ICA/BOSTON AND WORLD MUSIC/CRASHarts PRESENT WAVELENGTHS August 7, 2009

FRIDAYS IN AUGUST

The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) and World Music/CRASHarts partner to present WAVELENGTHS, an adventurous series of the most exciting indie, electronic, and global acts emerging today. Every Friday in August, these concerts will feature artists performing outside on the ICA’s HarborWalk against the stunning backdrop of Boston Harbor. Tickets, on sale beginning June 15 are $25 general admission, or $20 for ICA or World Music/CRASHarts members. Tickets can be purchased at www.icaboston.org, by calling the ICA at (617) 478-3103, at www.WorldMusic.org or by calling World Music/CRASHarts at (617) 876-4275. All shows start at 7:30 p.m.

Aug. 7
Prefuse 73

Prefuse 73 is the showbiz moniker of Guillermo Scott Herren, an experimental hip hop DJ/producer who has worked with TV on the Radio, Broadcast, Ghostface, Aesop Rock, Blonde Redhead, School of Seven Bells and Battles. He’s a renowned practitioner of glitch-hop, a kind of music that celebrates the sounds of malfunctioning digital audio equipment. His fifth and most recent record, Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian (Warp) is part space-age hip hop and part folktronica, and fans of Intelligent Dance Music will love it.

Aug. 14
Nomo, Dutty Artz: DJ/rupture + Matt Shadetek with special guest Jahdan Blakkamoore

A spectacular co-bill of innovative, African-influenced music.

Ann Arbor-based Nomo is a post-afrobeat dance explosion with a unique and vital sound. What started out as a University of Michigan party band has turned in to a crowd-pleasing, always-touring juggernaut. Inspired by Fela Kuti, their work also incorporates seemingly disparate influences such as Funkadelic, MIA, Brian Eno and Kraut-rockers like Can and Neu, to create a modern, non-revivalist take on afrobeat.

Dutty Artz is a New York-based label/collective run by Matt Shadetek and DJ/rupture. Shadetek has been a force since 2000, focusing on dancehall reggae, grime and dubstep. He’s responsible for the underground smash hit, “Brooklyn Anthem,” featured on EA Sports’ Madden NFL 08. DJ/rupture creates complicated mixes of partyrock with political undertones using three turntables. He has done two John Peel Sessions and performed as turntable soloist with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra.

April 21
Zizek Club at ICA: Fauna, Uproot Andy, Oro11

Fresh from Coachella, Zizek Club is a high-energy, participatory roving party by the Argentinian Zizek collective – a laboratory where DJs, producers and musicians experiment with cutting-edge Latin dance sounds.  Fauna, South America’s bass-loving hip hop duo, describe their music as cumbia, “like it was played by a rhino.”  Their style, called “Tropitronica,” blends South American reggaeton, cumbia villera, baile funk with IDM, Jungle and Break Beat. Brooklyn-based Uproot Andy mixes cumbia, dancehall, and electro to create a propulsive Afro-Columbian sound. San Francisco-based Oro11 (pronounced oro own-say) lived in Buenos Aires for years, where he honed his psychedelic/electronic approach to cumbia. Billboard has called Zizek the “underground surprise of the year that crosses borders.” Tropicaliente!

Aug. 28
Black Moth Super Rainbow

Pittsburgh freak-folk, pysch-electronica outfit Black Moth Super Rainbow, named an “artist to watch” by Rolling Stone, is an enigmatic, six-piece band that got its start when one guy named Tobacco recorded on his four-track in his bedroom. Over the years, the group has grown and their sound has developed into a sweet, poppy, bouncy sound. On their latest CD, Eating Us (Graveface), produced by Mercury Rev’s Dave Fridmann, they have added some new flavors to their already well-established rainbow of sounds. There are dense layers of lushly complex orchestration, intensely rhythmic drumming by a live human, vocoder vocals that are anything but robotic, and thick, undulating bass tones. They have toured with the Flaming Lips and Aesop Rock.

The ICA Water Café will be open during all WAVELENGTHS concerts until 9:00 p.m. In case of weather, shows will be moved indoors into the ICA theater.