Star Parks (Modern Outsider) • Mike Adams at His Honest Weight (Joyful Noise) • Chris Porterfield of Field Report
Sat 02/22/20
9:00PM
18+
music
$8 ADV // $10 DOS
Show Lineup
Star Parks
(Austin, TX)
Genre: Indie Rock
New album out Feb 14th of Modern Outsider Records
Since the release of their 2016 debut Don’t Dwell the band has grown into a 7 piece mini-orchestra, a far throw from its beginnings as a solo act of the group’s principle songwriter, Andy Bianculli. Touring France and Ireland as a solo artist in early 2016, Bianculli caught the attention of Dublin based label, Paper Trail Records when a mutual friend heard the then unreleased album and passed it along to Jack Rainey and Dan Finnegan at Paper Trail. In April of 2016, the band released their first single Theoretical Girls. A somber ballad of unrequited love and disrupted fates. It was featured prominently on playlists as one of the best indie and undiscovered singles of the year.
In May, the LP Don’t Dwell was released. Bandcamp described the album as “erudite chamber pop that hearkens back to the elegant and experimental production of the 1960s, swinging from melancholia to playfulness”. Star Parks, now a four piece with Keith Lough on drums, Ben Burdick on bass and Nathaniel Klugman on keyboards, embarked on a tour of France, Ireland and the United Kingdom in support. The group would later add trumpet player, Derek Phelps and trombonist Wayne Myers later that year. In July 2017 the group released a new song, this time with producer and engineer Danny Reisch (Shearwater, Other Lives). They released The Past is Like a Foreign Country and started work on what would become their follow up LP.
Their sophomore album The New Sounds of Late Capitalism was completed in June of 2019. Recorded again with Reisch, now located in Lockhart, Texas, it is a record about alienation, dissatisfaction and postmodernism. “I found an old Concord reel to reel in my parent’s attic in New York and when I played the tape it was my father as a 12 year old boy recording the The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show off the television” explains Bianculli. “There are so many layers to that discovery that affected me and made me contemplate my place in time, my family, America, culture and music.” “To me it was like discovering the spark that gave man fire, in that it is a first hand account of a moment that propelled me and the whole world in a different direction.” “I knew I wanted to write about moments like that, that had promise but inevitably lead to disappointment.” Reisch played a pivotal role in helping the band shape the sound of the new album, which at its heart was an attempt to reproduce a time where studios could employ dozens of musicians and keep orchestras on hand. Without such resources, the band developed what they called “Burt Bacharach on a budget”. The band cites exotica legends Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman as major influences as well as Ethiopian organist Hailu Mergia, Van Dyke Parks, Kevin Ayers and Alice Coltrane. The New Sounds Of Late Capitalism is due for release in February 2020 by Modern Outsider Records.
Mike Adams
(Bloomington, IN)
Genre: Indie Rock
Joyful Noise Recordings
Musician, writer, TV host, parent, humorist, friend, nimble agitator, these are all adjectives that describe Mike Adams, the man. But, in another realm, he’s a complex mixture of Star-stuff, somehow equally at home whether he’s at home, or performing for a captivated drooling audience.
For the most part, these songs are written and recorded by Mike, alone, in his room before they’re handed off to friend and trusted confidant, Adam Jessup, for further production and polishing-off. I suppose Mike sees the arranging and writing process as an escape fantasy into his own mind where he’s safe and in control. Of course, he’s wrong about that. What he’s really doing is flipping himself inside out; internalizing his experience and exposing his veiled vulnerability in a grotesque public evolutionary process for the whole world to see. Obviously. But, he’s a sensitive guy, so if you don’t tell him, neither will we.
Field Report
(Milwaukee, WI)
Genre: Indie Rock
Fellesskap Records is pleased to present the music video for Field Report’s newest single “Puget Sound.” It’s a video that harkens back to the days of homemade movies, shot by relatives who are so consumed by the thrill of new technology that they don’t care what they film, but end up capturing precious capsules of time. For a song and narrative based around feelings of displacement, isolation, and paranoia, being set to images of its namesake is only appropriate. With footage captured by friend, Noah Gundersen, Christopher Porterfield has put his handwritten lyrics over the unmistakable water and landscape to give us a stark, yet hypnotic experience.