The Bowery Presents

The Mercury Lounge upcoming shows

Free Blood
10:00

Preacher & The Knife
9:00
Esque
8:00
Deleted Scenes
7:00

Venue:
The Mercury Lounge
Date:
Sun 12/06
Notes:
21+
Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 7:00 PM
$8
Free Blood
official website
myspace
Free Blood in a concrete room with no windows in the sweltering summer of 2003. The group is based in Brooklyn, New York.

The concept was simple: A soundtrack for parties gone awry.

Music to fuel awkward sexual dalliances, desperate yelled misunderstandings on the dance floor, toilets over-flowing with the night’s collective regurgitation, lonesome midnight ramblings, hair-brained (possibly illegal) parlour games, stereo components fried by heat and moisture, backyard furniture bonfires, power outages, mass hallucination, etc.

The instrumentation was kept to a minimum intentionally (two microphones, bass guitar and mechanical drums) so that the group could fit into any cramped corner, with an easy getaway in case the authorities (or audience, even) took issue with the noise. Free Blood began playing smaller venues and house parties around the Brooklyn and Manhattan boroughs, usually lugging their own PA to the gig so that the ear-splitting volume they were accustomed to in the practice space could be replicated. These performances were designed to leave the audience deaf, dumb and blind…and perhaps with smiles on their faces.

Since their inception they have shared the stage (and floor) with a variety of groups (Melt Banana, Suicide, Jamie Lidell, TV On The Radio), only leaving the State of New York once for a brief four-day tour in Japan. The first three years saw Free Blood as strictly a live phenomenon whose appearances were erratic and ridden with chaos.
Preacher and the Knife
official website
myspace
Preacher and the Knife is a 5-piece ensemble intent on redefining the bounds of modern dance music. “It’s like Professor Murder gone Nick Cave and produced by LCD Soundsystem.” (bidabidi.com) They played their first show, appropriately, on Halloween 2006, and since have been performing with a mind towards evoking the spirits of old, borrowing broadly from American gospel, tribal drumming, and Caribbean island sounds. “A mix of bizzaro psychedelia and minimalist no wave action — all reverb-drenched hollering and cowbells and thumpy drums.” (therichgirlsareweeping.com) Most shows feature appearances by guest musicians; recent additions include taiko drummers, gospel singers, and Dennis Young of Liquid Liquid.

Preacher and the Knife is Daniel Barcelowsky (vocals), Jon Ramos (bass), Fiore Tedesco III (drums), Jordan Hadley (keyboards), and John Reineck (percussion and vocals). “Incantations both holy and profane with a hint of swamp muck humid sweat, I do declare Preacher and the Knife to be a force.” (Realitynoshow.com)
- LAST.FM
Esque
official website
myspace
After trickling to New York one-by-one over the course of a year to escape the self-congratulatory traditionalism of Memphis and its music scene, the members of Esque reconvened and immediately began work on their debut full-length, Tonightmares. Sloughing off most of the more immediately obvious miserabilist 80s influences of their first EP, Everyone's Playing, Tonightmares is a brisk yet menacing, subtly psychedelic work of paranoid art rock of impressive scope, recorded and mixed by ex-Fiery Furnace Toshi Yano, with help from ex-Psychedelic Fur Joe McGinty.

The harbinger for this growth will be Double Blind, which, like everything Esque does, is dark and romantic; a Moroder meets-Simple Minds workout that proves that the best aspects of the EP have not been left behind: Chase Anderson's thundering polyrhythms, Basil Whatley's lock-tite, hooky bass, and Darren O'Brien's cruelly brittle guitar and hypermelodic, impassioned croon. Double Blind is set to be released in late 2009 as a 12" single with remixes from Free Blood, Omega Jarden, Edie Sedwick, and others not on the vinyl (unfortunately, the band had to turn down Egyptian Lover). The rest of Tonightmares will follow in early 2010.

"The rhythm section represented here could easily compete with any other regional act in the genre. Bassist Basil Bayne could give more famous contemporaries, such as Interpol's Carlos D., a run for his major-label money. Following suit, singer Darren O'Brien croons somewhere between the realms of glam and goth, channeling the likes of Davids Bowie and Byrne." -- PerformerMag.com
Deleted Scenes
official website
myspace
Deleted Scenes burst onto the now legendary Olney, Maryland hyphy-pop scene in 1998, after songwriters Dan Scheuerman and Matt Dowling met at a juvenile detention center urinal while visiting incarcerated relatives. Citing Cabaret Voltaire, Sparks, and Misissippi John Hurt among the artists in which they were in no way influenced, the two immediately began sculpting the Deleted Scenes signature sound using mostly shoe horns and limp pillows. Guitarist Chris Scheffey and drummer Brian Hospital soon joined the compulsively apologetic duo to take their nefarious bedroom scuzz into a live setting.

In 2005, Deleted Scenes entered a commodious hellhole in East Baltimore to record the four songs that would make up the "Deleted Scenes" EP. Following the album's release, the band hit the road in Scheffey's father's airbrushed, self-portrait-slathered bread van, playing scores of dates across the US in an attempt to get people to like them.

After having their van covered with faded denim in Gary, Indiana, Deleted Scenes relocated to Washington, D.C where they subsisted exclusively on Ethiopian fir-fir and recorded only raindrops for three months.

It was around this time in 2007 that Deleted Scenes stumbled upon a surrealistic plop of a record called "Sookie Jump" by one "L. Skell" (of The Rude Staircase), and immediately went on a crusade to hunt down the now bald and olfactorily unpleasant recluse. Wearing sneakers, the band drove up to Skell's West Philadelphia dungeon, only to find him in a salvia, nutmeg and EPMD-induced stupor. After haranguing him for 10 straight hours, Skell finally agreed to help in the creation of what would become "Birdseed Shirt".

Following tender sessions with heroic soundsmith J. Robbins, the band holed up in Skell's dark, dank hermitage for 17 months collecting like stamps every last perfumed essence of sound until what resulted was not only a mellifluous, anthemic collage of existential joy and despair, but the best pop record of 2009. Dig!

"Birdseed Shirt", Deleted Scenes first full length record, unclenches your chest and pours sonic Elysian Fields inside, waterboarding your viscera with unspeakably catchy hooks and unbridled, youthful senescence.
--What Delicate Recordings
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