UCP WHEELS FOR HUMANITY, is a fantastic organization that provides wheelchairs for disadvantaged children and adults around the world. If you’re near San Francisco on December 3, head to Slim’s and check it out!

About UPC Wheels for Humanity:

“It is estimated that more than 100 million children and adults worldwide need wheelchairs and do not have them either due to lack of access, lack of money, or both. Their lack of mobility stems from accidents, birth defects, war injuries, debilitating diseases, aging, natural disasters and land mines. To address this need, UCP WHEELS FOR HUMANITY begins with volunteers collecting over 230,000 pounds of discarded wheelchairs and wheelchair parts each year from around the U.S.

Since a wheelchair in a developing country is an unimaginable luxury, Therapeutic seating specialists then deliver and individually fit the wheelchairs to disadvantaged children and adults free of charge. Since 1996, UCP WHEELS FOR HUMANITY has helped over 44,000 children and adults living in the poorest of conditions, in developing countries such as Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Ukraine, Mexico, Mongolia, and many others.”

Tickets go on sale Saturday, November 7. An online auction, featuring items from The Bouncing Souls, Chuck Ragan, and more, will be set up soon!

Entering Santos Party House, I could already hear Harlem’s guitars, even if I couldn’t see them. Their distorted vocals welcomed in the first night of CMJ.

Santos Party House is a huge new place that’s been collecting plaudits at every turn since its opening last summer. The two stages had already filled up by 9 and bands were in full swing.

On in the basement when I arrived were Dinowalrus, a strangely compelling outfit, who somehow made the clarinet solo seem pivotal to any good set. If anyone in the crowd wasn’t up for the party before they saw these guys then they certainly were afterwards. They worked their ambient sounds into awesome drops that really hit the spot.

Harlem were a little calmer with their retro sound that brings together influences from Buddy Holly, The Kinks and classic pop then adds some more folky rhythms. Very bloody catchy!

A final highlight in the basement were Flexions, it was really getting crowded and sweaty down there at the more intimate stage but their cool synths and sparse vocals really kept everyone interested.

Santos really created a festival atmosphere, not least because there were too many bands to possibly keep up with – especially with a few drinks in hand. But also because everyone involved was there purely for the music, to see these great new bands and to have a good old dance.

– James Loveday

Harlem

Flexions

Dinowalrus

Splitting Twilight, a new exhibition from New York-based painter Kristin Baker, opens November 5 at Deitch Projects’ Wooster Street location in New York. Baker, who notoriously focuses her paintings on car racing, presents landscape painting with a modernist twist for her third exhibition with Deitch Projects.
Using layers of acrylic paint built up to form two dimensional surfaces shapes are made not by paintbrush but through tape, which when ripped away leaves overlapping silhouettes. Baker then uses scraping tools to reveal hidden layers of paint leaving grooves and tufts that make the surface look more like a collage than a painted canvas.

Splitting Twilight, which runs through December 19, uses Baker’s self- described mechanical, accidental, harmonious, raw and untamed technique to look at confusion between the natural and artificial in classic landscape painting by colliding the two with blasts of unnatural color.

Kristin Baker's studio, Brooklyn, NY

Kristin Baker Flying Curve, Differential Manifold, 2007, acrylic on acrylic with powder coated steel freestanding structure, 96 x 360 inches (243.8 x 914.4 cm)

Lymbyc Systym: Shutter Release (Mush)

Brothers Jared and Mike Bell have kept busy since 2007, releasing their heavily layered electro-acoustic jams on two full-length albums, a remix album, a re-released debut EP, and a split EP with This Will Destroy You.

With Shutter Release, the two showcase their continued musical development, laying tape to a new set of densely packed, melodically driven creations that lean on reappearing refrains and crescendos.

The album opens with a circular, cascading beat that gives way to one of the album’s most noted additions — a clean-channel electric guitar that presents the first of innumerable melodies to follow. A glockenspiel and synthesizers join, and soon the duo’s familiar brand of post-rock is in full effect.

Shutter Release succeeds with the familiar, but it expands Lymbyc Systym’s catalog with mellow moments and does well to capture its live energy.  Don’t sleep on this release.

Mr. Chop: For Pete’s Sake (Now-Again)

Coz Littler, also known as the multi-instrumentalist producer Mr. Chop, has begun making a name for himself in the States with an EP on Stones Throw and production work on MF Doom’s Born Like This.

Littler can handle most of his albums’ instrumentation by himself, but for his newest release, he again calls upon more studio vets for funky, jazzy, effects-fueled renditions of the beats and productions of critically acclaimed producer Pete Rock.

For Pete’s Sake stands on its own as a funky good time, but for those familiar with Rock’s catalog, it should prove to be doubly enjoyable.

Nile: Those Whom the Gods Detest (Nuclear Blast)

On the heels of a haunting solo album, cultural fusionist and guitarist Karl Sanders leads a new album from Nile, his extreme metal quartet with influence from ancient Egyptian themes and imagery.

A traditional Middle Eastern vocal passage makes a strange (but effective) complement to an otherwise brutal, shredding opener, but much of Those Whom the Gods Detest consists of Nile’s relentless guitar fury, blazing double bass, vocal ferocity, and slowly churning chugs.

Beginning with more of Sanders’ worldly influence, the title track shortly transforms to a harrowing assault of lightning-fast riffs and blast beats before working to an epic chorus.  Ultimately, the track vies for title of the album’s best, and it comes to typify the stylistic convergence that has separated Nile for the past 15 years.

Honorable mentions:

Bill Frisell: Good Dog, Happy Man reissue (2xLP + bonus CD, Nonesuch)
The Gift of Gab: Escape 2 Mars (Cornerstone RAS)
Lateef the Truthspeaker: Truth is Love (Dread Piper Sounds)
Nirvana: Bleach deluxe edition (Sub Pop)
Rita J: Artist Workshop (All Natural)

The self-described “Chicago-Irish band,” brings a fresh twist to Gaelic rock by adding a Midwestern flavor to Celtic, folk, and punk sounds.

Magner’s Irish Sessions, hosted by Magner’s Irish Cider presented some of the best Irish and Irish-influenced local acts at an array of (where else?) Irish pubs around the city. celebrating traditional and current Irish sounds while introducing audience members to their tasty and refreshing beverage for the first time.

01 “Before Destruction”
02 “Is Love Forever?”
03 “The Mystery Zone”
04 “Who Makes Your Money”
05 “Written In Reverse”
06 “I Saw The Light”
07 “Trouble Comes Running”
08 “Goodnight Laura”
09 “Out Go The Lights”
10 “Got Nuffin”
11 “Nobody Gets Me But You”

From the press release:

“This is not another portfolio book by an artist… or at least it’s trying not to be. Formal Additive Programs, Nakanishi’s first release is an attempt to provide insight into a daily art practice and process, while focusing on the commonalities of figurative and abstract images. Formal Additive Programs offers 18 simple instructions to help the reader expand upon a singular idea, a practice that aids Nakanishi in her art-making everyday.

Come out to the book release on October 29th at Quimby’s. Dakota Brown, who wrote the poetic preface to the book, will be reading from his work. Nick Butcher (www.nickbutcher.net) is to follow with a musical set, interpreting the 18 steps of instruction that make up the books content. The audience is encouraged to draw along with the instructions and the music. Yes, to experience the book the audience is expected to interact.”

Heavy Trash: Midnight Soul Serenade (Fat Possum)

As Jon Spencer and Matt Verta-Ray unleash their third disc of old-school roots rock and rockabilly as Heavy Trash, the duo collaborates with a bona fide cast of contributors to create some of its finest tunes on a disc that expands its repertoire.

Accompanying organ is spread throughout Midnight Soul Serenade, an album that also contains splashes of piano on “Gee, I Really Love You,” vocal gentleness and female vocal backings on “Good Man,” vocal eccentricities on “Bumble Bee,” Southwestern guitar and baritone harmonies on “Pimento,” and low tones and acid flair on “The Pill,” a tune evocative of Twin Peaks that tells its own psychedelic tale.

Top-end players Simon Chardiet, Sam Baker, Powersolo, Mickey Finn, Daniel Collas, and Those Darlins lend their good graces.  If this kind of music piques your interest, pick this up.

Themselves: CrownsDown (Anticon)

After six years of silence (spent on countless other projects, many with each other), no-nonsense rap duo Themselves — Adam “Doseone” Drucker and Jeffrey “Jel” Logan — returned with a free “mixtape” earlier this year.  Now the two have released their proper third album, CrownsDown, a sample-driven album that is both experimental and traditional.

The gritty, nasally intonation and rapid-fire delivery of Jel are slathered up and down the disc, which is based on hip-hop and dance beats and patchwork samples.  Subtle founder Dax Pierson and 13 & God bandmates Jordan Dalrymple and Markus Acher make cameos.

Minamo: Kuroi Kawa: Black River (Tzadik)

Avant-violinist extraordinaire Carla Kihlstedt (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, 2 Foot Yard, The Book of Knots) and prolific classical pianist Satoko Fujii (Satoko Fujii Orchestra) spend much of their time on the outskirts of musical convention, combining their desired genres in whichever ways that they see fit.

Here the two create two worlds on two discs: one of dutifully recorded compositions and one of live, stream-of-conscious improvisations.  Fans of experimental chamber music should dig this.

Honorable mentions:

Dave Douglas: A Single Sky (Greenleaf)
Jesu: Opiate Sun (Caldo Verde)
Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things: About Us (482 Music)
Jessica Pavone: Songs of Synastry & Solitude (Tzadik)
Pyramids with Nadja: s/t (Hydra Head)
Rupa & The April Fishes: Este Mundo (Cumbancha)
The Squirrel Nut Zippers: Lost at Sea
John Zorn: Femina (Tzadik)

I’ve never seen Metalocalypse on Adult Swim, though the premise of an animated series about a metal band sounds hilarious, and I’d never heard Dethklok before, but when I heard that Converge and High on Fire, two groundbreaking artists with compelling rock shows, along with prog-metal stalwarts Mastodon, were on tour  opening for a cartoon, I had to go to Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom on October 17 to see for myself.

I’m not knocking Deathklok—the live band sounded great, despite deliberately playing second fiddle to the large screen above—but I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that thousands more people would prefer to shell out their hard-earned cash to see a cartoon (albeit, a cartoon with a live soundtrack), then to see a badass rock ’n’ roll show on it’s own.

Not to mention that prior to the evening’s headliner, the screen was used to run advertisements for the Metalocalypse DVD. Spinal Tap-ish? Maybe. Disheartening? Definitely.

The good news is that each band was exposed to new audience members for the first time (after all, the Aragon does hold 4500 people), which will hopefully lead to more good things to come. High on Fire introduced a badass new song, most likely evidence of a killer record to come in 2010, and Converge put on a thrilling show, showcasing material from their incredible new album Axe to Fall (Epitaph).

Still, next time I’ll stay at home and watch Metalocaplypse on the small screen before heading out to a show to rock my face off.

-Jamie Ludwig