Latest Posts

Tonight: Proxemia

July 16, 2015

Sound is as malleable as silly putty. Bend it, twist it, or hit it, audio frequencies have the superpower to make you shake that ass or run screaming for your hanky. The setting is Dreamland. The theme evokes the kind of ambient, experimental content that the venue has become so beloved for amongst those that appreciate the avant-garde. This particular exposition takes full advantage of the spatial environment, and how sound reacts within it. Bouncing and reverberating off walls, straight into your inner ear. Proxemia is the brainchild of multimedia artist Jose Rivera. Taking full advantage of his background in architecture and music, he composes layered soundscapes by way of samples and field recordings. Be transported away to places not of this earthly realm, but inherently grounded within it. The environments that only exist in the concentrated thought patterns of Rivera and his utilities. Rivera also recorded a song with[...]

Silo Sessions

June 19, 2015

Today is going to be a busy Saturday. If you’re looking to get the most out of your all-access Herd Fest bracelet, your itinerary will take you to Record Theatre in the afternoon, Black Dots in the evening, and the Buffalo bustle of Allen Street to cap off your fat schedule at a number of Allen’s finest watering holes. And if you tough it out and stay up and at ‘em for the final show of the night, you’ll find yourself at Nietzsche’s for the stacked, jacked and packed Silo Sessions showcase. Thanks to weekly videos of Silo Sessions—one of the local music scene’s newest and most unique upstarts—the cavernous natural reverb of Buffalo’s old grain silos has proven to be a valuable sonic entity in one of the city’s coolest new music spots. Since its inception last year, Silo Sessions has recorded over thirty musical performances in the Silos,[...]

Tonight: Parlor Trix #3

May 29, 2015

Buzzing Purchase, NY pop act, Adult Mom, will be one of the highlights of tonight’s latest installment of Steak & Cake’s Parlor Trix series at the label’s home base venue of Curly’s (note: this is not the Lackawanna restaurant). The group’s latest single,”Survival,” has been getting some serious burn over at Pitchfork. I would have compared the act to Rilo Kiley if the P4K crew didn’t meet me to it first. Rounding out tonight’s bill will be Alex Berkley, whose most recent release, Shuffled, premiered as part of Sugar City’s annual Fun-a-Day art installment this past March, Helen, the haunting folk project of Bourbon and Coffee’s Andrew Biggie, and the extremely unknown act/musician Thelma. Seriously, I found nothing on them. $5 is all it will cost to figure out who Thelma is, in addition to catch an on-the-rise touring act in Adult Mom, and two of the city’s finest songwriters[...]

Tonight: Filmstrip

October 15, 2014

Cleveland’s Filmstrip is an interesting band to listen to because they sound like guys who could explode into cathartic-but-too-obvious fuzz at any moment, but who choose not to. It’s reductive to call a band “mature” just because they aren’t ear-splittingly loud, so let’s just call them patient. Besides, “mature” indicates at best that they’ve totally figured themselves out, and at worst that they’re past their prime, and none of that is true. Their three most recent singles showcase the band tinkering with a few sounds: slower, melodic indie rock on “Stuck on Explode,” something like Neil Young & Crazy Horse on “Up on the Promenade,” and countrified punk a la The Men on “Waiting on a Train.” Hard to say where they’re headed, exactly, but I think the maturation is ongoing and that the best is yet to come. So check ’em out tonight at Nietzsche’s with local psychedelic doomsurfers[...]

Tonight: Quarterbacks

July 13, 2014

There’s a ton of great bands that call New Paltz home, and Quarterbacks is one of ’em. And they’ll be coming to visit us at the Hive today as an 11th hour addition to their tour, along with fellow New Paltzers Fraternal Twin. These last minute shows scare the hell outta me, because how can you be sure that people will even know that they should go? And Quarterbacks is certainly worth catching. Can’t help but compare Quarterbacks to Frankie Cosmos, maybe I’m a hack. But, like Frankie, Quarterbacks on the record is usually a single person (here, Dean Engle) singing poignant lo-fi folk tunes in an observational style that kinda make you wanna smile as you cry a single tear. And, like Frankie, Quarterbacks live is a different beast: Engle is joined by pounding, driving rhythm section and the songs take on new life (at least, if this Shea[...]