music / theater arts + culture
Welcome to the Machine Nootropics by Lower Dens (Ribbon Music/ Domino, 2012) by Joseph Martin
Top cover image by Shawn Brackbill; Bottom photo by Jeffrey D. Martin
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fter a beloved debut, many bands take the define-and-refine route: Tighten up, take fewer chances, and retrench. But Lower Dens’ Jana Hunter had more radical evolution in mind. Driving to the Eastern Shore to compose the band’s second act, she found her angle via Germany’s most famous man-machines. "I was listening to Kraftwerk’s RadioActivity,” she recalls. “And I became fascinated with how they allowed the simple repetition of parts to let tones and textures really flourish. Giving [songs] eight minutes to breathe gave them a lot more weight.” The Kraftwerk connection didn’t end there. Having nabbed the krautrock pioneers’ breadth, Hunter wed it to a topic dear to that band: transhumanism, the ability to transcend human limitations via technology. The resulting Nootropics—named for a subgroup of brainsharpening pharmaceuticals—lived up to its
Crazy Beautiful Freak Show
The Baltimore Rock Opera Society’s Valhella: The Ragnarøkkoperetta, May 11–13, 18–20 at the Autograph Playhouse Opera in a Can’s Sid the Serpent Who Wanted to Sing, May 12 at Towson University
W
hen a group of male recent Goucher grads living in a house they had dubbed Brotopia spawned the Baltimore Rock Opera
(Fe)male bonding: Jen Tydings brings glamorized Vikings to the BROS.
name, allowing Hunter herself some measure of transcendence. “Transhumanism is a key of entry into a human instinct to improve,” she says. “This record could be the part of the story of my own development—I’m a human animal, too. But the thematic arc gave us a broader conversation, made us look beyond our own lives.” Appropriately, the Dens tossed their postpunk punch in lieu of billowing synth swells, sequenced clicks, and steel-encased harmonies— a far cry from 2010’s Twin Hand Movement. But, ironically, Hunter attributes Nootropics’ woven artifice to newly sophisticated band interplay. “It’s like we wanted to be an old-school acoustic ensemble,” she says. She points to the
Society in 2007, the acronym, BROS, was both convenient and fitting. Their first production, Gründlehämmer, performed at 2640 in 2009, was set in the mythical kingdom of Brotopia, where a dark king attempted to usurp power with a heavy metal motif. The group went on to perform another original, BROpocalypse, at Artscape for the past two years, atop an art car they call “The Brothership.” If the combination of metal music and guy bonding seems a bit daunting, Jared Margulies, whose title Grand Vizier of Rock Wizardry translates to Outreach and Development Director, reassures. The BROS’s upcoming Valhella is written and directed by a woman, Jen Tydings. “It’s the first time a girl has stepped up. She’s whipping us into shape,” says Margulies. The new show, subtitled “The Ragnarøkkoperetta,” is loosely based on the Norse mythology of Ragnarök, the foretelling of the downfall of the gods. In Tydings’s version, three brothers, each afflicted by a disability (one is blind, one deaf, one mute), become the musical saviors of their plague-afflicted clan. The rock opera is outfitted in full Nordic regalia, with a soundtrack that pays homage to 1980s metal popularized by such bands as Manowar and the Swedish Bathory. “It’s the glamorized version of Vikings,” Tydings says. “I wanted to create an alternate universe.” But Valhella: The Ragnarøkkoperetta will be easy listening compared Manowar (though Margulies would have you think Hedwig, not Andrew Lloyd Weber). Tydings, who started penning the opera about two years ago,
additions of instrumentalist Carter Tanton and drummer Nate Nelson, both seasoned players, as major catalysts for the album’s atmospheric bent. “Like a jazz band, [we are] learning to sit back when it’s your turn and stand forward when it’s time to carry the song.” Unified dynamics aside, Nootropics may be a tough sell for older fans. Where earlier songs worked a soulful slow burn, an uncanny valley like “Lion in Winter Pt. 1” feels purposely brittle; even the human elements of songs like "Propagation” and “Alphabet Song,” with their palpable heartbeats, buzz with a surreal hum of oscillations and machinery. But for all its conceptual heft, Nootropics still offers a uniquely liminal humanity; when Hunter crows “don’t be afraid,” as in technophobic/-philic monologue “Brains,” she’s as much feeding herself verbal Xanax as preaching acceptance. And, ultimately, it’s this humanity that keeps the album compelling. While Nootropics seems like a paean to computer love on its surface, its contents remain as intimate—and human—as anything in Hunter’s catalogue.
To hear tracks from Nootropics, visit http://bit.ly/LowerDensMusic. describes it as somewhat “tongue-in-cheek.” She continues, “It’s fun metal, with ballads and a lot of power yelling. Families will like it.” For a more sedate introduction to opera, parents need look no further than the nascent Opera in a Can troupe’s production of Sid the Serpent Who Wanted to Sing by classical composer Malcolm Fox. The Towson University resident company, comprised of undergraduates in performance and music education, debuted last spring with a performance of Little Red’s Most Unusual Day, a pastiche of songs from operettas by Rossini and Offenbach. This year’s Sid the Serpent, directed by Phillip Collister, assistant chair of the music department, is the tale of a dancing circus reptile who ventures into the world to pursue his dream of becoming a singer, along the way learning about various musical styles and the way music works. But “the central message of the show is that everyone has their own talents,” says Collister. Collister says he formed Opera in a Can as a learning tool for burgeoning performers: “Children are a mirror to what is happening on stage. Whatever you give kids, they give it right back.” In addition, he points out, children seem to appreciate the operatic form. “When they hear people making sounds like that, it’s like watching some crazy, beautiful freak show.” For tickets to Valhella: The Ragnarøkkoperetta, visit www. baltimorerockopera.org.For tickets to Sid the Serpent who Wanted to Sing, visit www.events.towson.edu.
Urbanite #95 may 2012 67