An impressive lineup of vintage gear and raw talent thrusts this western Massachusetts band’s third album, Let’s Do Lunch, into the 21st century. Comprised entirely of songs tracked with vintage equipment on a Tascam 4-Track cassette recorder (remember those?!), they manage to sound new and familiar at the same time—but there’s no denying the modern, indie-pop DNA. “This record is different for us,” explains keyboardist Gabe Bernini, “because while recording we used such limited technology that we were able to be much more productive. Without the luxury of having endless recording options, we found that we really like the sound that comes out of us just playing together as a band. Most of the record is made up of second and third takes that were recorded in the same sitting as the writing.” With no place to hide amidst an analog backbone, their expertly performed musicianship is front and center. “I Love You I Love You” is a standout, as is “Scrapsy.”

LuxDeluxe imports many of music’s most popular roots and those influences are interpreted cleanly. Far from sounding dated, the warm sound has a contemporary, catchy vibe and rock quality. The drums are a real standout, crashing and crunching along the rich vocals, spot-on harmonies, and smart lyrics, all woven through some serious musical talent. A bright sounding Clavinet keyed by Gabe Bernini pings fluidly alongside solid guitar chops by Caleb Rosazza, and a steadfast bass line courtesy of Jacob Rosazza.

LuxDeluxe live

The your-in-the-room feel to the album is replicated in energetic live performances; this band puts on an extraordinarily fun show. “New England is a great place to be a touring band,” says Bernini. “Our touring strategy for the past year has been to stop touring all the way to Colorado and back and instead keep hitting cool music cities that are closer to us, more often. We’ve been playing Boston, New York City, Burlington, Philly, Washington DC, and other close-by cities over and over to build our audience, which has been a really great way to make fans and keep them busy!” Fronted by dynamic showman Ned King, LuxDeluxe is engaged and polished like only a band that’s played together for ages can be. Come prepared to participate and dance your ass off, because this is a band having a good time. Catch them on their upcoming tour with a swing through some of New York’s finest joints, finally landing in New England with a Massachusetts gig at Festival at the Farm in Canton.

LuxDeluxe is: Ned King – vocals, Jacob Rosazza – bass, Caleb Rosazza – guitar, Gabe Bernini – keys, Jake Edwards – drums
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The post LuxDeluxe Delivers appeared first on Take Magazine.

Anne Decker got involved in contemporary classical, or new, music not because of the curriculum she was studying in college. She jumped into this forum because she heard what her fellow students and composers were creating and had an AHA moment. “I said ‘Hey, I’d do that!’” says Decker of her response to the sounds she heard and the thought of helping realize performances of those scores. So she and some friends started a student-led new music ensemble, the first of its kind at the school where she was in Michigan.

That DIY attitude is part of what infuses TURNmusic, a Vermont-based new-music chamber series that Decker helped create in 2014 and for which she is the conductor and artistic director. “I had been listening to all of the latest new music coming out,” says Decker of the formation of TURNmusic, referring to the wide-ranging outpouring of work from contemporary classically-versed composers. “There was this cool genre of music that I felt like wasn’t being represented in Vermont. Quite accessible chamber music is being written. I wanted to bring that stuff to Vermont.”

With encouragement from innovative violinist Mary Rowell, co-founder of the forward-thinking ETHEL quartet, Decker assembled a group of top-notch players committed to performing new music and playing it, in many cases, outside of the traditional high-culture venues where “classical” music often gets played. “She helped give me courage,” Decker says of Rowell, who is also a core part of TURNmusic.

“I just felt like there was a place for new music here,” says Decker. “I believe in this music. I’m a music educator. And I believe in hearing these high-level musicians that I’m working with. They should be heard. And they don’t have to be heard by the elite. It’s music for all.”

Anne Decker, TURNmusic in performance

TURNmusic has, in its three years of existence, been committed to music written by living composers. That, basically, means someone born after the advent of the age of mass entertainment, pop culture, radio, records, and the embrace of youth as a marketing demographic. These are composers who—unless raised in a classical-music commune—were probably soaking up rock, hip-hop, soundtracks, jazz, electronic music, non-Western music, and all kinds of other traditions beyond Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.

Though Decker, 42, was keen to bring new music to Vermont, she was also interested in highlighting some of the new music that was already being made or associated with the state. Composer Nico Muhly is a prominent name in new contemporary classical music circles. In addition to composing his own operas and other pieces, Muhly has gotten a lot of attention for his orchestrations and arrangements for performers within the artsy-leaning end of the indie rock world, people like Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Sam Amidon (also from Vermont), Bjork, Antony and the Johnsons, and Joanna Newsom. Muhly’s work was included in the first TURN series in 2014.

Other artists with a foot in both the contemporary classical and the world of indie rock that TURN has featured include Bryce Dessner, who plays in the band the National but who also has a masters in music from Yale and a highly regarded output as a composer. TURNmusic featured a performance of Dessner’s “Murder Ballads” in the fall of last year. Recently TURNmusic has included performances of work by Richard Reed Parry, a composer and multi-instrumentalist who’s known for his work as a member of the band Arcade Fire.

But highlighting the connection between the world of indie rock and contemporary classical music is just one of the threads TURNmusic tugs on. Decker also helped to create a collegiate composition prize that allows composers still finishing their formal education to have a piece performed by a professional ensemble. She wanted to zero in on collegiate composers because that was the period in her life when she fell in love with new music. TURNmusic also helped launch the North Country Electronic Music Festival.

Decker, whose day job is as a music teacher in the public schools, is also on the lookout for Vermont musicians, particularly those who might be slightly outside the world of new music, to ask them to consider writing for the chamber ensemble. “These are players who can play anything,” she says of her musical collaborators.

Montpelier Chamber Orchestra, which Anne Decker also conducts. Photo by Monika Rivard.

If the musicians in TURNmusic are open for just about anything, Decker feels that the audience is in a similarly receptive state. And the work of TURNmusic is, in part, about connecting with listeners, making the experience of hearing new music one that isn’t complicated by much uncertainty or anxiety about being thrust into some abrasive sonic terrain “I feel like I’m just building trust,” says Decker. “The fans are just looking for good music.”

Anne Decker–founder TURNmusic
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The post DIY New Music in Vermont appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally appeared in our December/January 2015 print issue.

The Green Mountain State’s most famous musical product is almost certainly the jam band Phish. If that quartet, formed in Burlington in 1983, earned a reputation for playing extended improvisations and working in the spiritual and musical wake of the Grateful Dead, MV & EE took shape largely in the twenty-first century, in the southern end of the state around Brattleboro, still playing off many elements of the Dead’s legacy but with drastically different results.

Valentine and Elder are also a couple. Unlike Phish, MV & EE are unlikely to sell out Madison Square Garden anytime soon, but the duo operates on a whole other level, making deeply psychedelic, small-batch, boutique, esoteric folk music that’s tinged with noise. Or maybe it’s indie rock tinged with folk. Either way, their recordings and performances are highly improvisational and experimental. The music of MV & EE embodies a thread of the reality of their home state: it’s both earthy and spacey, and it’s all propelled by a spirit of intrepid self-reliance.

This year was a big year for Valentine and Elder. A new MV & EE double album, Alpine Frequency, came out in the summer, at about the same time Valentine released a solo double album as well. “They were both pretty large records,” says Valentine. “We try to make a record that someone ideally is going to go back to and revisit. So we try to make the album have a certain depth or trajectory. There were several years of work on both of them. Hopefully that will tide some people over for a while.”

Photo by Paul Specht

Valentine’s new record is called Midden Mound, which, if you’ve forgotten some of the terms from your college anthropology class, is basically a prehistoric trash heap made up of shells and bones and other stuff. It’s a meaningful pile of refuse, dense and old, yielding secrets to those patient and learned enough to sift through it. The title seems to fit right in with the concept of “sonic agriculture” Valentine has spoken of, a utilitarian, plow-sow-and-reap vision of music making, with natural forces and human labor producing fertile results.

“I can’t get out of the underground,” jokes Valentine about the record’s title. But then he adds, “I thought [the title] worked for that body of work specifically; it’s definitely the remains of a certain sonic settlement of mine.”

That’s not all just talk. Sound attains something close to physicality in Valentine’s solo work and in the music of MV & EE. The music and the recordings are more about textures and resonance than melody, lyrics, and song form. The attention to the physical extends to the packaging and marketing of the music as well. Both new records were pressed on vinyl in addition to being available in other forms, such as CDs and MP3s. The duo often creates limited-edition original artwork to go along with some of their small-batch releases or to bring to shows, to make each record one of a kind.

Valentine’s connections with recorded music—with vinyl in particular—go back to his formative musical experiences.

“I’ve always been around records,” he says. “My parents collected records. They had a record library. They encouraged me to use the turntable. I heard a lot of music growing up that was interesting to me. I worked at record stores since I was a teenager. I stayed working at record stores. I was a lifer, a record-store casualty.”

Selling records has never been the most remunerative line of work, and surviving by playing DIY avant-garage folk presents challenges. But Valentine and Elder approach the work with a flinty Yankee ethos. They are impressively prolific, releasing an average of two records a year, which brings their total to something like 32 since 2001. They also run a boutique record label that releases limited pressings of live recordings, packaged with original artwork. Oh, and they have a two-year-old daughter. So they keep pretty busy.

Elder does work as a freelance graphic designer, and she says their living space reflects the creative multitasking that goes on there. “You should see our house— it’s part house, part workshop. It’s all blended together,” she says.

MV & EE possess a particular kind of twenty-first-century musical eclecticism, drawing on the Old, Weird America of Harry Smith’s epic Anthology of American Folk Music, steeped in old-time music, country blues, and field recordings (the duo was asked to contribute a song to the highly regarded 2015 tribute record to English singer and folklorist Shirley Collins), and yet their work is also in conversation with some core ideas of contemporary classical music, minimalism, and free jazz.

Photo by Paul Specht

“That’s very natural,” says Elder. “If you look at our record collection, we’ve got our Carter Family and our Sonny Sharrock records right next to each other.”

She grew up in Virginia, where singing was a regular part of her extended family gatherings. “I kind of brought the Appalachia to the table,” Elder says. “I grew up thinking that everybody just got around the piano on Sundays and played different songs.” That included folk songs and plenty of religious material, sources that MV & EE have returned to.

“I played sax in elementary school,” says Valentine. “I got kicked out of the school band for trying to play like [keening iconoclastic saxophonist Albert] Ayler. I got booted.”

Valentine got one strand of his musical education for free by auditing classes in the Conservatory of Music at the State University of New York at Purchase, where several pioneers of experimental and computer music taught and where the homemade instruments of maverick composer Harry Partch were housed at one point.

Extended drones, ominous echoes, alternate tunings, dub effects, and spooky war whoops all make appearances on Valentine’s new solo record. Two-chord vamps attain a mystic density as they’re prolonged. It fits right in with the MV & EE oeuvre. The DNA of much of MV & EE’s material seems like it can be traced to either “Dark Star,” the Dead’s epic interstellar exploratory vehicle; “Cortez the Killer,” Neil Young’s mythic caveman-like protosludge masterpiece; and “If I Could Only Remember My Name,” David Crosby’s haunting and beautiful comedown opus. Those are good genes, at any rate.

Valentine and Elder make the most of what they call the global I-91 corridor—a joking way of referring to their spiraling network of friends, fellow musicians, and collaborators. And the town they live in, outside of Brattleboro, is something of a magnet for other creative people.

“We’ve been here for 13 years,” says Elder. “Everybody who lives in this area whom we’re friends with is here for the energy. It’s still a very important reason why we’re here.”

But the actual I-91 connection links them to likeminded artists from New Haven, Connecticut, through western Massachusetts and up through Vermont. Contributors to the new batch of records include J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. and Pete Nolan of art-noise trio The Magik Markers. And the band has recorded on Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! record label, based in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

For MV & EE and for Valentine’s solo album, recording isn’t just a matter of heading into the studio with some tunes, some guitars, and rolling tape. Bits are recorded in Valentine and Elder’s home studio or sometimes at a friend’s place, or while traveling; then sometimes layers are added on elsewhere. Some tracks might take shape in a living room and others in a fancy studio. The setting needs to be conducive to improvisation, which is central to much of the duo’s work.

“I have pretty elaborate recording techniques deployed that we use now,” says Valentine. “And they’re primitive, too, in some cases. There are techniques used to sometimes make one performance sound like multiple ones. The mood of the moment was more important than the technicalities.”

MV & EE balance the raw and the refined, the overstuffed and the stripped down. “It’s sometimes very minimal, sometimes very maximal,” says Valentine.

Photo by Paul Specht

For all of their folk tendencies and pedigrees, MV & EE can also sound like a stoner rock outfit, with lumbering bass lines and bruising drumbeats anchoring their unison singing and slashing guitars, like on “Susquehanna (Sole Art Trample)” from 2007’s Gettin’ Gone. Though the deep psychedelic connection is clear, there’s also a classic rock aspect to some of MV & EE’s eclecticism. “Susquehanna (Sole Art Trample),” for instance, is followed by a song called “The Burden,” which has gentle finger picking and high, atmospheric pedal steel guitars. It’s a pairing that might be at home on Led Zeppelin III, where the howling stomp of marauding invaders gives way to soothing and dreamy acoustic songs rooted in traditional folk music. “I’m in such a trance state usually when I’m playing,” says Elder.

That textural and tonal perspective is what helps the music withstand repeated listenings. “We try to keep it interesting for ourselves as much as for people who might be hearing it,” says Valentine.

But—as with something like a Fela Kuti record, an Indian raga, or a piece of music by La Monte Young— sometimes the music of MV & EE and Valentine’s solo work are meant to possibly scramble one’s sense of time: to transport the listener into a slow-drip mindset, where a pattern repeating for 15 minutes somehow becomes more gratifying and meaningful than one that stops after 3 minutes. Sometimes that aesthetic can be at odds with the demands of the marketplace. Valentine had originally planned on making Midden Mound a triple record, but he decided to settle on a double album.

“I kind of peeled that concept back,” he says. But he will be releasing the material that would have been that third record as another single solo album in 2016.

Valentine and Elder don’t have an elaborate promotional machine behind them. They do much of the behind-the-scenes logistics themselves, booking and publicizing shows. So if people are possibly starting to hear their music more and know their name after years and years of productivity, it’s because the world is beginning to come around to them. The combination of heavy rock, obscure folk, and experimental music is perhaps less of a head-scratcher than it was 20 years ago. “People are a little more ready for what we’re doing now,” says Valentine. “People are catching up to the sound.”

One senses that being creative and productive is just the way Valentine and Elder live their lives, and they’d be playing music every day and handcrafting one-of-a-kind art to go with it whether or not they had fans and a career. “I just like to make things,” says Valentine. “It’s probably why I like living up here.”

MV & EE–musicians from Brattleboro, Vermont
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The post Small-Batch Mystical Folk Noise appeared first on Take Magazine.

The connection between song and literature is a long and complicated one. Look to Bob Dylan’s winning of the Nobel Prize and all the hand-wringing and chin-stroking that prompted. Many say that literature sprang from song—that rhyme, melody, and meter allowed the first bards to flesh out their material into longer forms. Cricket Blue, an acoustic folk duo from Burlington, Vermont, explore that place where literature, short stories, folk tales, mythology, poetry, and song all swirl together.

I spoke to the two—Laura Heaberlin, 27, and Taylor Smith, 26—by phone from their home recently. Heaberlin had just finished her shift working at a local bookstore. “I’ve got both feet in dying industries,” said Heaberlin with a laugh, referencing my comment about book selling and music making in the age of streaming and online sales.

Both Heaberlin and Smith studied literature in college. The literary bent of their material can be seen from the titles alone. The duo’s most recent EP is called Io, which you might remember from reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and there’s a song called “Angela Carter,” which is what Heaberlin calls a tribute to the style of the English author of novels that are like graphic feminist fairy tales at their core. Another song features a reference to Niobe, another tragic figure from Greek mythology.

The duo took shape after Heaberlin and Smith had shared some bills together as solo artists. Sometimes they’d do a couple tunes together, work on a cover, or practice an arrangement to stretch out their time on stage. “There were all these two-hour slots to fill and neither of us had that much music or stamina,” says Smith. The sessions made them realize that they liked playing and singing together more than being separate solo acts. Both Heaberlin and Smith write. They each harmonize on the other’s songs.

They do a lot of shows around the Northeast, heading out from their Burlington home base and fitting all their equipment into a Prius.

Like the myths and stories that Cricket Blue draw on for inspiration, the duo’s songs have a vaguely old familiar sound to them, but with unexpected turns and twists. It’s folk music in the sense that it is acoustic music, with stories that draw on a tradition, but it’s not the Carter Family. For one thing, Cricket Blue doesn’t seem to be especially fond of repeating choruses and refrains. Both songwriters convey the sense that they’d prefer to wedge more lyrical details into a song instead of spending valuable time going over words that have already been covered.

“I feel like if you’ve already said something, and you can potentially say something new, why say the same thing again?” asks Heaberlin, posing a question that many poetically inclined songwriters have asked themselves before.

Smith echoes the sentiment: “If left to my druthers, I’d have tons and tons of lyrics with no chorus.”

If many songwriters in their 20s find the experience of making their way in the world, navigating adulthood, relationships, work, independence, and the emotional and psychic ruffles that come with that to provide sufficient depths of feeling to mine for songwriting purposes, Heaberlin says that she tends to focus on narratives and characters outside herself for their songs.

“You can only really write so many songs about your life,” she says, “especially when nothing really changes in your life.”

Laura Heaberlin and Taylor Smith – Cricket Blue, Acoustic Duo
Burlington, VT
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The post Singing the Writing Life in Vermont appeared first on Take Magazine.

Musician Rick Reyes may have been born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but his heart and his music lie in Puerto Rico. Which is one reason he’s created the Puerto Rican songbook project: It’s his way of sharing a piece of Puerto Rico with the world.

Reyes, who refers to his Connecticut hometown as “Bridgeportorico,” moved back to Puerto Rico when he was a young child. He lived there until he was 13, at which point he and his family moved back to the States.

It was a tough time to move, Reyes recalls, and it was music, and Puerto Rican in particular, that helped him through the transition. “When you move any place as a child…it’s a big transition in your life,” Reyes says. “I was taken aback by leaving friends behind, starting again new.”

“I used to always write my thoughts and feelings as a little kid,” he continues. “My outlet became to write more. I picked up guitar. Things became songs.”

These songs eventually turned into a music career, which in turn evolved into a dedication to spread the sounds of Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican songbook project began with an arts grant in 2016 that placed Reyes as artist in residence at the Bijou Theater in Bridgeport. The grant enabled Reyes to perform once a month with various Latin-centric groups, as well as develop the project.

While not the sole focus of Reyes’ concerts—he performs regularly with Cosmic Jibaros, the Pasofino Social Club, and Novela Sin Tiempo—the Puerto Rican songbook project is meant to be a Puerto Rican musical travel guide of sorts, featuring songs from the 1920s to the ‘90s and highlighting the contributions of Puerto Rican composers. Reyes, who is a member of the Nest Arts Factory in Bridgeport, has also developed a few workshops on the topic.

Reyes is pleased with the feedback he’s getting on these performances so far. (You can catch the next one April 22 at the Bijou). “It’s had such an impact in the community,” Reyes says. “It’s a community that needed to realize their roots. It’s a very healing show for folks.”

That healing seems apt given that’s what music initially did for the young Reyes newly transplanted in America. “When I started writing music, it was not with the intent of following any particular genre but to let me emotions out,” he says. “It was the only way I could express what I was feeling. Like many artists you paint your soul, you sculpt your emotions.”

Rick Reyes – musician
Bridgeport, Connecticut
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Top images courtesy Rick Reyes

The post Rick Reyes’ Love Songs to Puerto Rico appeared first on Take Magazine.

In a former lifetime in which the person inhabiting the Oval Office had an actual vision based on facts, the arts were recognized as an integral measure of our society. President John F. Kennedy, for instance, said this about the arts: “We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda. It is a form of truth.”

Truth, of course, has taken a hit since 45 took office. That whole “alternative facts” bit. But numbers, or so the saying goes, don’t lie. So with that in mind, we took a quick look at the potential math implications of 45’s federal budget.

First the overview:

• Number of programs and agencies due for elimination: 62
• Number of programs within the Environmental Protection Agency alone: 50

Other programs due for funding cuts—or outright elimination—focus on everything from literacy to low-income home energy improvements to investigating chemical accidents. The enormous breadth and scope of impact on those least able to manage without these programs is breathtaking.

But since we’re an arts and culture magazine, we’re going to focus our hyperventilation on the potential impact of these devastating cuts to art and culture in New England. The proposed budget calls for eliminating all funding for the National Endowment for the Arts ($152 million) and the National Endowment for the Humanities ($155 million).

What NEA funding means to New England:

For fiscal year 2017, New England states received $2.591 million in NEA grants overall, according to the NEA website. Here’s who got what:

• Connecticut: 15 organizations, $310,000
• Massachusetts: 62 organizations, $1,672,000
• Maine: 11 organizations, $242,000
• New Hampshire: 6 organizations, $120,000
• Rhode Island: 9 organizations, $152,500
• Vermont: 4 organizations, $95,000

But the math adds up even less when you look beyond straight grants. Ann Wicks, communications manager for the New England Foundation on the Arts (NEFA)—one of six regional arts organizations funded by the NEA and private donations—explains. Arts organizations can potentially receive NEA dollars in three ways:

• an outright allocation of a grant the organization applies for itself
• an allocation from NEFA through NEA dollars provided to NEFA
• from NEA dollars given to state arts organizations, such as the Massachusetts Cultural Council

Wicks says about 15 percent of NEFA’s annual budget comes from NEA dollars. Beyond grants, NEFA uses those dollars to support artists in other, less direct ways, Wicks says. The Creative Ground Directory, for instance, is a free resource that lists artists and other creators around New England so that it’s easier to find appropriate collaborators for projects. In FY2016, NEFA made a total of 462 grants equaling $3.4 million. New England states received $829,947 of those NEFA grants.

In other words, the loss of funding to New England arts and humanities organizations could be even larger. “NEA support is very important to New England and the creative sector,” she says.

It’s a point that is echoed nationally. The National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), a national nonprofit that assists state arts agencies, offers this math about how NEA dollars improve the economy at large:

• The arts return $22.3 billion in tax revenue to federal, state, county, and municipal governments.
• Rural areas, low-income communities, and schools would feel the effects of this funding loss disproportionately from reductions. State arts agencies (using state and federal funds) award more than 25% of their grants to rural areas, 54% to low-income communities, and 45% to arts education projects.
• Every NEA dollar leverages more than $9 in matching funds, meaning that the impact of the NEA loss is just the beginning of the potential financial loss for arts organizations.

Cutting the NEA and NEH seem especially confusing given this math offered by NASAA: The NEA receives 0.004% of the total Federal budget, which is less than ½ of one hundredth of a percent.

That math also doesn’t add up when you consider the numbers presented by The Guardian. The British paper reports the following expenses incurred by taxpayers less than 50 days into 45’s residency:

• $56.6 million (or a cool $500,000 a day) to protect Trump Tower. That was through March 1. Assuming that Mrs. 45 stays until June for Mini-45 to finish school, that dollar amount could add another $46 million, bringing the total to $102 million.
• $3+million estimated cost for EACH weekend jaunt to golf work at his Mar-a-Lago Resort (a place where he doubled entry fees from $100,000 to $200,000 the day after he was elected).
• $97,380 for hotels for Secret Service to protect Eric Trump (that would be his son on those business interests 45 still hasn’t divested himself of) while he visited a condominium development in Uruguay. This is just one trip.

And finally this statistic: 45’s proposed military spending increase in his federal budget? $54 billion.

Something definitely doesn’t add up.

Does this irritate you as much as it does us? Here are a few links if you want to #TakeAction. See you on the streets.

Pen.org
artsactionfund.org
Change.org
The Official White House Petition to Save Arts Funding
Contact Your Representative
Arts Advocacy Day – Washington, DC
#SaveTheNEA

Top image courtesy Royal Talens

The post #TakeAction: Doing the NEA Defunding Math appeared first on Take Magazine.

Providence composer Kirsten Volness certainly keeps herself busy. This year, she became the inaugural Composer-in-Residence at the Music Mansion, or more formally the Mary K. Hail Music Mansion, a converted home on Providence’s College Hill that has been open to the public for concerts since 1948.

“This is a trial run,” says Volness, a Minnesota native who moved to Rhode Island in 2008. The Music Mansion’s board of directors is prepping the venue for a new generation of music lovers, performing physical upgrades on the building so that future Composers-in-Residence can actually live on site.

Part of Volness’s role is to curate the venue’s new First Fridays series, and she’s put together a diverse lineup ranging from a mixed string/wind quartet to solo percussion, a clarinet/marimba duo, and even Irish folk.

So far, the outreach seems to be working. “It’s the first program I’ve ever done where the email signup sheet was totally full at the end,” she says. At a recent performance by Boston-based percussionist Marisa Finkelmeier, half of the crowd raised their hand when asked if this was their first visit to the Music Mansion.

But the residency is just one of Volness’ many projects.

Verdant Vibes performs Julie Barwick’s “Shroud” at The Music Mansion | February 2017

With partner Jacob Richman, she also co-directs Verdant Vibes, a new music ensemble that’s now in its second season. Each year they hold an open call for composers. Volness and Richman charge no fee to submit—a rarity in the music world—so every year there’s a deluge of scores to sort through. But the ensemble remains adamant that the submission process should foster a diversity of voices, including those who might feel shut out of more traditional, more expensive outlets.

Earlier this month, Verdant Vibes threw its annual benefit concert, and right now they’re running an IndieGogo campaign to raise funds for their next season.

Volness’s enthusiasm for experimentation is paying off. How many other composers can claim that multiple beers have been brewed in their honor? That’s what happened last spring, when Slumbrew developed two different IPAs based on her compositions.

She and Richman are also music directors of Tenderloin Opera Company, a musical and theater group that advocates for the homeless. Started in San Francisco, the idea moved to Providence six years ago when founder Erik Ehn started teaching at Brown. The company is composed largely of homeless individuals living in downtown Providence, and they perform their off-kilter pop songs regularly at soup kitchens, protests, and memorial services.

How does Volness manage all these projects while teaching a full course load at the University of Rhode Island, giving private lessons in piano and composition every Thursday, performing several times a year with a New York ensemble, and actually finding the time and mental energy to write her own music?

“I focus on whatever’s due next,” she says modestly.

Kirsten Volness | Photo by Jacob Richman

Kirsten Volness — composer, pianist, teacher, producer
Providence, Rhode Island
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Music Mansion – venue
Providence, Rhode Island
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Verdant Vibes – music ensemble
Providence, Rhode Island
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Tenderloin Opera Company – musical and theater group
Providence, Rhode Island
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The post Staying Composed appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally appeared in our February/March 2016 analog-themed print issue. 

In November of 1994, the rock band Pearl Jam released its highly-anticipated third album, Vitalogy, on vinyl, two full weeks before releasing it on CD. If you’re too young to remember the days before albums leaked on the Internet, this was quite a novelty, if not a stunt. Although fewer than 10 years removed from an era when vinyl records were ubiquitous, by 1994 the compact disc had (supposedly) thoroughly banished the format to the Island of Antiquated Tech, where it joined 8-track tapes and rotary phones. Discs were portable, lightweight, slim, sturdy, and, most importantly, sounded goddamn amazing. No skips, no tape, no fuss, no muss. So the fact that Vitalogy sold 34,000 copies on vinyl in its first week was something of a coup, even if most people at the time shook their heads and smiled as if it was an episode of nostalgia or, worse, stubborn Luddism in the face of undeniable progress.

Burlington Record Plant co-owner Justin Crowther

Fast-forward (ahem) two decades later. The CD is all but obsolete, rendered so by phenomena with pleasant, natural-sounding names like “streaming” and “the cloud.” But tucked away in a garage bay behind a bagel shop just outside of downtown Burlington, Vermont, a new business, the Burlington Record Plant, creates actual physical media in the form of, yes, vinyl records. Helmed by honest-to-god working musicians, it’s no gimmick or retro flight-of-fancy, but a testament to the enduring power of a medium that has never fully gone away.

On the hottest day of the summer, I wander into the open garage bay to find Justin Crowther, drummer for one of Vermont’s most beloved hometown bands, “underground outlaw dirt rock” quartet Waylon Speed, hard at work test-pressing copies of the band’s 2014 album, Kin. He is surrounded by a phalanx of machinery and not a small amount of vintage radios and other sonic equipment. Within a minute of shaking hands amid stacks of traditional black platters, he proudly shows me a copy of Kin recently pressed on white, marbled vinyl. “I’ve just started experimenting,” Crowther says.

He is also quick to establish a running theme about the Burlington Record Plant—that it’s a labor of love. And both words, labor and love, are equally important. Gesturing toward the main piece of machinery currently churning out test pressings, he explains “I bought this from Germany, [where] it was totally just mothballed. We spent the better part of the year totally rebuilding it, like, five times over.”

Vinyl pellets that will be melted into records.

The “we” refers to the members of Waylon Speed (Crowther and his brother Noah, plus Reverend Chad Hammaker and Kelly Ravin); JD Campbell, who also works in the shop; a team of pipefitters who helped with the buildout; and two guys skilled in heavy machinery: Andre Bolduc, who works in hydraulics, and Davor Amrain, an engineer for a snowboard prototype facility just a few blocks away. “I saw [Amrain] was doing injection and compression molding. . .so I gained security clearance, went over [to Amrain’s workplace], and got a tour,” Crowther recalls.

“We took [the record-pressing machine] apart together, piece by piece, and determined what it was doing exactly, and redid it all with these electrical components. This is a custom design for pressing records, like ‘2.0.’” Crowther will later reiterate to me “how grateful I am for the crew.”

With only a few dozen record plants worldwide, there’s no training program or manual of best practices for starting up this sort of thing; it’s sink or swim.

“I put an international plan on my phone, and I called all over the world for a long time and talked to all these old-school guys,” Crowther explains. “And they’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, some kid from the States is going to press records, whatever’—because your respect is earned. It’s a very underground, very private kind of manufacturing process [to learn]. So I would take pictures after we rebuilt something and send it back to them. Months later I would keep sending them pictures, like ‘there’s no turning back, man. This is what we’re doing.’ And I just started to build relationships.”

I get the sense pretty quickly how important relationships are to Crowther—relationships with other record manufacturers and with fans, friends, family, and, of course, bandmates. When I mention something about the recent, steady increase in vinyl record sales, he gently but firmly clarifies that money was not the primary impetus for creating the plant. Still, there’s a small but sure list of friends whose projects have helped launch the business.

Just how fast can the Burlington Record Plant’s custom-made rig turn the records out? “The cycle time’s the secret, the secret recipe,” says Crowther. “But I can, if we’re pushing it, in an eight-hour day, press 800 records.”

Justin Crowther, who is also the drummer for Waylon Speed, presses records.

That’s more than enough for the smaller runs desired by local bands. Crowther agrees, pointing to a sheet on the wall with a list of projects by select friends and compatriots. “We typically have [runs of] 500, a couple 100s, a 200.” All of the plant’s records are currently 12”, but there are future plans for 10″ and 7″ records. “Right now I’m trying to prevent a situation where we have to tell people, ‘Sorry, but we can’t do your record for six months.’ I’d rather it be like, these are the people I want to work with, there’s a couple records I’d really love to work with.”

And of course there’s Kin. Although released in 2014, Waylon Speed’s fourth album was recorded specifically with the promise of a future vinyl pressing in mind. Crowther puts the record on the house stereo and, so I can get the full effect, hands me a pair of headphones. Vinyl die-hards sometimes catch flak from audiophiles who say the oft-invoked “warmth” (read: superiority) of records is pure hokum. And it’s true that a lot of contemporary, digitally-recorded music, when put on wax, might as well be on CD or mp3. But to my ears, the sound of analog-recorded songs pressed on vinyl is distinctive. Crowther sums it up. For musicians, he says, “The romantic dream is you record to 2″ tape, you use an analog board, the whole analog set up, you get it mastered for vinyl, you get it cut and then plated, and sent. So we did that. It does offer a better spectrum of frequency and stays consistent.”

The physical parameters of vinyl with regard to album length have also played an important role in albums as an art form, and continue to do so, as Waylon Speed learned when cutting Kin. “It’s favorable to have the louder songs toward the beginning, because the grooves are deeper the louder [the sound] is,” says Crowther. I tell him that even as a lifelong music nerd, that piece of information blows my mind. “Same here,” he admits. “Every day is like a head-scratcher. All I’m doing is—and I know this might sound kinda cheesy—but I’m letting the record teach me what I need to do to it. I’m letting the equipment teach me what it wants to do.”

Justin and his brother, Waylon Speed bassist Noah, grew up in a house with a lot of music. “My parents were Deadheads. Lots of Zappa, King Crimson, Neil Young, and Little Feat.” As for his own tastes, “Punk and hardcore drew me in first. The first vinyl record I remember buying was Earth Crisis, Firestorm. Funny how those two genres seem to be so opposite but align in many ways.”

JD Campbell, the Burlington Record Plant’s first employee.

In my mind, what links together the styles Crowther grew up around and the music he makes today, which is partly influenced by the former, is a certain reverence for the past, the idea that you don’t just abandon something because it’s old, even as you’re evolving and pushing forward. “I believe vinyl has remained because it’s such a part of our history,” Crowther says. “Just like the automobile, it changes, but the principle and functionality remain.”

Within the past year, Waylon Speed even supported rock legends Lynyrd Skynyrd on their Simple Man Cruise around the Caribbean, further exemplifying a willingness to transcend generational bounds. And speaking of generations, just a few months after the tour, Crowther and his wife welcomed their son, Ezhno, into the world. “For a month or so, I was burning the candle at both ends,” he says, but adds that he’s figuring out the balance between the band, the plant, and family.

Before I leave, Crowther introduces me to one of his favorite records to listen to specifically on vinyl, Frank Zappa’s Sleep Dirt. It was the first entirely instrumental Zappa album, one he recorded just to fulfill a contract. It sounds fantastic. “You can tell that was made for fuckin’ vinyl,” Crowther says. For all of the convenience of sharing music digitally, there’s no substitute for getting an in-person recommendation where the five-star rating is entirely in someone’s eyes as they set the needle down.

Justin Crowther – musician and Burlington Record Plant principal
Burlington, Vermont
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Top photo Burlington Record Plant | Photography by Scott Pasfield

The post The Vinyl Revival appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally appeared in our September 2015 print edition. 

Peter McLaughlin launched his music career in Portland, Maine, and never looked back.

McLaughlin’s work as a drummer, composer, sound engineer, producer, and collaborator makes him one of the highest-regarded champions of the city’s music scene. His new project—Pretty Purgatory, which launched late last year—is both an Americana and folk-focused record label and an art collective. The label has released new offerings by Family Planning; Butcher Boy; Lisa/Liza; and McLaughlin’s own band, The Milkman’s Union. The latest is a split 7″ single featuring Maine’s Jacob Augustine backed by the psych-folk band Bad Braids from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Peter McLaughlin at SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine.

“It’s easily my proudest release so far—from music, production value, right down to the art and packaging, designed collaboratively by Jakob Battick, Megan Biscieglia, and Tom Ryan,” McLaughlin says.

What is it about this coastal city, with a modest population of just over 66,000 and a reputation that rests more on chefs than musicians, that attracted the Needham, Massachusetts, native? It turns out that while Portland’s culinary diversity lures tourists, its cultural vibrancy has inspired an influx of savvy, dynamic, and creative music makers.

Upon his 2010 graduation from Bowdoin College, where he studied composition with celebrated American composer Elliott Schwartz, McLaughlin flirted with the idea of moving to a larger metropolitan area before turning his focus to Portland. “I was choosing between Boston, New York, Portland, and Northampton [Massachusetts]. I thought that the Portland music scene was honestly more interesting. It seemed to be a tight-knit community of people creating exciting music, and I wanted to be a part of it.”

On top of running his record label, McLaughlin also programs SPACE Gallery’s musical performances.

McLaughlin immersed himself in the scene by expanding on his college job experience as a soundman and talent booker for Bowdoin’s campus pub. He landed a gig at the busy nonprofit arts-and-music venue SPACE Gallery. Today he is the organization’s music programmer, bringing in such notable acts as Screaming Females, Death Vessel, and Today Is the Day. It’s a job that allows him the flexibility to continue touring as a musician.

“I’ve hit the road hard these last couple months, doing short tours and multi-week runs,” McLaughlin says. “I’ve traveled all over, and my travels always reaffirm what I know about Portland—that it’s a unique place. You get all the niceties of a small town with many of the advantages of a big city.

“It is attractive to young people, artists, developers, and the folks moving into these developments for the same reasons—it’s a thriving, artistic town,” he says. “And all of these people need to be careful that Portland remain just that.”

Peter McLaughlin’s Five Under-the-Radar Musical Paragons of Maine

Tom Kovacevic
Oud-playing Arabic music cognoscente. Weaver of delicate and idiosyncratic songs like no others.

Caethua
Enchanting hymns truly out of the forest. Makes bleakness resplendent like the winters she knows so intimately.

Big Blood
High priests of don’t-call-it-psychfreak-folk-new-weird-whatever-because-it’s-just-transcendent-goddamn-music.

Asa Irons
Exalted dirges, full of light and grit, like the salt of the New England earth. Always sounds like home.

Colby Nathan
Torch bearer and medium of feelings: nervous laughter, wide-eyed awe, honest tears, and subtle serenity.

Peter McLaughlin – owner, Pretty Purgatory
Portland, Maine
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Photography by Cara Slifka

The post Indie Music’s Maine Man appeared first on Take Magazine.

It’s time you heard about Mammal Dap.

Making melodies so catchy and singular that they feel slightly familiar, Mammal Dap’s EP Deep Field, to be launched February 23, brings listeners more of its signature style of super tight, sometimes funky, always optimistic psych fusion featuring furious guitar (Killian Karlsson), expert beat-keeping (Reed Sutherland bass and synth bass, Colin Jalbert drums and samples), and wild keys (Zack Cross). It’s like these melodies, songs, and tiny electronic musings have always existed, but Mammal Dap was there to tap into the ether, and record them for our eternal enjoyment.

(left to right) Zack Cross and Killian Karlsson

These four boys hail from Western Massachusetts, a region known more for its punks and indie rockers than its exclusively instrumental producers. Mammal Dap, however, seems right at home in a music scene constantly creating something new from something not so old. And The Kids, for example, borrow a bit of their sound from early folk rock, then imaginatively tailor their music and lyrical content for a much stranger, queerer future wasteland. In a similar way, Mammal Dap’s recordings call up a time of quartets and trios, devious jazz fusion demigods and early Moog modulators, all made simultaneously contemporary and timeless through obsessively precise arrangements, intriguing samples and, most of all, a lot of fun.

At times, Mammal Dap’s music gets intense and even heavy, layering lots of deep synth, bass, guitar, and wild fills, but always lands on the side of cool and tight. To get a full range of the soaring solos, catchy beats, earworm melodies, sexy guitar, and breakdowns, peep PRMLMND when the Deep Field drops.

Mammal Dap is one of those rare bands whose live sound is nearly as tight as the record—yet the band isn’t afraid to depart a bit. Since each member is literally a master at the machine they pick and slap, Dap’s members can knowingly improvise and reinterpret their illustrious, sparkling melodies. Solos abound during a Mammal Dap performance, but they’re not the typical extended musical rants that often bog down an otherwise energetic genre. Dap’s members offer mini, often momentary, musical departures from the melodies you love; like the twist end of a short story or a small secret you never knew you needed to know.

Deep Field to be released February 24, 2017 | Cover art by Josh Unsderfer at Conifer Studios

Mammal Dap is a psych-fusion band from Northampton, Massachusetts. Follow them on Facebook and Instagram to listen to their upcoming EP Deep Field, and be sure to look out for their forthcoming New England tour. 

All photos by Coley Krystyna

All video produced for Take Magazine by V. A. Karsaliakos

The post Into the Deep Field with Mammal Dap appeared first on Take Magazine.