Tuesday, March 3, 2009

This better not be an April Fools joke

We're excited to pass along the news that one of our all time AQ-fave bands, that we've NEVER seen play before, are coming to San Francisco on tour soon!

That'd be Germany's Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore!

First US tour we're pretty sure. They'll be in SF on April 1st, at the Great American Music Hall. Opening will be Void Ov Voices - the solo project of none other than Attila Csihar, from Mayhem, SUNNO))), Tormentor, etc.

We're happy to "co-present" this show with our friends at KFJC. Meaning, we'll have some free tickets to give away, so watch the AQ list for details when the time comes.

Here's our review of Bohren's latest album for Ipecac, "Dolores", to whet yr appetite:
Imagine a blackened, funereal dooooooom band like Skepticism or Nortt morphed into the jazz idiom (after having kissed a frog, or some fairytale scenario like that), playing their slow, sad music in a smoky Berlin jazz club. The sound is jazz (electric piano, organ, vibes, sax, double bass, trap kit...) but the feeling is doom. That's our usual shorthand for describing the unique music made by longtime AQ fave, Germany's Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. Here at last is their eagerly anticipated 5th album, Dolores (not named after the San Francisco street near us, presumably). If you're fans like we are, you know what to expect, it's just as ponderously "heavy" as a "jazz" band can be. No, not loud, not harsh, not noisy. The opposite of all that. Rather, whisper-quiet, glacially slow, and spacious, with sparse snare hits keeping time like a wound-down clock ticking off the eternity between 2 minutes to midnight and the witching hour itself. Doomsday so slowly arrives on a velvety bed of somnolent deep bass notes, and the cool slinky tones of vintage Fender Rhodes. Cymbals shiver in a dark haze of ambient drones near to silence. Several of the songs are infused with the warmth of tenor or baritone sax breathes gorgeous expiring breaths. It's all so sad and woeful and achingly beautiful, Bohren nodding off, their fragile melodies trickling like tears, and by the end you may find you have shed a few too.
This newest Bohren differs mainly from their previous Ipecac outing Geisterfaust by being composed of somewhat shorter, sweeter tracks, ten in all, in about an hour. But it is, again, an-ever-more-perfected example of why Bohren is one of our all time favorite bands, especially at twilight and late at night...

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