Former La Casan Andrew Heathwaite still has blog edit privileges. Therefore, hi!
And also, he just made an album in the month of February! What excitement!
There are some first steps here into a new style, exploring tuning, time and form in an electronic-pop medium. Free to stream and download online:
Maybe good music to listen to while perusing the La Casa chicken picture archives?
As many of you know, Jacob and Andrew have a project going at the IMC called Oddmusic Urbana-Champaign:
Oddmusic U-C is building a library of unusual and usual musical instruments at the UC-IMC and facilitates events to connect experimental composition, microtonality, & instrument-building with non-sectarian radical social change. We insist upon “music” as a type of “odd,” desirable when it avoids the same old society telling itself what it already knows.
Last month, we had a grand(e) opening, and this month an opportunity has come up to relocate our collection to a brand new space that’s cheaper, more commodious, brighter, and by at least one guest’s account, friendlier! Last Sunday, with help from our friends Mary Ann(e), Don, Snow Leopard, and Mary Margaret, we successfully moved into our great new space. We’re continuing to host office hours every Sunday evening from 7pm to 9:30, so feel free to come by this weekend and see what we’re about. We’re now in the basement of the Independent Media Center (at Elm and Broadway in Urbana), room 21A, just down the hall from the Bike Project.
For more, see our blog and (or) sign up to be on the Oddmusic listserv.
Last Wednesday, May 13, we put on House Concert VII (seventh in “recent memory”), the final act of which was all of us La Casans covering the Talking Heads, This Must Be The Place. Heather got the whole thing on her point-and-shoot; thanks Heather!
More videos from Heather’s youtube:
A New Inspired Poem, by Snow Leopard.
This is the Title of the Story, read by Michael Phelps.
Hoprock, by Jacob Barton.
5 songs of fish (but in this instance, four), by Nodal Nim.
On Friday I left lovely Urbana for a two-week tour of the Midwest, in conjunction with elizaBeth Simpson and the Change of State Performance Project. I hope to post occasional updates on this fortnight of adventure. I also hope Urbana folks can come on April 21 or 23, when we hit Urbana, and that you can invite whoever friends near Iowa and Chicago and Milwaukee are arty enough to handle our art art art.
The theme of the tour is WATER; Qilo and Andrea perform a play about water & its politics, Beth has created a seaside multimedia romp, and I play an udderbot solo piece called hoprock. The udderbot is a musical instrument we’ve invented which must be filled with water to be played; check out the blog ‘n’ wiki when curious.
Stop One was Minneapolis. Staying in a house with hairless cats, who are more like giraffe-bats, eating ginger snaps, studying maps. A hurried visit with Philip Blackburn, a soft-spoken and highly-accomplished sonical practitioner who’s planning to plant a circle of 52 different varieties of apple tree in his backyard.
Then we had a show this afternoon, and a good audience came, despite the inclement Easter.
That’s all for now. Maybe one of these other folks will lend me their camera for further illustration…
Hold down the fort!
The JAR band opened a show at the Independent Media Center yesterday.
My poor excuse for a camera was there to insufficiently document the moment.
Last Friday, March 6, La Casa (under the MCery of friend & former resident Anna) hosted Concerturtle (!) – an evening of performances of (mostly) new experimental works. Three residents (including your humble narrator) participated in music-making. We packed our living room with delightful human beings, kept our guests in grape juice & popcorn, & followed the festivities with a talk-back session & a bonfire in our garden. I (for one) thought it went swimmingly.
The “Program”:
Hi there,
Do you remember this assignment? Here are two versions:
“Write a statement that you want to be true.”
“Write a statement that is unfortunately false in current society.”I want this assignment to linger in the air for a while. I find that I’m never quite done with it. Dr. Parenti recommends exercising your “desiring muscles” frequently enough that they at least don’t atrophy.
So, I’m starting a weekly bulletin: This Week in Desire Statements. Send false statements and related artworks & project links to unfortunately DOT… false AAT… gmail DOT… com, and every Friday (I hope) I’ll put
together something out of it.Thanks,
Jacob Barton
More about this piece here.
Rigadoo plays some hot bluegrass & Celtic music with traditional instruments & a set of mesmerizing “chakra bowls”; the Duke of Uke plays funky tunes on ukulele (accompanied, in this instance, by electric bass, tuba, & backup singin’); Snow Leopard arranged Bagatelle No. 1 (by whom?) for keyboard & udderbot; elizaBeth shared a draft of a story for children pointing to the absurdities of capitalism with talking rodents!
We six La Casans have inherited a tradition of house concerts – a tradition I happen to adore. I can think of no better venue for a show than a good friend’s living room!
UPDATE: some photos from the event,
