About Wave Farm
Laura Ortman and Bryan Zimmerman
Mar 19, 2011: 6pm- 11:59 pm
WGXC 90.7-FM: Radio for Open Ears
90.7-FM in NY's Upper Hudson Valley and wgxc.org/listen everywhere
http://www.wgxc.org/
Tune-in at 90.7-FM or on wgxc.org for a special live performance by free103point9 Transmission Artists Laura Ortman and Bryan Zimmerman, who perform as solo performers and as part of a band called The Dust Dive. The last Dust Dive album was produced by Sebadoh's Jason Lowenstein. They come from Brooklyn, NY to the WGXC Hudson studio to perform.
From a Stylus magazine of one of their records:
"Your appreciation may very well pivot on how you feel about the vocals: telescoped layers of radioed-in voices that foreground (and even obscure) Zimmerman’s winding, circular prose. Opaque vocal production and a reluctance to conform lyrics to any sort of metrical or melodic structure contributes to the diaristic and timeless (in the “time is barely moving” sense of the word) tenor of the record. This is not to say the vocals (think Thurston Moore doing Syd Barrett), while lyrically-driven, lack musical lyricism. What’s remarkable to me is that the songs achieve an essentially literary/poetic effect through musical technique. Throughout, the simultaneous lyrical threads come to engender a sort of punk-folk motet, giving props to the abstractions attendant to the act of memory. Zimmerman creates linguistic dirt bike paths through tall-grass prairies, touring backyard forts and vagrant mental monuments commemorating the sublimated tools and leavings of a Midwestern exurban childhood desire: hand-fashioned crawdad fishing tools, midnight tailgating parties, gagging on the smell of perfume/makeup in church, Playboys stolen from dad's shed, Suzuki crotch-rockets, plastic ghetto blasters with AC/DC and Run DMC tapes, tadpoles with extra digits. We are given an endless inventory of artifacts and a quietly unfolding obsession to connect the dots to nothing (but not Nothing) in particular, bitter-sweetly celebrating an un-zoned freedom of manageably human scale. " (Excerpt of review by William Fields.)
From a Stylus magazine of one of their records:
"Your appreciation may very well pivot on how you feel about the vocals: telescoped layers of radioed-in voices that foreground (and even obscure) Zimmerman’s winding, circular prose. Opaque vocal production and a reluctance to conform lyrics to any sort of metrical or melodic structure contributes to the diaristic and timeless (in the “time is barely moving” sense of the word) tenor of the record. This is not to say the vocals (think Thurston Moore doing Syd Barrett), while lyrically-driven, lack musical lyricism. What’s remarkable to me is that the songs achieve an essentially literary/poetic effect through musical technique. Throughout, the simultaneous lyrical threads come to engender a sort of punk-folk motet, giving props to the abstractions attendant to the act of memory. Zimmerman creates linguistic dirt bike paths through tall-grass prairies, touring backyard forts and vagrant mental monuments commemorating the sublimated tools and leavings of a Midwestern exurban childhood desire: hand-fashioned crawdad fishing tools, midnight tailgating parties, gagging on the smell of perfume/makeup in church, Playboys stolen from dad's shed, Suzuki crotch-rockets, plastic ghetto blasters with AC/DC and Run DMC tapes, tadpoles with extra digits. We are given an endless inventory of artifacts and a quietly unfolding obsession to connect the dots to nothing (but not Nothing) in particular, bitter-sweetly celebrating an un-zoned freedom of manageably human scale. " (Excerpt of review by William Fields.)