Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Rare Frequencies: Cirque de so loud

Over the past few years, former Providence residents MEM1 (Laura and Mark Cetelia) have traveled extensively in Europe and beyond, doing residencies in Norway and at the venerable electronic music studio STEIM in the Netherlands. During that time, they also found time to record a new album, +1, that features collaborations with an impressive collections of musicians including Frank Bretschneider, Steve Roden, and Jan Jelinek.

They’ll be coming to Outpost 186 this Thursday to perform their patented combination of cello and electronics along with drone-guitarist extraordinaire AREA C. You can hear snippets from the new album here.

There aren’t many venues in town that can handle noisy experimental music, 3-D film projections, and aerial artists, but the new Center for the Arts at the Armory in Somerville can. This Friday, May 8, it’ll be hosting the VOIDSTAR 2009 MULTIMEDIA CIRCUS, a crazy mix of traditional circus acts, avant-garde musicians, multimedia artists, and more. The bill includes the 100 wpm percussion ensemble the TYPEWRITER ORCHESTRA, turntablist DARRYL HELL, and the circuit-bent insanity of BILL T. MILLER and the ORGY OF NOISE. See the complete line-up here.

And this Sunday at Great Scott, one of Boston’s finest and most versatile electronic musicians, KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN, will headline a killer show that also features multi-instrumentalist GEOFF MULLEN and the blazing sax and percussion duo ASHLEY PAUL and ELI KESZLER. Bring an umbrella: they may well tear the roof off the place.