Upcoming Bands
Hope you all are enjoying winter break. Below is a list of bands heading to the Loft next quarter. So start prepping your dancing shoes during break as these bands will certainly get your feet moving.
Friday, January 15, 2010 / 8:30 PM
Asobi Seksu feat. Lady Danville
While Asobi Seksu’s creative core explored music at an early age (lead vocalist/keyboardist Yuki Chikudate got standing ovations at child prodigy recitals when she was just 8; guitarist/vocalist James Hanna bounced between sludgy hardcore and Mogwai-schooled post-rock in his teens), their potential ‘career’ wasn’t put into perspective until a stint at the Manhattan School of Music. And by put into perspective, we mean finding out what they didn’t want to do. “We knew we didn’t want to do 7,000 reverb guitars this time,” says Hanna, “So we stripped the sound down and built it back up from there.” Come check out a very special stripped down set of acoustic music from Asobi Seksu at the Loft along with UCLA graduates Lady Danville.
Saturday, January 23, 2010 / 9:00 PM
HEALTH
The niche of the LA noise rock world has finally broken out with the help of one of its greatest and most energetic bands, HEALTH. With a huge fan base originating from LA’s music venue, The Smell, the band’s profile has risen considerably thanks in part to the chart-topping mix with Crystal Castles and relentless touring with the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Of Montreal. HEALTH makes an excellent musical impression with their aggressive, loud, and almost esoterically beautiful noise rock with their two album releases. Though, if their studio tracks didn’t provide enough audio energy for you, HEALTH’s upcoming live performance at The Loft is by no means an experience to be missed.
Monday, February 1, 2010 / 9:00 PM
Broadside Ballads: Bowerbirds feat. Julie Doiron
Bowerbirds’ debut album, Hymns for a Dark Horse, was nearly one hundred percent focused on the thesis that the earth is a sacred place with merit beyond us, and that humans are just visitors here. Its contrapuntal harmonies documented a moment in the life of the songwriter and the life of the band – Beth Tacular and Phil Moore living in an airstream in rural North Carolina, building a cabin of reclaimed boards by hand in the woods – but did so without, as far as we could tell, delving into their lives at all. While these weren’t protest songs, per se, they had the wry anger of a “Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” The songs were interconnected, both musically and thematically, a musical whitepaper of the very best, most listenable kind.
Saturday, March 13, 2010 / 8:30 PM
The Ruby Suns with Toro Y Moi
Releasing their latest Album ‘Sea Lion’ (on Sub Pop records) The Ruby Suns will be dropping by The Loft as part of their nationwide tour with Toro Y Moi.
Phones ring and field recordings follow: footsteps in a friend’s backyard, getting drunk at a bar in Chicago, screaming kids at an indoor pool, and Kenyan rug makers singing. All of these sounds churn within tidal tape manipulations. Relating to a small, solitary sea bird on the opening track of Sea Lion, Ryan McPhun sings, ‘The great Pacific can connect you with your relatives.’
McPhun was born and raised in the seaside town of Ventura, CA. Eventually his hunger for travel and new experiences led him to his newfound home away from home. New Zealand has offered Ryan its mountainous South Island, rugged beaches and the North Island’s enchanted forests, to which Ryan replies with sounds he has borrowed and fashioned from machine, Manuka trees and many a musical instrument. Although New Zealand is somewhat isolated in the southern most part of the Pacific Ocean, Ryan has remained true to his buccaneer instinct. He and his Dictaphone (portable tape recorder) have ventured into the wilds of Africa, the ancient monasteries of Thailand, and the haunting landscapes that surround his everyday.
In 2004 McPhun gathered some like-minded Kiwi wanderers and formed the band Ryan McPhun and The Ruby Suns. He also enjoyed stints in various Auckland-based pop groups including The Tokey Tones, The Reduction Agents, and The Brunettes, with whom he toured the US with The Shins and Rilo Kiley both in ‘05. McPhun also plays drums, percussion and background vocals on The Brunettes recent Sub Pop release Structure and Cosmetics.
The band is now shortly, sweetly and simply called The Ruby Suns. At present the live band consists of Ryan McPhun, Amee Robinson, and Imogen Taylor.
