the critique of pure reason presents
greg davis
signer
ariel pink
november 18
9:30pm
all ages
$8 suggested donation

Greg Davis is a musician based in Chicago. As an undergraduate at DePaul University in Chicago, Greg Davis studied classical and jazz guitar alongside composition and jazz studies. In 1997, he started his own label, Autumn Records, in order to put out his music and that of others. Several CDR releases later, Autumn Records relocated to Boston in 1999. At this time Greg was attending the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where he received his master’s degree in composition in June 2001. Greg was an active performer in the Boston area, playing many shows by himself and with Parallel, before returning to Chicago in 2002. As Bob Mehr wrote in the Chicago Reader: “He augments his signature symphony of gently plucked acoustic guitar and natural sounds—water seems to be a favorite theme—with touches of brass, woodwind, and pedal steel and even takes a couple rare lead vocal turns….” Beginning to work with an ensemble, Davis toured North America in spring 2004 playing material from the Curling Pond Woods album as part of Greg Davis (Group). A new piano piece by Davis called “Emptying” premiered at the Summer Institute for Contemporary Piano Performance at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, MA.

Mysterious mutant offspring of Bevan Smith’s Aspen, Signer crafts dub-replicant grooves. Signer grafts Aspen’s distinctive spatial possibilities and organic textures onto the DNA blueprint of the Basic Channel Berlin techno-dub sound. Smith’s alter ego allows him to add more cogent rhythm patterns to the Aspen sound. The music is deep; bass-heavy inputs fed through shifting textures. Smith describes the sound as ‘experiments in the movement of ambient music’. Perhaps this is the sound that movement makes in dreams. Effortless, static free flights through physical locations and emotive scapes.

Recording at home with a guitar, bass, keyboard, and 8-track (the drum sounds are all unbelievably created with his mouth), Ariel Pink blends Lite FM and warped lo-fi pop into something beautiful and confusing, yet highly addictive. After years of recording in relative seclusion in the hills of Los Angeles, Ariel Pink (the first non-Animal Collective member on the Paw Tracks roster) makes his official Paw Tracks debut with “The Doldrums”. Originally a handmade CD-R release a couple years back, “The Doldrums” by Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti was discovered by the Animal Collective during one of their west coast tours and became an immediate favorite.

production: stacie slotnick for the critique of pure reason
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