Night of the Masters and Mystics May 16, 2009

Avant Garden promises a night of masters and mystics with the performances of Metal Rouge and A Thousand Cranes and How I Quit Crack.
Metal Rouge, sound artists from New Zealand, channel the freedom of the ancient Maori of their land in their free noise/new music. It was formed in Aukland, N.Z. by Andrew Scott and Helga Fassonaki, They are performing across the United States to spread groundbreaking art from the southern hemisphere of the world to the northern hemisphere.
How I Quit Crack is the brilliant expression of Tina Forbis.
A Thousand Cranes is an experimental music/performance art troupe from Houston, TX. Their shows define the avant garde, blurring the boundaries between ritual, music and performance art. The members are revolving and include Travis Kerschen, Shawn Rameshwar, Richie Durham, Mary Sharpe, Brian Harrison, Don Walsh, Domokos, Tyler Morris, Hoff, Brittney Chanel Walker, Anthony Torres, Brandon Davis and Tex Kerschen.
METAL ROUGE music and videos
http://www.myspace.com/metalrouge

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_OUxGl3DfQ&feature=related


PRESS CLIPPINGS:
from SEYMOURRECORDS.blogspot.com
"It has been a longtime desire of ours to work with
Andrew Scott & Helga Fassonaki of Metal Rouge, before
Stunned was even a twinkle in our eye in fact. If there’s
one thing we’re convinced of, it’s that these two are
some of the most raw and intrepid aural magicians out there.
And ‘Salt Stones’ is everything we could have hoped from
them after years now of shaking in our shoes whenever they
plug in around town for another anthem unto the heavier of
heavenly bodies. Keeping in step with their no-bullshit,
stripped-back live actions, here we encounter a merging of
energies old and new as Andrew & Helga boost off from
90s NZ free noise styles, lending honorable nods to
earth-quakers A Handful of Dust, Gate, and Dead C. But ample
room is left for Metal Rouge’s own signature
ear-splitting/life-affirming gamma rays. We’ve no choice
but to rise higher than ever into the ultraviolet spectrum
as Metal Rouge continue their liberated refinement,
casting chunks of 6-string trance, extreme jazz vocals
and black metal into the blistering, beautiful gas inferno
of ‘Salt Stones’. Limited to 90 black cdrs in sari cloth
lined vinyl case with transparent insert and flower."

Epically long review on The Ear Conditioned Nightmare
blog:
"Andrew Scott and Helga Fassonaki's Metal Rouge
have been it for a few years now, I believe. They've had
releases all over the place but perhaps none quite so well
presented as this. Salt Stones represents over 45 minutes of
their opaque sound just soft enough to expose the fragile
details within.
The disc opens with "Aligning Mud with Salt,"
whose interweaving clouds of guitar annihilation are, like a
swarm of insects, insurmountable in their density but highly
mobile and active. Squalling riffs interlace as vocals seem
to ooze out of the mix in one cacophonous wave after
another. Definitely some Dead C and even some Harry Pussy in
there, but so dense as to melt those influences down into a
molten lead.
"Embryonic Bird Zero" opens with sharp guitar
strums over Helga's distant moans. As Andrew shoots off
high end electrical wire fuzz, Helga's voice adds an
ominous, near Pocahaunted singing style, though hers is one
of fits and starts rather than the longer, chant-like
vocalizings of Pocahaunted. Before too long the proceedings
drift into a slower and more minimal metallic slant.
Electronic arpeggiations interweave with strums and gestures
from Andrew as washes of fuzz coalesce with Helga's
atmospheric vocal shudders. Soon the fuzz builds back as
Helga's vocals subside. Slow and dizzy blues twangs and
slides bend over one another while synthesized guitar
insanity lurches on in the background. Blips and squelches
emerge from the dust of the dense layer of fuzz which lies
below all of the proceedings here, soon moving into bassier
and more obtuse territory that nearly sounds like some monk
chant stuff or something.
That Metal Rouge are able to wield such heavy axes without
losing any lushness or detail of activity is wonderful.
Rather than pushing its listener into a dark cavern they
merely seem to suggest a number of paths at any given
moment, opportuning you the ability to peak down each of
them before they choose one. "None People,"
recorded live at, fittingly, Frank's Power Plant, though
I suspect that's probably a club and not an emitter of
cold electric energy, though it sure would be fitting if it
were. The duo tone things down a bit for the crowd here,
opening with a steady three-note pulse while guitar wails
pummel about as softly as the simmering hum of electric
lines underneath various discursive events in the audience.
As the work crescendos over its length, it begins to merge
more and more with its surroundings, seemingly melding with
the very air in the room and just hovering, static and
warmed by the friction of its minute vibrations. Small
details begin to break off and make statement; feedback, cries,
equipment battles, all add to its organic and fluid sound
world.
Metal Rouge, clearly with a knack for finding the inner
rhythms of a work and letting them unfold as they will, have
released another great one with Salt Stones. The package,
yet another step for Stunned, is a beautiful CD-R with sari
cloth and gorgeous liner notes. The CD too is printed, and
it all fits right together to make this one of the most
beautiful looking Stunned releases yet."
FROM http://www.psychedelicfolk.com/post-asiatic.html
"Metal Rouge is more like a slowed down personal
ritual, which has a slight industrial environment feeling
because the total of sounds feel lost in a big recording
environment, until most of it becomes like droning echoes,
full distortion.

You can hear How I Quit Crack on myspace at
www.myspace.com/howiquitcrack
and see them


PRESS CLIPPINGS

from DO512:
How I Quit Crack brings you vocals with grainy synth sounds, drum machine and a slight reminder of Portishead-like ghost ballads.
You can hear A Thousand Cranes on myspace at
www.myspace.com/athousandcranes
and see them on youtube:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmzinwS0soc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1qaQEf_JvM&feature=related

PRESS CLIPPINGS:
FROM the HOUSTON FREE PRESS:
A Thousand Cranes are the results of a scientific
experiment where all band members were raised solely on the
music of Florian Frike and made to fend for themselves with
low-fi equipment. We'll call this experiment a
success.-Ramon Medina, Oct. 20th, 2008

from Artshound
March 29, 2009
A Thousand Cranes will be performing at Jennyoga Studio as
a tribute to yoga and tantric practices. They perform after
the Houston premiere of the film "YYOGA "
A Thousand Cranes is a music collaborative formed in
Houston, Texas. The two founding members of A Thousand
Cranes are Travis Kerschen and Shawn Rameshwar. They
continued with a mutually agreed upon vision that A
Thousand Cranes be grounded in the sacred, experimental,
jazz, and noise influences they shared. With a grounding
in the sacred, jazz, and noise influeces shared by both
members A Thousand Cranes set out to discover avenues to the
induction of meditation as a means to pull their audiences
into the vortex of shared human experience." from
Artshound.com
FROM HOUSTON PRESS:
"A Thousand Cranes, whose forthcoming Cheap Gold
promises a dementia-inducing panoply of near-catatonic
drone." ...from the article:"Rusted Shut,A
Thousand Cranes" By Chris Gray Published: March 6,
2008
..To me it sounds like a five-part suite where
"Refuge" might as well be synonymous with
"Brown" - completely soothing and profoundly
disturbing at the same time.-Chris Gray, on the second album
"Mexican Refuge"

FROM JIM PYRTLE's NOTSUOH blog on myspace:
.....an onslaught of noise with a spaghetti western flavor
(travis even wore a wool pancho) as if domokos of pink cloud
was jammin with encinio morricone for the Good the Bad and the Noisy....

Official Website: http://www.myspace.com/athousandcranes