All That Music & Video

VNV Nation
February 27th, 2012
At: Tricky Falls (209 S. El Paso St)
All Ages / 8pm
$18

The electronic project VNV (“Victory Not Vengeance”) Nation was conceived in London in 1990 by Ronan Harris, debuting in May of that year with the 12-inch “Body Pulse.” “Strength of Youth” followed a few months later, and at the end of the year Harris relocated to Toronto, where VNV Nation opened for Nitzer Ebb on their Canadian tour. After moving back to Europe, Harris released only a handful of compilation tracks in the years to follow before signing with the German label Discordia in 1995 to issue the full-length Advance and Follow. Three years later, VNV Nation resurfaced on another German label, Off-Beat, an alliance which generated the LP Praise the Fallen as well as the EP Solitary. Empires, which was issued with another European distributor Dependent, and on Metropolis in the U.S., followed in the spring of 2000. Singles such as “Standing” and “Dark Angel” were club mainstays, boasting Ronan Harris‘ love for pulsating club rhythms and his developing seascapes of dark ambient waves. Mix projects Genesis.1 and Genesis.2 followed that format in 2001, giving a sneak preview to VNV Nation‘s Futureperfect.

Agent Orange
Thursday March 8th, 2012
At: Tricky Falls (209 S. El Paso St)
All Ages
$11

Punk to the core, yet with audible influences from early heavy metal and surf rock, Agent Orange formed in Fullerton, California at the end of the ’70s, with vocalist/guitarist Mike Palm, bassist James Levesque and drummer Scott Miller. The first Agent Orange record, released in 1981 on Poshboy Records in the midst of Southern California’s already hectic hardcore community, cemented their reputation as one of the best skate-punk bands around the area. Two EPs during the next few years were all the band released until 1986′s This Is the Voice, for Restless/Enigma. A much less energetic LP with brighter melodies and an emphasis on vocal audibility, it was also Agent Orange’s last for quite awhile, except for a 1990 live record. The group was resurrected later in the decade, touring the world and recording the 1996 LP Virtually Indestructible. In 2000 Cleopatra released Greatest and Latest, a collection of songs from Agent Orange‘s catalog rerecorded by the band with three new songs, which was later reissued in 2004 on the Anarchy Music label under the title Blood Stained Hitz. In between these two identical issues, Restless released a two-disc best-of titled Sonic Snake Session, which chronicled many of the group’s defining moments in one set.

Cults
Saturday March 17th, 2012
At: Lowbrow Palace (111 E. Robinson Ave)
18+
$11

Cults‘ twinkling experimental pop arrived in a shroud of mystery early in 2010, when the group posted three songs on their Bandcamp page. One of those songs was “Go Outside,” which mixed dream pop haze with girl group harmonies (and, fittingly, samples of Jonestown leader Jim Jones) and earned the band acclaim from publications including Pitchfork and NME. Eventually, Cults‘ core duo was revealed as guitarist Brian Oblivion and vocalist Madeline Follin. Later in 2010, Cults released Go Outside as a single on Forest Family Records and performed shows with bands including Best Coast. Early in 2011, the group made its U.K. debut and signed to Columbia Records; Cults‘ self-titled album, which featured production by Shane Stoneback, arrived in the middle of that year.

 Of Montreal
With: Deerhoof & Kishi Bashi
Sunday March 8th, 2012
At: Tricky Falls (209 S. El Paso St)
$16

The brainchild of singer/guitarist Kevin Barnes, of Montreal was among the second wave of bands to emerge from the sprawling Elephant 6 collective. A native of Athens, GA, Barnes was inspired to form the euphoric indie pop group in the wake of a broken romance with a woman from Montreal. He signed with Bar/None Records while living in Florida, subsequently moved to Cleveland and Minneapolis in search of compatible bandmates, and finally returned home to collaborate with bassist Bryan Helium (also a member of Athens’ Elf Power) and drummer Derek Almstead.
of Montreal‘s debut album, Cherry Peel, appeared in mid-1997, followed that autumn by an EP entitled The Bird Who Continues to Eat the Rabbit’s Flower. From the start, the band buoyed its bright, flamboyant indie pop sound with elements of psychedelia and vaudeville; of Montreal‘s earliest records also exhibited a lo-fi sound that bordered on twee pop, although the band steadily shed those influences throughout the early 2000s. After Helium left the group in 1998 to focus on Elf Power full-time, Almstead assumed bass duties, while keyboardist Dottie Alexander and drummer Jamie Huggins both joined the lineup. Nevertheless, the band’s second album, 1998′s The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy, was recorded primarily as a Barnes solo project.
Multi-instrumentalist A.C. Forrester signed on for 1999′s sublime The Gay Parade, while the retrospective album Horse & Elephant Eatery followed in the spring of 2000. The group continued with the release of Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse in April 2001 and Aldhils Arboretum in September of 2002, both of which were issued by the Georgia-based label Kindercore Records. With the subsequent folding of Kindercore, the departures of multi-instrumentalist Andy Gonzales and Almstead, and Barnes‘ marriage, 2003 proved to be an up and down year for the group. Barnes‘ wife, Nina, joined of Montreal‘s lineup as the group signed to Polyvinyl Records and delivered one of their most celebrated records, Satanic Panic in the Attic, in early 2004.
The following year found Barnes exploring a bouncier, synth-driven avenue with the release of Sunlandic Twins, but things began to get complicated in his personal life at the same time. He and his wife moved to Norway for the birth of their baby. Deprived of familiar touchstones, Barnes fell into a deep depression and, upon returning to the States, continued to travel progressively downhill. He and his wife separated for a time, and she returned to her family in Norway with their new daughter. Through the emotional turmoil, Barnes concocted what was to be his darkest, most personal, and ambitious album yet — Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? — in 2007. Arriving one year later, Skeletal Lamping furthered that ambitious sound by emphasizing Barnes‘ outrageous alter ego, “Georgie Fruit,” whose influence pushed the album toward funk and prog territory. An Eluardian Instance (Jon Brion Remix EP) followed in early 2009, featuring five remixed tracks from the previous album. of Montreal‘s tenth studio release, False Priest, arrived the following year and featured cameos from fellow genre-hoppers Janelle Monáe and Solange Knowles. Songs written for that album but not used saw the light of day in April of 2011 with the release of thecontrollersphere EP.