East vs. West electronic music throwdown tonight at Metro Gallery
East coast and West coast members of the artists collective Cytoplastik will perform at Metro Gallery tonight in their annual electronic music face-off.
The battle, which is really more of an excuse for a dance party, will pit the Baltimore-based trio Megadrives against another trio, Intergon, the Los Angeles-based makers of "intelligent electronica". Also performing will be Florian Mosleh (there as duo English), DJ Infinity, Free Sauce and VJ Chroma, among others.
Organizers have added live video accompaniment to the live music performances. They're calling it an "acoustic performance art experience."
My favorite part of this thing are the directions to attendees: "COLD hooping, spinning, etc. encouraged ON THE DANCE SIDE ONLY, NOT ON THE GALLERY SIDE!D respect the artwork on display PLEASE!"
Yes, respect the artwork. Please. Anyway, it's the official start of New Year's Eve celebrating.
Mosleh, actually, is responsible for the collective's most well known track, "Wax Music Box," which was featured in an early episode of "The Wire." If you think the performers' names above are "Tron"-esque, you're not alone. Blake Leyh, the show's music supervisor, was flummoxed himself.
"Cytoplastik’s ideas are so deep, their mission so obscure, their Web site so labyrinthal, and their server so slow," he wrote, "That I can’t quite figure out if they are unrecognized geniuses, the ultimate technodorks or both."
It's the fifth year for the East-West battle, which last year was held at Talking Head, and where Comeback Ranch, Glass Knife, and others performed. Cytoplastic has posted MP3s from their battle royale of 2008 here. (There are tons of others downloads posted through the website - play with it, it's just as trippy as their work.)
Erik Maza is a features reporter at the Baltimore Sun. He writes for several sections of the Sun paper and contributes weekly columns on music and nightlife. He also writes and edits the Midnight Sun blog. He often covers entertainment, business, and the business of entertainment. Occasionally, he writes about Four Loko, The Block, the liquor board, and those who practice "
