Vuk + Alex Temple March 19, 2008

VUK

"Imagine a fierier, less frilly Björk, PJ Harvey or Nico lancing every commercial impulse from her repertoire, and you'll have only vague insight into this woman's deep, emotional bouts with death-gospel drama, esoteric organ-and-harmonium requiems, percussive chants and unbridled, youthful whimsy."
-Jordan Mamone, Dusted Magazine

Vuk is an experimental, wildly eclectic songwriter. She makes music seeking first and foremost to move and surprise her listeners. Blessed with an exceptionally wide vocal range and raw, emotive power, her influences range from Diamanda Galás and industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten, to Bulgarian folk music and the delta blues. Having recently relocated from Helsinki to New York, the songs from her upcoming album, "The Plains," baroque and orchestral on the record, have been re-arranged for solo voice and portable pump organ for solo performances such as this.

http://www.myspace.com/vukmusic

ALEX TEMPLE'S "THE TRAVELS OF E.C. DUMONDE"

In another chapter of her book, Dumonde describes the peculiar experience of what can only be called hearing forward in time. It was during one of her rare ventures into a major city, specifically New York, on a fiercely cold day in February of 1955. As she passed a little building on Church Street, she heard a performance: a man's voice speaking with exaggerated inflections, almost like singing, accompanied by an orchestra of clanging, whining, whirring instruments playing skittish, sharp-angled tunes. The sounds were unlike any she'd heard, and when she looked into the building, she couldn't see what was making them — just a black velvet curtain lying dead against the dark gray walls. But as she listened, she realized that the man was talking about her. He was telling a story of something that had not yet happened, about a city near Los Angeles that she would go to in 1956. When she got there, he said, she would find it empty, except for a black-haired woman who would know about her past, and who would tell her where to go next. At that moment she decided that it was time to return to Los Angeles, which she had not been to in eleven years.

http://www.alextemplemusic.com/dumonde.html