Morr Music North American Tour November 30, 2003

Featuring Ms. John Soda (live), B. Flesichmann (live), Jel (Anticon, live), and Thomas Morr (DJ)

Door: $10.00
Ages: 18+
Standing

Ms. John Soda
Ms. John Soda, the sibling/side project of German noisemakers THE NOTWIST and Couch's Stefanie Böhm, has some pretty big genre-expanding shoes to fill. Fortunately, there's plenty of room in the Baroque-electronica-pop book, and their debut album, No P. or D., is strong enough to impress both fans of IDM and casual listeners on its own terms. The album manages to merge guitars, ambient pop, and glitch pop with grace, steering clear of the cut-and-paste not-quite-there unions put out by bands like Air or Portishead. At the same time, the band follows in the footsteps of pop noise experimentalists like Stereolab and Solex, but always takes the road less traveled: Where Stereolab would layer and take tracks into jams or movements, Ms. John Soda pulls back, making room for the richness of the deceptively organic rhythm section; where Radiohead or Björk would tailor an album for headphones, No P. or D.'s aura can be immediately appreciated. (Morr Music)

B. Fleischmann
With Aphex Twin on sabbatical and ?-Ziq relatively happy favoring electro over emotion, B. Fleischmann has taken up the slack to make albums of brittle, sweet electronic gurglings. It's a rare thing when this high a level of emotion is sustained throughout 60 minutes of experimental electronic music. It's not that the instruments wail and sound mournful; Fleischmann expresses emotion through repetitive, pretty melodies. Each song works as a minimalist symphony to happiness and/or existence. Warmth really is the dominant feeling of the music presenting a relatively stark contrast to the icy madness of Aphex Twin, even though the instruments and overall sound have so much in common. This is an artist for fans of electronic music who favor feelings over style. (Morr Music)