Saturday, May 5, 2012
The Middle East Downstairs
CQ / Rogue presents
XIU XIU / DIRTY BEACHES
(co-headline / Xiu Xiu will close)
With
Father Murphy
18+ $15
8pm Doors / 9:30pm Show
* * *
XIU XIU
Xiu Xiu was born on a dance floor, arriving alone at the club and going home alone from the club.
That night the first Xiu Xiu song, Jennifer Lopez, was recorded. Its line, “is it tough to watch, Friday after Friday!?,” began what Xiu Xiu was going to try to say. The songs would always be about specific events in the personal lives of the band, the people close to them, and about the social and economic politics that effect and deform subjugated life from everywhere in this wobbling, wreck of a solar system.
Over the course of 15 7″s, five EPs, six collaboration albums and eight full lengths Xiu Xiu has never shied away from any topic that is honest and meaningful to them. Their songs are about gender dysphoria, suicide, loneliness, going insane, child soldiers, the tsunami in Indonesia, hideous sex, the Sanrio character Pandapple, abortion politics, incest, cats, queer life, being raped by the police and the individual responsibility of U.S. military personnel for the families they murder. Somehow within all of this, cuteness attempts to find a way to embrace death and horrible emotion.
The music is drawn from British post punk and synth pop, modern Western classical, noise and experimental musics, Asian percussion musics, American folk, torch singers, house, techno, 1950s rock n roll and this second’s top 40.
Starting in isolation in San Jose, California in 2002, Xiu Xiu has relentlessly toured all over the world since. San Jose is a rotten place to be, so relentless touring was a way to get AWAY!
There have been a total of seven line-ups with the newest and best being Angela Seo, Bettina Escauriza, Marc Riordan, Devin Hoff, and Jamie Stewart. They are currently cluster bombed around America in New York and Durham, NC.
Xiu Xiu have been called “self flagellating”, “harsh”, “brutal”, “shocking” and “perverse” but also “genius”, “brilliant”, “unique”, “imaginative” and “luminous.”
- http://pitchfork.com/news/43073-listen-xiu-xiu-cover-rihanna/
- http://www.polyvinylrecords.com/news/index.php?id=962
- http://www.polyvinylrecords.com/artists/index.php?id=915
DIRTY BEACHES
Dirty Beaches is the sound of waves against a picturesque and putrid shore, the silent rumble of a Chevy as it speeds by in slow motion. Sparse but condensed, relentlessly edging forward: this is music for locomotive travel, for racing your weary motorcycle through neon archways and into dusky tunnels. The man behind Dirty Beaches is Alex Zhang Hungtai; solo performer, sound-smith, and trans-Pacific nomad.
Born in Taiwan, Hungtai has made Toronto, Honolulu, Montreal, and Vancouver his homes. Like Bo DiDdley or minimalist synth provocateurs Suicide, Dirty Beaches’ compositions are not so much stripped down as refined to their essence. Drum loops entrance, Hungtai’s croon enchants, and the yearning melodies draped overtop belie as much a sense of haunting mystery as they do romanticism and wry humor.
Career Highlights
- Dirty Beaches Video Interview on Spinner
- Dirty Beaches’ “Lone Runner” receives Best New Music from Pitchfork
- Dirty Beaches featured in Stereogum’s 40 Best New Bands of 2011
- Dirty Beaches’ Badlands Among Pitchfork’s Albums of the Year Honorable Mention
- Dirty Beaches’ “Badlands” receives 8.2 from Pitchfork
- Dirty Beaches interview in The Wall Street Journal
- Dirty Beaches does Guest Post for Altered Zones
- Dirty Beaches featured on Pitchfork’s Rising
- Dirty Beaches receives Best New Music from Pitchfork
