 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website |
 |
| • website |
 |
| • website • view ad • buy tickets |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website • view ad • buy tickets |
 |
| • website • view ad • buy tickets |
 |
| • website • view ad • buy tickets |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website |
 |
| • website • view ad • buy tickets |
 |
| • website • view ad • buy tickets |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website • view ad • buy tickets |
 |
| • website • view ad • buy tickets |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website • view ad |
 |
| • website |
 |
| • website • view ad |
Share
Harlem Improv Troupe Gets Almost Highfalutin After a Dozen Years
Brandon Stosuy
Tuesday, January 17th 2006
-
photo: Fanatic Promotion
Freedom-jazz meets psych-scat
Details:
Qvaris
5RC
A few weeks ago, eating crappy apples backstage at NYU after Magik Markers' autumn harvest meant catching the tail end of the No-Neck Blues Band's Qvaris release party. Arriving at the Knitting Factory during a heavily percussive session was fine: Live, the Harlem crew does that tribal séancing best. On record, though, the more atrophied the better. Qvaris (linked to the mirrored Robert Smithson–style art that percussionist Dave Nuss told me was the "Qvaris Object at Dawn") offers a melancholic improvisational big top, blending Sunburned Hand of the Man freedom-jazz with Wooden Wand psych-scat. A lengthy bout of chance percussion detracts from the magic curios, but the electro-sprinkled four-part "Qvaris" suite transmigrates drums, bells, and nobs into fetching ragbag permafrost. Armed with a creepy multidimensional sequined-eggplant video for "The Black Pope," a promotional tour, and a full-on publicity push, Qvaris is the crew's most highfalutin release of 12-plus years. Twits may gripe at the loss of the shadowy figures of Forced Exposures past who spray-painted vinyl-only releases and eschewed traditional club gigs, but the seminal posse still records at the communal Hint House, the carnival props are weirdo bacchanalian, and the cosmic references (here to Lovecraft, Dunsany, Yeats, etc.) remain enjoyably oblique. Oh, and the one guy's beard has gotten really long.
Recent Articles
More by Brandon Stosuy
Sweet Nothing
A new bio and a Dumb and Dumber avant la lettre
TV Eyes
Shy, surrealist pop pours forth from the Human TV
Receivers
Baroque Brooklynites Telepathe try to read your mind
Pitted Out
Painting the Whitehouse blank amid the grind and noise
Second Hand Dose
Hand-me-down rock-qua-rock bands flatter via imitation
Site Search «
Most Popular
-
The Strangest Landlord-Tenant Relationship In Town? Stacked up in cubicles for decades, immigrants living in a Bowery tenement may have a very unusual situation.
-
The Pet-Death Business All dogs go to heaven. Yours will probably get there in an urn.
- We've Bailed out the Banks. When Do We Go After the Crooks Behind our Financial Collapse?
- On Michael Jackson's Mercifully Goofy, Cheerful This Is It
-
The Secret Life of Girls On the latest blog-rock sensation's improbable, somewhat verifiable backstory
| buy, sell, trade 10,398 | musician 3,579 |
| rentals 13,382 | jobs 2,100 |
| adult entertainment 35,447 | |
| classifieds | backpage.com | Post ads for free! | |
|---|---|