Cosmic Panspermia
Saturn Hexagon
Resisting death culture
Subverting ego
The living sounds of everyday
Anselm Kiefer
Flying over & driving through the lonely states.
Ralph Eugene Meatyard
Jorge Borges
Objects of the ordinary, acoustic instruments, magical microchips, old synths, new synths, no synth, recording in the field, toys, voice, my kids, performing with other folk
Failing
Achieving
Alice Coltrane
and much more
Pop Matters
Magicicada, Everyone Is Everyone (Public Guilt)
In this entrancing, beautifully packaged album of trance-inducing sound collages, Atlanta musician Christopher White has combined various organic sounds such as iron balls rolling on wooden floors, oven doors, and buses with more conventional musical instruments, ironically creating something decidedly otherworldly. Strange, unsettling, but oddly optimistic, it's the musical equivalent of a Bruce Conner sculpture.
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MARC WEIDENBAUM Reviewed for disquiet.com/ E/I magazine
MAGICICADA
Everyone Is Everyone
Public Guilt
The cicada comes up often in discussion of electronic music. Theres
something unmistakably cicada-like in a particular realm of sonic
experimentation, when samples or just pure synthesis are revved up to a
hardy range of cycles, when the sounds reach a fever pitch. Despite
having adopted the insect as his namesake, Christopher White, aka
Magicicada, is generally more interested in a kind of homespun
methodology that rarely approaches the level of activity required to
simulate bugsound, except as a distant backdrop to the goings-on. No,
instead on Everyone Is Everyone we get gently rolling sweeps of domestic
tinkering, with everything from household goods to toys to guitar (and
snoring, maybe?) directed into generally gentle tapestries that are the
audio equivalent to scrapbooks. Oven door percussion? Check.
Resonating metal pieces? Check. An alternate title might have been
Everything Is an Instrument. Not everything is tranquil. For the
Father suggests some serious parental issues, with dark drones, vibrant
little noises and rattles that suggest bad memories. And Peach Is Pink
is initially so over-clocked it could give Kid 606 a run for his laptop,
though it quickly mellows into a raga of quotidian sound cues. Even when
the echo is set on heavy (Wellbelow) and the samples are looping
interminably (Cause), you can still smell good cooking from the
kitchen and feel shag carpet under your feet. MARC WEIDENBAUM
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Indie Workshop
reviewed by Grant Capes
http://www.indieworkshop.com/music.php?id=2363
You get these albums sometimes, and it is like reaching into a black plastic garbage bag without looking. You might reach in and pull out a cute puppy, or a hundred dollar bill. Or you might pull out twelve rusty steak knives, blade first or a huge pile of that same puppy's steaming feces. Thankfully, with Magicicada's newest concoction, I have pulled out a strange but magical machine that seems to creak away on splintered sprocket wheels and projects the dreams of long dead artists onto a nearby wall. Everyone is Everyone is a dense and varied composition of sounds, some juxtaposed to mystify and others melded together seamlessly.
Atlanta mastermind and chief musician, Christopher White, seems to pull these random and disparate sounds from quite a variety of sources, both in the digital and analog world, both from here and now and from before (by way of tape samples and sampling conspirators, Destructo Swarmbots). White makes nine considerable pieces of music, almost filling the limits of a mere compact disc, but never resorts to filler pieces or empty space, unless it is called for in the compilation.
It is hard to imagine this music coming from Atlanta, and not the polar reaches of Scandinavia or the dirty streets of New York. It has so much in common with the works of the sound compositions of Basinski and Branca, as well as the dark rhythmic potentials of the Double Leopards, Mouthus, and Axolotl camp. The beauty in Magicicada's work is that isn't based simply of one or two of these models. It is both alive with change and polyrhythms like the No-Neck Blues Band and yet also content to hover ponderously like Stars of the Lid or Birchville Cat Motel. Look carefully and often for more releases from this amazing Atlantean (?), for I have a feeling he is going to make some big noises in the near future (in addition to this astounding and considerable piece of work).
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MAGICICADA - Everyone is everyone (Public Guilt)
The press notes narrate that, in order to spread his music around, Christopher White (aka Magicicada) dumped 25 copies of his "Static line" CDR without permission in the avantgarde bin at Tower Records. The 25 unsuspecting buyers who took the risk found just one of the many facets of this Atlanta artist, who is also a sound designer and photographer. "Everyone is everyone" is variegated, brisk and well crafted, a teapot of deviated psychedelia, rancid electronica and sounds coming from forgotten offshoots of Ed Wood's "Plan 9 from outer space", all of the above floating in a broth of Biota and Zoviet France with exhausted batteries. Using dozens of acoustic and electric instruments, manipulating tapes, voices and elastic looping, deforming most sources until an imminent overload, Magicicada succeeds by not taking himself too seriously; his music maintains that "homemade vibe" that makes me prefer this CD to hundreds of "one-zither-note-in-a-300-second-digital-reverb" releases dressed in Zen philosophy but totally meaningless. At least, White lets us share some of his fun - and the drones of "Cause" are blood-icing in their beauty.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
Michael Jackson and Vice President Dick Cheney excepted, there are few creatures in this world more unsettling and generally creepy than cicadas (or "locusts," as they are typically, and incorrectly, referred to in the Midwest). Ugly and repugnant, yet somehow able to arouse ghoulish fascination, cicadas are a seasonal fixture that you get used to after a while, until you don't even think about them any more; though deep down inside you know they're there, lurking in the shadows. Like the monotonous, summertime thrum of the cicada, there is something disquieting, yet strangely assuasive, about Everyone is Everyone, the new full-length release from Magicicada, issued on Baltimore's Public Guilt Records.
Magicicada is the project of musician Christopher White, a long-time resident of Atlanta. Everyone is Everyone is an incredibly enigmatic release that shares characteristics with several musical genres. Though the occasional glimpse of free folk can be caught here, Magicicada should best be thought of as pure sound design where instrumentation takes on secondary, even tertiary importance. Mood and atmosphere are the operative words here. None of the tracks on Everyone is Everyone possesses anything resembling conventional song structureat least, not for very long. The murky and brooding "Wellbelow" is the album's only track featuring recognizable vocals; in this case, sung by Trulee Grace Hall. Periodically, a recognizable musical instrument surfaces through the music's chemical haze, but White is clearly in his element piecing these tracks together using layer upon layer of field recordings, incidental noises, and "found sounds."
Though Everyone is Everyone fits neatly, for the most part, into the "noise rock" pigeonhole, the album, with its cavernous, nocturnal atmosphere, is more akin to the recordings of Birchville Cat Motel and Stars of the Lid than Wolf Eyes and Jazzkammer. Magicicada's tracks are long, dense patchworks of undulating, mechanical sounds that recall the disturbing, twilit world of David Lynch's Eraserhead. As Alan Splet's sound design was the perfect accompaniment to the grim industrial wasteland Lynch's characters inhabited, White's recordings seem to evoke images of a similar environment. Hissing pipes, electrical white noise, metallic drones, and other unidentifiable sounds, whether natural or unnatural, are the backbone, if one can consider it as much, of Everyone is Everyone.
One of those CDs that you deliberately put off opening because it looks so fascinating, Everyone is Everyone is a beautifully packaged album that is a work of art in itself. White's mysterious and deliberately obscure artwork gives the listener little idea of what resides inside, but in an era of digital music where the significance of cover art and packaging has all but gone by the wayside, this Magicicada album really stands out. An intriguing and engaging release, Magicicada's Everyone is Everyone is a highly listenable record that juxtaposes delicate ambient passages with harsh, edgy soundscapes
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Crucial Blast:
Everyone Is Everyone
Public Guilt
Magicicada is one Christopher White, an Atlanta musician and artist who creates mystical sound collages and evocative, organic drones from a arsenal of folk instruments, found objects,samplers, and field recordings. The nine tracks on Everyone Is Everyone range from shimmering pastoral drones to dense and hypnotic electronic tides joined by tribal clatter, vocal experimentation, skittery free improv, tape loop hallucinations, and ghostly folksy strum. All sorts of instruments and objects are at play here...the buzzing of contact mics and faulty electrical lines,melodica and pump organ, toys and bells and synths, the sounds of wind and frogs and public transit systems. The field recordings, otherworldy sounds and drones, and cinematic terrain take this into a kind of Sun City GIrls meets Sunroof! territory. Quite dreamy and beautiful. Good stuff for fans of Sunroof, Ashtray Navigations, Birchville Cat Motel, Avarus, RIchard Youngs, Burning Star Core, and all manner of free drone improv bliss. The first 500 discs contain a print of cool/mysterious treated photography by Christopher White. Packaged in an Arigato Pak style sleeve gorgeously printed by Stumptown. Another winner from our buddy JR at Public Guilt...
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Discography: 1999: '150' cassette only release consisting of a long manipulated recording of the faulty eletrical wiring of an old school house I inhabited, in Grantville, Ga.
2000:
Static Line: self released cdr with ink and gesso artwork.
2001-2002: tons of little experiments and one off cdrs/cassettes made and sold a shows. One of my favorites : 'Live in Asheville' recorded by Jay Martin and featuring Bill Coonan on Guitar.
2002:
Putting Out Fires Unfinished: released on Matt Jeanes Sub:marine Records.
2002-2005:
I disappeared for a bit: i make these sounds' cause I love you:a constantly evolving disc (which i mainly sell at shows) that reflects
my often, daily recording habits. a version of this was released by Stickfigure as a cdr which
featured some early version of pieces that made it onto:
2006:
Everyone is Everyone: released on J.R.'s Public Guilt Label. Mastered by Ryan Williams .
2007:
RobotFishy :no title:
3cd "untitled" Released by Public Guilt, Epicene and UndeRadar
also, working on collab w. VxPxC
Tonight we welcome Atlanta's NO RIVER CITY, former tourmates of Iron and Wine, Calexico, and Richard Buckner. We think you'll love their rollicking blend of folk, country, and rock combined with their sometimes dark storytelling lyrics. Supporting will be Birmingham favorites The Saturdays, this lineup featuring frontman Bo Butler, John Strohm (Lemonheads, Blake Babies), and Brad Armstrong (13 Ghosts).
Opening for both bands will be Nate Nelson and the Cortrights from Athens, a well-known birthplace of indie rock.
Tickets are $8 for the show, and you can buy them right through our website.
Doors @ 8:00
Show @ 9:00
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Sunday night we welcome back Birmingham natives, popular stoner rockers Brightblack Morning Light. Their hazy, atmospheric set puts a new spin on "jam band," so come catch their critically acclaimed set and zone out with us!
Opening for them will be tourmates White Lodge. You can buy your tickets now.
Sunday, April 22
Doors @ 8:00
Show @ 9:00
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Thursday, April 26, Bottletree welcomes Mike Dillon's Go-Go Jungle for their first performance in Birmingham. This is our second jazz/funk performance of the year, so put on your dancing shoes like you did with Big Sam and bring your funky asses out here.
Mike Dillon is a vibraphonist who has worked as a percussionist for Les Claypool, Ani DiFranco, Polyphonic Spree, Galactic, and Garage a Trois, among esteemed others. He&
