Seems the previous mail-out mysteriously vanished without reaching
its recipients, sorry about that, hope it works better this time...
We've got a couple of gigs worth attending this week, both are at
Henry's Cellar Bar, 8 Morrison Street, Edinburgh.

Monday 15th May (tonight), 7pm:
VOLCANO! + THE LEG + REJECTED BY HANNAH
vocano! are a young noise-rock band from Chicago recently signed to
the Leaf label. See more info below.
The Leg feature ex-members of Desc and can be found here:
http://www.myspace.com/ihatetheleg

Tuesday 16th May (tomorrow), 7.30pm
THE HUB + MICAH BLUE SMALDONE + JACOB FLYNCH
The Hub are a New York based drums / bass / sax jazz-metal trio who
are friends and touring partners of Zu and Lightning Bolt amongst
others. More info can be found below...
Micah Blue Smaldone is a US alt.country singer / songwriter on
Cerberus Shoal's label North East Indie. More info below.
Jacob Flynch have been described as "Rage Against the Machine being
sodomized by Captain Beefheart".

Each gig is £6 entry, but £5 only for mailing-list members and their
friends, or £8 for both gigs. Bargain!

About VOLCANO!
The Leaf Label has a long history of releasing adventurous, original
and gifted artists from around the world, but for the first time in
our history, they have found a rock band fit for inclusion.
*/Beautiful Seizure/* is the debut album from the young Chicago trio
*volcano!*, and it's an intense, exhilarating and immensely rewarding
ride.

volcano! are creatively white-hot and ferociously innovative. What
may at first sound chaotic and unplanned reveals itself on repeated
listening as meticulously structured: rhythms gather, flicker,
melt(down) and emerge as something different; splenetic episodes give
way to passages of hymnal calm which in turn are shattered as
language breaks down into strobe-like stuttering and is tugged back
into line by *Sam Scranton's* insistent drumming; silvery shards of
controlled static ride high above everything. Melodies are stretched
to and beyond breaking point, *Aaron With*'s guitar shifts between a
ragged, feverish dissonance and bright spaciousness (`La Lluvia' is
even lush…). There are no boundaries and no indulgences, nothing here
that's hackneyed or extraneous.

/Beautiful Seizure /is driven by a relentless exploratory
intelligence, but it would be a mistake to consider volcano!'s music
as purely cerebral. The lyrics would be fascinating on their own:
anxious, humorous, angry and longing, made even more so by Aaron's
sinewy delivery that recalls Black Francis' most ribald moments and
Thom Yorke's most commanding – sometimes violent, often vulnerable.

Comparisons could be made with the fervent dynamism of Deerhoof or
Black Dice, and there's an inquisitiveness in bass/electronics man
*Mark Cartwright*'s real-life samples, but it's their stunning live
show marks volcano! out as a unique band carving their own auspicious
path.

About THE HUB:
Bass / drums / sax trio formed in Brooklyn in 1998.
"Manically exhilarating, gripping in its precision and energy, best
described as free jazz meets death metal inside the blades of a
combine harvester"
- John Fordham, The Guardian, UK

The Hub at the Vortex, London:
"Wherever the Hub comes from, it isn't the Charlie Parker school of
jazz. If this Brooklyn power trio hasan obvious guiding spirit, it is
probably John Zorn -plus a lot of general mind-jangling listening to
subterranean thrash-metal bands.

A look at the band's European gig-list indicates that they could be
on the road about as much as Pat Metheny, albeit visiting rather
tattier venues, attended by much younger audiences who aren't fazed
by the lack of regular tunes. At the London stop of that tour, the
trio were maniacally exhilarating. They look like an American college
rock band (the drummer came on in a singlet, shorts and a headband),
but that is where all links to the familiar break down. Their music
is loud, fast, indifferent to traditional build-ups and resolutions,
often refers to jazz but in a broad-brush (or hurled bucketful)
manner rather than in studied detail, and is as exciting in its
twitchy energy as it is often unlovely in its textures and tone.

The band's sound unceremoniously switches between tautly organised
ensemble music and howling abstractions. This performance took in a
jigging, squirty, Ornette Coleman-like alto sax theme from Dan Magay
over Sean Noonan's thrashing drums, with intervals for Noonan's
furious nickety-nacketing on the woodwork of the kit. The remarkable
electric bassist Tim Dahl, meanwhile, swapped his fast, rubbery,
stream-of-sound improvising for eruptions of raw noise.

The trio's skillfulness in sustaining and varying a regular groove is
matched by a periodic indifference to the usual rules of steady
tempo. A bass figure faintly reminiscent of an old Headhunters lick
pulled the saxophonist into a lurchingly jazzier manner,while
Noonan's drum pulse remorselessly changed tempo beneath. But the trio
can also be conventional, as with an unexpectedly gentle visit to
samba, Magay's sax carrying the tune in high, breathy exhalations.
Sporadically, Magay also accompanied his fierce alto sound with
harmony-generating electronics, while Dahl's fast, jazzy bass-walk
under a free-sax blast of sound was gripping in its precision and
energy. A real breath of fresh air, even if it hits your eardrums at
dangerous velocities."
John Fordham, The Guardian

About MICAH BLUE SMALDONE (Portland, Maine, US)
"Despite the timeless qualities of Smaldone's music, it's the
timeliness of Hither and Thither's songs that shines through with
repeated listening. If ever a collection of songs captured the
palpable sense of unease felt in these days of terror levels and
loved ones fighting a needless war, it is Hither and Thither." - Tom
Flynn - The Bollard (Portland, ME)

"His rather mannered singing seems patterned after 1920s jazz
vocalists, minstrels, and songsters like Jimmie Rodgers. It's
startlingly old-fashioned and would be more jarring if Smaldone
didn't pull it off with such grace and depth of feeling." - Ian Zack
Acoustic Guitar Magazine

"Micah Smaldone should, by the sound of it, be dead. Seemingly held
over from the era of vaudeville and ragtime, Some Sweet Day does what
most albums can't: It touches on the strength of a small, nasal voice
and finely picked guitar. When he yodels his Dustbowl-beggar blues
about outlaws, in-laws and old-fashioned hurtin', you can't help but
wonder where all the good music has gone." - Magnet Magazine