June 17, 2010 – CASA – 9PM – DM Stith + Silje Nes + Inlets
DM STITH
David Stith comes from a musical family: his father is a college wind ensemble director and former church choir director; his grandfather is professor emeritus in the music department at Cornell University; his mother is a pianist; his sisters sing opera, play piano, tap dance, play timpani and are excellent soft ball players. David Stith grew up dreading the family ensemble’s appearances in church, preferring instead to draw mazes on the blank sides of church bulletins during services. In fifth grade, a harrowing performance of Phantom of the Opera at a school assembly (accompanied by his mother on piano) nearly turned him off to music for good. He started a noise band in high school, called Starchild (or Starchildren, or The Pool –they never did quite decide); but they preferred painting their guitars over playing them. David wrote a lot of bad poetry during this time.
In college, David attempted writing a novel and a children’s book, illustrating his work with original woodcut prints. His pursuit of writing and illustration brought him from Rochester to Brooklyn, where he took up work as a graphic designer. While in Brooklyn, David befriended Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond), and soon after began facilitating, in small technical ways, the recording of her album Bring Me The Workhorse. This, in turn, spurred David to begin writing and recording songs of his own. It was a casual, private affair. He spent countless days stored away in his bedroom, sketching folk songs with epic electronic gestures, a rekindling of passions for his first familial love: music.
David completed his first catalog of songs for an album called Ichabod and Apple, written and recorded in the first month of his song-writing experiments. His first full length album is Heavy Ghost, on Asthmatic Kitty Records.
It was no grand injunction that encouraged David to return to music. He writes songs for the same reasons he enjoys a good conversation: it’s just natural. His songs come out of a knock-about life, pressed by the urge to overcome insecurities, to probe questions, to revisit dreams and visions.
http://asthmatickitty.com/dm-stith
SILJE NES
We first became aware of Norwegian multi-instrumentalist / singer / songwriter Silje Nes through a unique and charming demo she sent us in early 2006. Silje grew up on a tiny town called Leikanger, in Sognefjord, the largest fjord in Norway. In 2000, she moved to the rainy town of Bergen – where she still lives – to study philosophy and then visual communication. Silje has previously played in an indie pop band, and other highlights from a diverse musical background include playing timpani in an orchestra and bass drum in a marching band.
Starting making her own music around 2001, Silje began by recording on 4-track demo software through a tiny inbuilt microphone on her laptop. Though she’d previously studied classical piano, when she started recording, she did so with guitars and instruments she had no previous experience of playing. In this she was simply guided by the sounds she loved, and the excitement of discovering new instruments and sounds without learned conventions.
Starting out by working purely instrumentally, Silje made use of whatever equipment she could get hold of – guitars and an old synth, a cello, a drum kit, a laptop, as well as loop pedals to build layers of her own playing. Little by little she also found ways of including her own voice in the mix, both as texture and song, and her music has organically evolved from there. Although she made a successful live debut outside of Norway with a set at FatCat’s ‘Open Circuit’ festival in Belgium in early 2007, during this period Silje had only played her songs for very few people locally.
Her first album for FatCat, the quirky, adventurous ‘Ames Room’, was released in December 2007. Whilst creating a sound-world entirely her own, the record shows a similar single-mindedness and (autodidactic) adventurousness to fellow peers like Tujiko Noriko, Islaja, Lau Nau, Eglantine Gouzy, Foehn, or Leila Arab, also sharing something of the homespun, sprawling beauty of the likes of The Pastels, Pram, or Crescent. Beautifully pieced together, tracks unfurl like a series of intricate constructions, or like some kind of strange blown-up world of insects or curious creatures – the whole teeming with life and a great sense of fun.
A digital-only EP, ‘Yellow’ followed in March 2008, featuring three exclusive, previously unreleased tracks, all created in the same period as the album. Silje then toured the UK and Ireland in May and played dates in Norway and Berlin over the summer.
Silje Nes is currently in the studio recording a new album which will be out in 2010.
http://www.myspace.com/siljenes
http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat/artistInfo.php?id=122
INLETS
A worrier, childhood choir member, and unfocused student of many instruments, Sebastian Krueger marries the darker ornaments of baroque pop with lo-fi intimacy. Far from his Wisconsin roots and perfunctory piano lessons, he works out of a small Brooklyn apartment as Inlets, incubating songs over the course of months and creating short, dusty suites.
Thanksgiving of 2006 brought the free online release of the Vestibule EP, an eight-song collection that won round praise from music blogs including Stereogum, Gorilla vs Bear, Said The Gramophone, and Le Blogotheque. Framed by eclectic layers of clustered woodwinds, brass, and percussive guitars, the record captured a personal and raw enterprise.
Rather than promote the new project, Krueger dug in and committed to the slow process of writing an ambitious collection of new songs. Now, Inter Arbiter picks up where Vestibule left off, but the scope is wider and the hues are sharper. Krueger has honed his arranging abilities, creating elegant high drama from bursts of strings and discord from jangly cheap guitars.
Inter Arbiter is due April 20th via Two Syllable Records.
http://www.inletsmusic.com/index2.php
http://www.myspace.com/inlets
