PSYCHEDELIC EGGNOG

Epic, free, all-ages party showcases young Boston

By DAVID DAY

del.ico.us | digg it! | reddit!

print | email | 1 Comments

If you’ve been missing out on the amazing improvisational, electronic and beat-oriented mess that’s enveloping Boston kids like the Blob, here’s the perfect chance to catch up. For one night and no money, Brendan Smith of the Asteroid M Project is calling all the troops for a monumental experience of sights, sounds and psychedelia.

“Since I have been performing in this area,” says Smith, who makes music with Dan Kenney as Peace & Quiet, “I have been really impressed with a lot of the people making music in Boston. Sometimes we get all these people in the same room together.”

These people include Truman Peyote, who showed up in these pages some months ago. Others are not so known, including the sometimes torrential free-skronk of Big Blue Octopus and the found-sound mouth music of Salem’s Moon Climb the Wall. “I don’t know how comfortable I am declaring what it all sounds like,” admits Smith. “People should just bring their ears.”

Much of the music on display is collected at Smith’s website of freely released music, called the Asteroid M Project. “The most important thing to me,” he says of his anti-label, “was getting the music out to people. I treated it as a hobby, learning to record music, but the collection started getting better and better.” Especially that of Many Mansions, a one-man band that shows considerable promise. With a psychedelic bent reminiscent of the Animal Collective brotherhood or Apollo Sunshine’s mythologies, Shane Donnelly makes a rapturous, vibe-filled wonderland of tweaker folk. “Next year, we’ll have a great season of new sounds at Asteroid M,” Smith promises, “and this show is showcasing some of that sound.”

Equally as inclined, but perhaps more vicious and improvisational, is the sound of Fractillian, which has two free albums available online. Behind pulsing, psychedelic visuals, Jeremy Cousins and Tom Fahey chant, breathe and drone with abandon. One glimpse at their website and it’s clear what’s going on here: “A vibrating gust of shamanic sounds and psychedelic visuals … the Fractillian has also been known to blend the conscious states of humans, sonically penetrating during sleep-state listenings, as well waking the third eye.” Freaky.

Keeping the show all ages is something Smith takes very seriously. “I just remember how amazing music became in high school,” he says, recalling his own experience growing up. It’s also no coincidence the show is on the MassArt campus. Perhaps Boston’s most creative resource, the Huntington hivemind has been churning out everything from the beatmakers under DJ Flack’s tutelage to the noise of Load Records recording artist Kites.

“The majority of performers are MassArt students or alumni,” Smith says. “We also live in the Jamaica Plain area, but I would mostly say it is the MassArt locale that links it all together.”

PSYCHEDELIC EGGNOG

WITH TRUMAN PEYOTE, PEACE & QUIET, MANY MANSIONS, BIG BLUE OCTOPUS, GUATEMALA CITY, DIRT CIRCUIT, ZAYDE BUTI, MOON CLIMBS THE WALL AND FRACTILLIAN

THURSDAY 12.18.08

MASSART POZEN CENTER

621 HUNTINGTON AVE., BOSTON

617.879.7000

7:30PM/ALL AGES/FREE

MASSART.EDU

ASTEROIDMPROJECT.COM