like with my broken filter. But nowadays it is not that easy, because, in a sense, the formulas have all been fulfilled.”

Dubstepper's delight

SUSANNA BOLLE — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 21:52:09 GMT

The Bug and Hatcha come to town
Prepare to have your ribcage rattled, as two pre-eminent members of London’s dubstep underground rumble through town.

Gimme swelter

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:48:35 GMT

The searing hot sounds of summer
Local composer, trumpeter, and electronic-musician Forbes Graham has been blazing in recent weeks.

Fringe benefits

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:52:31 GMT

The soft, experimental sounds of summer
There’s all kinds of ways to chill out at the beach. Herewith, something different for the dog days.

Folk trails

SUSANNA BOLLE — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:27:31 GMT

Peter Walker’s sound circles the world
A former student of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, Walker is a legendary figure best known for his intoxicating fusion of Indian raga and American folk.

STRING THEORY: Walker believes that flamenco acts as a kind of “missing link” between Eastern and Western music.

“A lot of people wonder what they’re going to do in life, what it’s all about for them,” says guitarist Peter Walker. “But I don’t have any angst. I’m very busy doing what’s obviously right in front of me.” As we begin our conversation, Walker offers a pre-emptive apology. He arrived home in Woodstock, New York, only the night before after a three-week trip to Peru, and he fears he’s still a little groggy. His focus returns, however, when the subject turns to one of his great passions, one that took him to Peru and has drawn him to Spain countless times in the past: flamenco.

A former student of Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, Walker — who comes to the Nave Gallery this Sunday — is a legendary figure best known for his intoxicating fusion of Indian raga and American folk. (It’s captured most powerfully on his 1967 Vanguard album Rainy Day Raga.) But his first love is the Gypsy music of Spain. “As a young child, I saw a movie with flamenco in it called Ship of Fools, and the music struck a chord with me. My father played guitar, so I was already programmed genetically to be a player, and that’s what I wanted to do from then on.”

The challenge for Walker, who was born in Medford (not exactly a hub of Spanish musical culture), was finding people to instruct him in the art of flamenco. He studied with a variety of teachers who passed through Boston; at the same time he was developing formidable chops as a folk player. By the time he made his first trip to Spain, in 1963, he was already well established in the coffeehouses of Cambridge and the basket houses of New York.

“It was an interesting scene,” he says of his time in New York. He describes going through a set of strings a day in marathon practice sessions with the likes of John Sebastian and José Feliciano followed by concerts that went into the wee hours of the morning. During that period, he supported just about every major act that came through New York, from Muddy Waters to the Mothers of Invention.

His most illustrious opening gig, however, was his stint as music director for Timothy Leary’s famed Happenings. His role was to get the audience in the proper frame of mind for psychedelic enlightenment. By that time, Walker had immersed himself in the study of Indian music. To get a taste of what the music was like at the Happenings, you need only listen to Rainy Day Raga.

Playing the body electric

SUSANNA BOLLE — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:32:11 GMT

James Coleman brings his Theremin to the Piano Factory
Chances are, even if you’ve never seen one played, you know what a theremin sounds like.

Dubstep lightly

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:44:03 GMT

Bristol and Berlin collide
One of the most acclaimed releases of the year comes from a relative newcomer — Dutch musician Dave Huismans, who goes by the name 2562.

Spray it, don’t say it

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:26:10 GMT

The cut of the Human Hairs’ gibberish
Saul Jacobowitz and Angela Sawyer love to spout garble.

Dubstep lively

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:43:16 GMT

Joe Nice returns; Pandai’a steps out
Every month for the past year, the folks at Bassic — a night devoted to the woofer-wobbling sounds of dubstep — have been shaking the bassbins proper downtown at the Good Life.

Contorted funk

SUSANNA BOLLE — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:23:17 GMT

Mound Magnet Pt. 2: Elevations Above Sea Level | Killer Pimp
The tracks on St. Werner’s fourth album as Lithops are eccentric, loose-limbed constructions, heavy on contorted rhythms, off-kilter beats, and writhing swirls of noise.