Thursday April 27th..doors 7:30pm, music 8:00pm SHARP $10 suggested donation
On his compulsive own, Eugene Chadbourne has spewed forth a ceaseless stream of records and cassettes that easily represent the oddest version of country and folk music ever. While the notable left-winger's guitar playing is looser than clams, it harbors wildly unique energy. He also plays banjo, electric rake, and balloon. The North Carolinian is the master of several different voices, some of them deceptively sincere. Harsh, funny, irritating and packed with ideas, Chadbourne often suggests a politically correct Frank Zappa.
"Sunwatchers stands in solidarity with the dispossessed, impoverished and embattled people of the world.” With this as a mission statement, Sunwatchers burst into being in 2012. A shapeshifting entity trafficking in sounds alternately raging and placid — intensely dynamic or mesmerically static, depending on the evening -- the New York-based punk/drone/jazz outfit has sought to imbue their avant-garde approach with a radical kind of urgency, and a surprising amount of melodic accessibility, ever since.
The group solidified into a core quartet of Peter Nye Kerlin (bass guitar; piano), Jim McHugh (guitars; electric phin; electric saz; synthesizer), Jason Robira (percussion) and Jeff Tobias (alto and baritone saxophones; keyboards). Notable projects involving core members of Sunwatchers include Arthur Doyle’s New Quiet Screamers, NYMPH, Dark Meat, Chris Forsyth’s Solar Motel Band, Matana Roberts, David First’s Western Enisphere, KATIEE and a multitude of other acts integral to the New York avant-garde scenes of the past decade.
Their eponymous debut, released in early 2016 on Los Angeles-based Castle Face Records, eliminates the common conceits of instrumental rock music to offer apoplectic aggression, a deep sense of humor, and a remarkable degree of pathos spanning a wide range of influence. Over the course of its sprawling forty-five minutes, the album caroms between insistent chaos, nudge-wink classic-rock structures, hypnotic repetition, and back.
Sunwatchers has finished their sophomore LP for Castle Face, and is readying a clatch of EP’s, live material and side-project-recordings for release on various labels. Throughout the latter part of 2015 and early 2016, the band collaborated with acclaimed documentary director Ian Olds on his first feature-length narrative film, Burn Country, and toured Stateside extensively. Recently the band has initiated work on a collaboration LP with legendary avant-garde savant Eugene Chadbourne, including covers of Minutemen, Doug Sahm and Henry Flynt songs, and featuring Mike Watt on vox.
"ESCAPE-ISM ---a found-sound-dream-drama starring Ian Svenonius"
