SUNDAY, JUNE 9th 2019
8PM


RUSSIAN TSARLAG

SYKO FRIEND
MELANIE VELARDE
DAN TALBOT


HANDBAG FACTORY


RUSSIAN TSARLAG (Providence – Wasp Video Roadhouse)

On the rare occasions that the sub-underground bubbles up for us to whiff, we must. And it’s thusly imperative to breathe in the laconic lo-fi melodics and story-tell of Russian Tsarlag in real life when the opportunity arises. Russian Tsarlag is the long-running song and sound outlet of Providence-based artist Carlos Gonzalez. On recordings and in performance, he channels forth a slow, strange, and singular otherworld of dejection that is strangely catchy, at the pace of a molasses flow. Tsarlag had a good run on Not Not Fun and then turned to self-issuing cassettes, still wrapped in his own esoteric collage.  A couple years back some key selections from these recent rare editions were thankfully culled into Gel Stations Past, released by the House Rules label. Gonzales not surprisingly is also a lifer in other realms of autonomous expressions: graphic novelizing and and ultra-DIY VHS film-making. Come for the slowest head nod and the slowest burn.


SKYO FRIEND (Los Angeles - Dove Cove)

Whether whispered or howled, her voice swims in a sea of drenched guitar. An electric folk music that sometimes seems of another time, until it creeps up on you that that time is now. And indeed, the music of Syko Friend – the solo project of Los Angeles based artist, musician, poet, and publisher Sophie Weil – riffs on intimacy and immediacy, letting flow a loose vibe best caught in the convivial and direct realm of a live set – whether “in the field” across the nation on the DIY tour circuit, or – perhaps more conveniently – at one of her frequent gigs in our considerable town.


MELANIE VELARDE (Berlin – Rvng Intl.)

This Sunday night salon will also – astonishingly – be the Los Angeles debut of Berlin-based sonic dream maker and sound-archivist Melanie Velarde. Her live performances – and recent LP on RVNG Intl – weave together her own electronic and abstract imaginary landscapes with the sounds of landscapes that are very real. Fodder for the latter she draws from her own catalog of field recordings of extreme locales, a practice she has long made under the name TEMPORARY ARCHIVES.


DAN TALBOT

Tourmate of Tslarlag, Providence’s Dan Talbot also carries that towns intrinsic freakness with excursions of frenetic folk or automatic poetry, wrapped in humor and challenge. Working in the idiom of ‘solo rock music’ his approach oft aligns with the stark economic arrangements of Reed, Thompson, and Harris.


Selector for the night is DJ HAUNTED FOSTEX aka Noah Anthony of Profligate.


Collage by Carlos Gonzalez