The Wake

With three records out on celebrated dance and DJ label Ninja Tune and an upcoming release on Lex Records, a sub-label of Warp Records, St. Louis Park native Andrew Broder, and his acclaimed five piece live ensemble, Fog, has an excellent track record. The newest Fog album, “10th Avenue Freakout,” is slated for a March 22nd U.S. release. You can catch the release party on March 18th at the 7th Street Entry. I stopped by Hymie’s Vintage Records, where Broder works, to chat about the new record, his previous projects and the Twin Cities scene.“I think I just got burnt out of everything sounding gelatinous and amorphous,” says Broder about his previous work. Broder says the new record is, “a lot more arranged. I think it’s a function of getting older and being better at …

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My first Thomasina experience occurred exactly twelve days ago when she took the stage at Coffman Union as the sole role in a one-woman play - Daughters of Africa. Since then (and at the risk of sounding slightly creepy) she has succeeded in consuming many of my thoughts and much of my time. Meet her, and you’ll understand. She’s not an easy woman to get out of your head. She’s soft in the way that steel is soft, but owns eyes — the kind of eyes capable of immediately disarming the most defensive among us. Charms aside, Thomasina Petrus (actress and vocalist) has become a staple in the local twin cities jazz and theatre scene. She’s been “doing her thing” here for 15 years and has evolved into a widely valued and exceptionally …

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Indigo.There is nothing unreal about this girl. In fact, it seems as though everything that could possibly be real about this world shines forcefully through her solid eyes. With a smooth tone of voice and a pleasingly liquid hip-hop drawl, Leah Bartizal informs me that she was given the name Indigo by a friend in her 16th year of life. While trying to help her through an insanely unpleasant mushroom trip, this friend stated simply that she had always thought of Leah as “Indigo.” Leah describes Indigo as depth; “it’s deep and dark and profound. It’s when the sun goes down, that vibrant dark-blue color where the trees stand out black against it.” This explanation of the idea of “Indigo” makes it clear to me why the name fits her so well — black …

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There is one ultimate B movie. One that is so extreme in its intentionally bizarre and stupid nature that it can claim to be the most deranged film ever created. This film involves Clive Barker, Texas, llamas, barnyard hanky panky, and some ultra-ridiculous dubbing. This, the be all and end all of B films, is the horror comedy cult classic from 1997, Barn of the Blood Llama (available from bijouflix.com), directed by Texas madman Kevin L. West. I’ve decided for your benefit to present to you a discussion with this autere of insanity. Enjoy! The Wake: Do you realize that Barn of the Blood Llama is a classic of twisted cinema? Hell, it plays a fairly notable influence in a film I am hoping to shoot soon called Murdeer.Kevin West: I could …

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A unique convergence is happening at St. Paul’s Minnesota Museum of American Art: combing art with rock’n’roll. The museum’s program, “Art Here 1st Fridays,” brings local bands such as Melodious Owl and Aneruretical together with American artists to make their work more accessible to youth culture. The museum’s current show “Abstract Painting in Minnesota: Selected Works 1930 to the Present” melded well with the exuberance of Aneruretical and Melodious Owl on February 4. Before the bands began their performance concertgoers meandered from painting to painting, experiencing what the museum has to offer its younger patrons. The artwork is vibrant, much like the music. To start the night Aneruretical mounted the stage to generate their bass-driven, hyper-hipster rock. There was no false veneer covering their notes that rang out fresh and invigorated. The trio sliced through …

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If I told you one of the best movies of 2001 was about a teenager with visions of a grotesque man-sized rabbit, you might begin to question my judgment in films. Donnie Darko tells the strange tale of an ’80s youth (Jake Gyllenhaal) who returns home from a bout of sleepwalking to find that a jet engine has landed in his bedroom. Had our protagonist not been out chatting with the above-mentioned demonic bunny, the falling hunk of metal would have crushed him. Why has he been saved? What purpose does this strange and not-at-all-cute animal-man have for our hero? Is that really Patrick Swayze playing a self-help guru?While it tanked at the box-office, Donnie Darko was about as original and hypnotically weird as movies were meant to be. Big chunks of it didn’t make …

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I’ve heard it said that one’s inner world is only as large as one’s ability to articulate it; meaning the depth of our thoughts are limited by the breadth of our vocabulary when trying to relate an experience or even an anecdote to anyone else other than our own self. And language, the means of such conveyance, is an almost constantly shifting collective agreement of naming and encoding the world inside and around us. It is an ever-changing organic and metaphysical mixture of inner sensations at odds with outer manifestations. Shit – with all that going on how can one ever communicate anything with anyone? One solution would be to grab a pen, a mic, and some weed and stop giving a shit about all that. With that being said, I would …

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I would take a bullet for Ian Brown. Any place. Any day. Any time. He’s one of the greats – a legend of his time. A walking god among men. He is Lennon, McCartney, Jagger and Marley – all rolled into one. A primal genius incarnate capable of euphoriating anything he pleases. The man could bend the will of an entire country. And he has.This may be the reason why I’d be so willing to let a shotgun slug rip through my chest to keep the swaggering Manchurian alive – maybe it’s why any of his fans would. Brown inspires on an outerwordly level; a level almost incomprehensible today. The man is a living legend in all of England. Walk his hometown Manchester streets and you’ll still see his name graffiti-ed all over city …

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The beginning of this particular food expedition occurred months ago, before the onslaught of winter, at a barbecue party my roommates and I hosted. We were in the midst of a bet only horny college girls would implement: the make-out-with-a-random boy bet, when out of nowhere I went from jolly to tipsy to pie-eyed and plastered. Blurbs of memory from that night flicker clear and then fade, but I do know this — I won and so did my other roommate, but in the same impalpable fashion. Our prize was dinner, paid for by our less prosperous roommate. Only in college can you win a wager and get treated to dinner without actually remembering how you won.To claim our blue ribbon for bawdiness we were taken to the Highland Grill, a decked-down ‘50s diner, the …

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If you like your movies mindless and action-packed, you might want to check out both the new “Assault on Precinct 13” remake that’s been in theaters a couple of weeks, and the original 1976 John Carpenter cult classic of the same name. With no real plot to induce distracting thoughts, these B-action movies are the perfect remedy to the Oscar snobbery we’ll have to look forward to in the coming months.The original film strands a handful of people inside an abandoned police station against an onslaught of nameless street thugs. No famous actors and plenty of glorified violence. The beautiful thing about the original movie is how it plays with stereotypes. Making their stand are an assertive black cop, a wise-cracking-white murderer and a pair of female secretaries. Referring to coffee, one of the secretaries …

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Creative thinkers converted the former Theda Chi frat house into a coffee shop that seeks to serve its community in an ambitious way. Bordertown Coffee opened in Dinkytown on the corner of 4th Street and 16th Avenue, at the end of January, the day before the Twin Cities got its first real dose of snow. The Theda Chi house, built in 1929, closed about five years ago due to fire safety regulations and declining enrollment. The house remained vacant until Greg Silker, the director of Campus Journey, a non-profit Christian and non-greek fraternity and sorority that currently owns the house and coffee shop, bought it two years ago, renovating it to its current grind-glory grandeur. The name came from an ethics and philosophy discussion group named Bordertown that met in the space about a year …

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Hangar 18 recently released The Multi-Platinum Debut Album. Their inaugural debut on Definitive Jux, Platinum – paWL, Alaska and Windnbreez — is more of an ironic understatement than anything. Maybe it’s their defense against fears that they’re fall into some kind of indie hip-hop pigeon-hole like so many indie rappers seem to have done —but probably not. It’s mostly just funny. And it’s pretty obvious they don’t need to worry about anything musically. Talking with MC Alaska, I learned a few things —notably, that yes, they are actually named after the Megadeth song and prior to hip-hop, Alaska’s favorite group was Iron Maiden. Strange.The Wake: Is Tim there?Alaska: No, can I take a message?The Wake: Yeah, this is Frederic with The Wake Magazine.Alaska: Oh, hey, what’s up? Sorry — I was screening my calls for …

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When you think of sketch comedy, two things probably come to mind: “Saturday Night Live” and “Mad TV.” When you think of locally produced cable access shows only one thing probably comes to mind: why would I waste my time watching that? What you may not know is that the Twin Cities has its own locally produced sketch show called “Nate On Drums” that could easily rival either of this genre’s giants in terms of originality and taste. Not only is “Nate on Drums” funny, it features local music, too. It’s so good that Channel 45 has picked it up, which is a big leap for a show that was once on cable access. Operating out of a studio in Mound, Minnesota (on Lake Minnetonka), the cast of “Nate on Drums” is a small, …

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A couple months ago I had the chance to talk to Paul Allender, guitar player for possibly the world’s biggest extreme metal band, Cradle of Filth. Paul was with the band in their formative days (1992-1994) and recently returned in 1999. In 2004 the band somehow managed to top all of their previous output (which is a great feat!) and released Nymphetamine on RoadRunner Records.The Wake: Well, Paul, I’d like to congratulate you on Nymphetamine, it’s really a killer record. But for those who haven’t been compelled to pick it up, tell them why they should bother.Paul: Nobody sounds like us. People compare us to black metal but we’re nothing actually like that. It’s unique and it’s our best album.The Wake: You were in Cradle of Filth in the very early years, left, and now …

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Heiruspecs is all about mixin’ it up – defying rap conventions.The St. Paul hip-hop group backs its rhymes with live drums, bass and keyboard, so on stage they look like a pair of MCs rolling out rhymes in front of a rock-band backdrop. But the sound is totally integrated, with Twinkie Jiggles’ strong basslines shining through in some songs and dVRG’s piano melodies in others. The fabric holding all of it together is the dense, smooth vocals of Felix and Maud’Dib. The speed at which the two fly through their lyrics creates a texture more than a discernible verbal statement, like a handful of wooden beads tossed on the floor. The attitude of each song, which is muted on the CD, comes through on stage.Heiruspecs’ independent roots didn’t stop them from signing with a semi-big …

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