November 9–16, 2000

music

Icepack

by a.d. amorosi

Drenched and drained may be how you felt after Election Day. But Rick Henderson, of Eltro, Emma and beyond, makes the sensation oozily electronic on his Drenched & Drained CD by Wayward Wind (another of his projects). His lo-fi electronics make everything he touches turn somewhat Brian Eno-esque. But Wayward Wind’s Eno-vibe is more Music For Airports, like a bright morning sun stream onto a vampire’s face: warm, weird and deadly. To celebrate its release, Henderson’s having a party, but not your run-of-the-mill record release party. Henderson says to expect "a modern dance multi-media spectacular." On Sat., Nov. 11, at Christ Church, (20 N. American St.) Headlong Dance, New Paradise Lab and Moxie Dance Collective have choreographed, according to Henderson, "3-5 minutes of jumping, running around, falling over" for each of the album’s twelve tracks. The result: A night of entertainment comparable to, but probably much better than, Riverdance or Ice Capades.…

Something to aspire to, experimental electronically speaking, is Gate to Moonbase Alpha’s artist CD compilation project. Moon Base man Aharon Varady is calling it "An Exo-Archaeological Tour for finding unfamiliar forms." Produced by his Philadelphia Ambient Consortium and The Foundation, Varady’s looking for new- and old-school ambient, musique concrete, FAX core, Berlin school space music, drone, instrumental electronic/ psychedelic post-rock and tonally incredible music. What he don’t want is music with obvious function, Yanni-esque post post-romantic rock, classical fusion, lyrical music or anything with diva samples. Send your submissions (on tape, CD, CD-R or CD-MP3) to Gate to Moon Base Alpha CD, c/o Aharon Varady, 512 S. 46th St., Philadelphia, PA 19143.…

Gyro-scope: While Matthew Durrington gets ready to head to a professorship at UCLA, Daniel Thomas has amicably left Gyro Worldwide to flesh out his music career. Thomas is also known as Gravy, a Gil Scott-Heron-esque spoken word/jazz vocal artist. He was backed musically by Need New Body and visually by girlfriend/muralist Rosa Karim at Bar Noir’s most recent Artists’ Den. Thomas is readying a CD assault (January?) backed by The Earmen — a group of musicians fueled by jungle, soul and Latin jams. ’ Til then you may be able to hear him on a soon-to-be-released down-tempo d’n’b 12-inch on Pat Parker’s Cue Records. Thomas did a mix and added some smoove vocal clips for a very Ursula Rucker-ish groove .…

Philly’s arch-evil Tapping The Vein finally got signed to Nuclear Blast.…

Bobby Startup and David Carroll’s spots on VH-1’s Brian Setzer Behind The Music will run Nov. 12.…

Congrats to Pet Shop Boys fan/scribe/DJ Sam "Pumpkinhead" Wood who eloped with Lisa Trudel, making her Mrs. Pumpkinhead.…

While the newly invigorated Festival of World Cinema gets much benefit from the TLA Video takeover (April 26 - May 5 2001), West Philly’s Lost Film Collective will invade 4040 Locust Nov. 25 and 26 with plenty of cut-and-pasted hot video of the melee that was the RNC riots/activist activity. Look for live wrestling performances by Boston’s Kaiju Big Battel and Big Tea Party’s Philly-shot RNC documentary.…

Surprise Shit: Original gangsta Schoolly D will officially drop his Funk N’ Pussy (PSK/ Chord/ Rykodisc) bomb on y’all Nov. 16 at Shampoo (where Moby showed up following his Electric Factory show). Schoolly may also pop up during The Roots’ OkayPlayer jam at Electric Factory Nov. 24. Watch for details.…

PhillySoulCollective’s Carl Michaels and Willyum (of 611, the store and the label) are starting Society Hill Records — a deep house offshoot label — from their home. Already set for release are the The Rurals’ "Window Pain" (remixed by Pete Moss) and the abstract "Pushin’ Harder" from Philly house music makers EDK (Julian Grefe and Scott "Sloppy" Weiss) with a remix by the Freaks from Classic Records UK. "After some thought, we decided that it might be wise to separate the new label from 611 Records since that focuses on more bangin’ techno," explains Michaels.…

The Last Emperor, Philly hip-hop demigod, once on long hold on Dr. Dre’s Aftermath imprint, may have completed his debut CD for Interscope. But rumor has it they ain’t releasing it, even though it’s got mixes by Prince Paul, DJ Muggs and Diamond D. Even though its got appearances from Black Thought, KRS-One and Killah Priest. In fact, not only is Interscope supposedly not releasing the joint, they’re purportedly keeping it and won’t give it back. We don’t know why yet. Now, Last Emperor may be signing to Rawkus, home of like-minded forces Mos Def and Talib Kweli. But the Emp would have to start at square one.…

Ad of the week: Branko’s e-vision postcard with Lee Marvin for his Nov. 11 gig at Upstage. Shoot ’em where they stand.