OH! PEARS (US) /chamber-pop/orchestral/avant-pop/pattern is movement // Johannes Lauxen (MZ) /soundscapes/drone/noise/chill/knertz // So. 19.06. at IvI, Kettenhofweg, 130 // 21:30 pm
OH! PEARS
Oh! Pears is the brainchild of Philadelphia’s Corey Duncan, a thrilling new voice whose work draws equally from the worlds of indie-pop (Beirut, Grizzly Bear) and classical composition (Ravel, Tchaikovsky) to create enchanting songs with transformative power.
Fill Your Lungs finds Duncan exploring a sound a lifetime in the making; setting stunning orchestral arrangements drawn from his family’s long lineage of classical musicians to urgent, three-minute perfect pop nuggets not far removed from the stylings of his previous outfit, Pattern Is Movement. It’s an engrossing sound that places Duncan at the forefront of a class of high-minded American songwriters like Van Dyke Parks and Jeremy Enigk.
The songs on Oh! Pears’ debut Fill Your Lungs EP deal with startlingly personal themes; „Singers“ is about Duncan and his brother forging their own identities amid intense Catholicism. „The Hall“ touches on a relative’s gradual loss of sight, and how he learns to adjust his life to the change. „A lot of these songs, really, are identity songs,“ Duncan says. „Who my family is, who my friends are.“
While Duncan has assembled groups consisting of anything from solo performances to a 13-piece chamber orchestra (strings, brass, winds, percussion), the Oh! Pears quartet, featuring Jonathan Pfeffer from Capillary Action on percussion and brother/sister string team Andy and Veronica Jurkiewicz, will be touring Europe behind a new 7” in June 2011.
JOHANNES LAUXEN
Lauxen plays everything he is not able to play and sings every note he is not able to sing. And he uses a lot of things in ways they are not supposed to be used. He writes the songs that are not supposed to be written and destroys the sounds that are supposed to live – without really making them not live. Perhaps he saves their lives. And he lives it all: Pop, Electronica, screaming guitars, his record collection.. It’s all in his music and his music is all in him. One man with a laptop and some instruments against the world. Or with the whole world against who? – You never know… what it will sound like in the end and he does neither. Everything is possible – from cut up drum attacks and surreals sounds collages to cosy ‘ you‘re-are-not-alone-with-that-pain-in-your-ass‘-songs.
summer days: burger ghosts / greatest scene (excerpt) by Kind City