Friday, July 23rd
The Slowest Runner in All the World w/ The Ascent of Everest
@ Institute 193. 193 N Limestone St. $6 suggested donation. 7 P.M. All ages.
I was striving to understand why a band would have a name as terrible as The Slowest Runner in All the World while listening to “As the Sea Swells She Bleats and Moans Like a Goat in Heat,” the opening song from their Flophouse Sessions EP. (The EP is available for a free download through the band’s Myspace page.) So I started thinking about someone running slowly to the music, which didn’t jibe with the audio—slow running, after all, is oxymoronic, whereas the Slowest Runner’s music makes good sense. So I started thinking of someone running in slow motion, which fit nicely in spite of the melodrama.
The Slowest Runner’s music lends itself to this sort of mental cinematic exercise. It’s described on their Myspace as “post-baroque” music, utilizing an array (guitar, bass, drums, piano, violin, cello, tape loops, and distorted vocals) of instruments to make dramatic, movie soundtrack-like songs forged with rock. They remind me of Louisville band Rachel’s, as both bands compose longer songs that unfold like short stories without words, drawing you in subtly, building upon expectations, heightening tensions, climaxing, resolving.
A similar act, The Ascent of Everest, will be sharing the bill on this evening, though their music features more vocals and is of a more straightforward rock variety. These two cinematic bands complement each other perfectly and will give Lexington a memorable inaugural installment of the NoC 193 music series, a joint project of Institute 193 and North of Center.
193/NoC collaboration
Last winter, NoC editor Danny Mayer attended the Morgan OKane show held in the tiny but open space that houses Institute 193. Essentially, the show was the after-party to XXXXXX and Ben Sollee’s free show at CD Central in support of their XXXXXX album. (See “XXXXXXXX” in this issue for more details on that work.) Morgan OKane, a four-piece un-miced band who busk streetcorners in Brooklyn and play wild music in the vein of Uncle Dave Macon, could not have fit the space better: intensely personal, loose and, with Sollee and others sitting in for some songs, collaborative.
The show’s success prompted Mayer to ask Phillips about the possibility of doing other shows at the Institute. Both owners struggle to pay bills out of pocket on their community-focused start-ups. A monthly show might offer a means of generating another income stream to help pay for things like the rent on Institute 193. The Institute could provide the space, and NoC could publicize the shows and bands in the paper’s music section.
The two haven’t really figured anything else out beyond that–the lazy retch Mayer hasn’t found the time to meet with Phillips to discuss it further–other than this month will be the first of the 193 NoC Music Series (the name itself even subject to change) to be publicized in the paper.
Your support of the shows will be greatly appreciated.
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