Artists' Television Access

Author: Fara

  • Noise Pop presents: Tom Zé: Astronauta Libertado (SF PREMIERE)

    “..makes you feel like you’re in a tiny apartment twenty stories above a city of open sewers, big churches, and satellite dishes, and this scrawny guy with eyes like M&Ms is playing these oddball pop songs that make you want to laugh and cry.”-Rolling Stone

    This SF Premiere of the award winning documentary on dynamic pioneering Brazilian musician Tom Zé screens now as a perfect compliment to the just released Luaka Bop box set Studies of Tom Zé: Explaining Things So I Can Confuse You. A long overdue box set compiled by David Byrne’s Luaka Bop who fell in love with Zé”s music in the mid ‘80s thankfully bringing him to a deserved broader audience. There’s no mistaking why the likes of Tortoise have embraced and toured with Zé, why The Fader states “Tom Zé has taken brilliantly bizarre, creative and intellectual routes to making music that is utterly joyous, listenable and often danceable.” And why the international media and fans alike have such high praise. Zé remains as exciting, provocative, intriguing, challenging and as immensely enjoyable as when he first came to the fore with his entrancing mixes of Brazil’s musical treasures.

    Astronauta Libertado gets us up close to this artist throughout his long labour of unceasing experimentation, in which he has had the unflinching courage to break with established moulds always refusing what is considered “correct” and commercial. His reflections, coupled with glimpses of his many appearances in São Paulo and Europe, opinions of key figures of Brazilian music constitute give us a rich portrait of this controversial, surprising and fascinating creator. , TRT: 90 minutes

    “Tom Zé is one of Brazil’s most idiosyncratic performers, a pop inventor who bypasses the ordinary.”-The New York Times
    Tickets:
    http://www.ticketfly.com/purchase/event/25915

    *Trailer:

    http://player.vimeo.com/video/711249

    http://vimeo.com/7112490
    http://vimeo.com/user1238136
    http://vimeo.com>

    Plus:

    “The Forrest” Directed by Lauryn Siegel
    This is the first music video off of Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn’s acclaimed 2009 album (A)Spera. While Mirah’s career spans over a decade and includes
    four praised albums, this is her first live-action music video ever and her second official music video to date.

  • Noise Pop presents: Pool Party

    Photo courtesy of Bao NguyenPool Party is the surprising story of the largest swimming pool in New York City that transformed into the most unique music venue the world has seen. Both an eclectic music showcase and an urban history lesson, this documentary follows the pulse of McCarren Pool as it reflects the state of the neighborhood in which it lives—Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Weaving stories of neighborhood locals, artists, famed politicians, community organizers and musicians we trace the process of gentrification of one of the most vibrant corners in the city through McCarren Pool.

    Featuring music and performances by Aesop Rock, the Beastie Boys, Black Lips, the Breeders, Deerhunter, The Hold Steady, the Liars, Les Savy Fav, Matt and Kim, M.I.A., Sonic Youth, Tall Firs, the Ting Tings, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Yo La Tengo, Pool Party celebrates McCarren Pool as a music venue for the very last time.  director, Beth Aala after the screening (in Person), *TRT: 75 minutes

    Tickets:
    http://www.ticketfly.com/purchase/event/23987

  • Fog Tropes

    A n evening of film-work alongside live experimental sound pieces with:

    Tashi Wada & Madison Brookshire
    En & Paul Clipson
    Radiant Husk & Zach Iannazzi
    Sean McCann
    —-

    Tashi Wada
    “Wada is obsessed by the brain scrambling properties of sustained tones and maximalist microtonal confusion and Alignment – written by Wada and performed on violin by Marc Sabat, best known for his Feldman interpretations – is a massive entry in the modern minimalist canon. Alignment is scored for eight violins in just intonation, cycling through the first 128 pitches of the harmonic series which are transcribed into one octave. It starts out as series of ‘simple’ descending tones before the violins come together in a beautiful organic bloom that just sort of hangs in the air and vibrates, sucking all of the light out of the room and generating a huge brain-fogging cloud of circling tones.” – Volcanic Tongue
    Madison Brookshire
    Madison Brookshire lives in Los Angeles, where he makes films, videos and music. He has shown his work at the New York Film Festival, the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Los Angeles Filmforum, REDCAT and The Hammer Museum. He studied cinema at the California Institute of the Arts and Binghamton University and currently works as an educator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
    En
    “Another sublime drone album from the unshakably good Root Strata camp, En’s The Absent Coast is a real upper tier ambient release. Distinguished by its depth and effortless musicality, this album is one for genre fans to really savour. After the sandblasting noise/tonal onslaught of ‘A Dying Sun/Return To Holyoke’, the album calibrates itself to a stately simmer that comes to life during the quite sublime ‘Honeysuckle Heart’, which combines glassy sustains with crackling, overdriven harp-like string plucks to exquisite effect. Elsewhere, ‘Miramar’ conjures a horizontal bowed soundscape that’s somehow more visceral and emotive than the sum of its parts and the ionosphere-scraping ‘Pratyaya’ paradoxically combines Tim Hecker-style fiery arcs with the kind of effortless, droning sedation that Stars Of The Lid specialise in. Excellent.” – Boomkat
    Paul Clipson
    “The camera style is at once impressionistic in its technique and boldly graphic in its compositions, haunted by familiar visual forms that, loosed from conventional perspective, are revealed to carry unexpected resonances and rhythms. What do we see? A million suns, made multiple by the surface of water and the curve of the camera lens; neon signs; flitting vertical obstructions; telephone wires; vegetation; intimate, handheld disclosures of vast distances; architectural surfaces. As with Joris Ivens’ early shorts, Clipson’s films register the city in its minor variations. Within the frame, a storm of vision emerges of superimpositions, dissolves, rack focus, zooms, and the interlacing of color and black-and-white stocks. It often seems that the objects he films are bringing the camera into focus and not the other way around.” – San Francisco Bay Guardian
    Radiant Husk
    “The solo project of Matt Erickson, who plays saxophone as well as a skittering kitbag of post-electronic doodads. It manifests an interesting approach to tube-blowage with riffling drones extended by both mechanical and meta-mechanical techniques, and a very cool insertion of squeals inspired by Fire Music and industrial stamping machines in equal measure. It’s a release that ‘works’ on a number of levels, all of them decent.” – Byron Coley, The WIRE
    Zach Iannazzi
    “This is one of the most nightmarish films I’ve seen in a good long time and it’s not even a horror movie — unless you’re a fish. Iannazzi has compiled several found films of fish farming, slowed them down considerably and paired the images with a low, droning soundtrack. Fish — I think all the footage is of salmon, but I can’t say for certain — are thrown into lakes so they can populate and be fished down the line. Other female fish are captured and have their eggs squeezed out into buckets so they can be sifted later for what reason I don’t exactly know. It all ends up looking very diabolical, insidious and evil. Watching the film I thought if I saw this and I were a fish, I wouldn’t be able to sleep for a year. But then I thought, do fish even sleep?” – Bad Lit
    Sean McCann
    “If Sean McCann is a new name to your list of weirdo dronesters, you better get hip quick, McCann is one of the most prolific ambient artists of recent years, and has delivered countless offerings of violin based, long-tone beauty on almost every home-spun tape label around. And even though “Chances Are Staying” is McCann’s first attempt at vinyl glory, he’s no newcomer to the soft-drifting world of string-based soundscaping. What really draws us into McCann’s music is his signature, ever-changing kaleidoscopic whirl, sounds and notes constantly shifting and swirling over crumbling layers of noise and grit, never a boring moment in an ocean of crashing color and melodic smear, so propelling yet immersive and entrancing.” – Aquarius Records