Optical Atlas

Tonight at the Georgia Theatre in Athens is a Fat Man Touring special lineup, with headliner Venice is Sinking, plus Casper & the Cookies, Fairmount Fair, The Buddy System, Deaf Judges, and Matias. A steal at $5 per head – doors at 9.

Monday, The New Sound of Numbers (recently renamed Sound Houses) will be playing the Caledonia Lounge with Paper Tanks and Ketman. Admission is $6, doors open at 10.

Yeah, so…I wrote the wrong deadline date on our contest to win Yeti #5. On the previous post I wrote May 10, but it was always intended to be May 17. THAT MEANS that you can still enter if you do it quickly. The prize is a free copy of the fifth issue of Yeti Magazine, featuring a CD compilation partially curated by Jeff Mangum (who also provides artwork for the magazine).

The rules: send your name and address to contest@opticalatlas.com with “YETI” in the subject line. The contest is open to international entries. I will pick a winner at random on Saturday, May 17.

That’s 17. Not 10.

UPDATE: A winner has been chosen and the contest is closed.  Thanks to all who entered!

Next month the Sled Island Festival in Calgary will feature of Montreal and Still Flyin’ (the fabulous hammjamm outfit started by Sean Rawls from Masters of the Hemisphere and featuring Gary Olson of The Ladybug Transistor), as well as Jonathan Richman, Deerhunter, Drive-By Truckers, Grizzly Bear, Yo La Tengo, and about a zillion others.  The festival is June 25-28 in Calgary, Alberta – more info here.

Speaking of the Ladybugs, on August 23rd in Moi, Norway, Gary Olson will be playing with Ole-Jei Åleskjær from Loch Ness Mouse, forming a new mutation called The Loch Ness Transistor.  It’s all happening at the Kamerad & Spelemann Festival. Thanks to Gary for the info.

The Tup Keewah Recordings Blog (Mike Barrett of The Sixth Great Lake, formerly of The Essex Green) has posted a Sixth Great Lake performance taped in October of 2001 at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, for the Crossing Borders Festival. Among the songs played are a few by Essex Green and even Guppyboy (the pre-Essex Green, SGL band). Barrett writes, “Chris [Ziter] had a terrible cold and you can hear it in his voice. Chris, Brendan Skwire and Neil Cleary joined Zach [Ward] and I between shows from the middle of an Essex Green tour.” You can download the MP3s here. Thanks to lou2ser, as always.

Hannah Jones has changed the name of her project The New Sound of Numbers to Sound Houses, to mark a new direction for the band. From TNSON’s MySpace blog:

We, The New Sound of Numbers are officially changing our name to Sound Houses. This change is coming about because our next recording project will sound quite a bit different from The New Sound of Numbers’ Liberty Seeds album – which was recorded for the most part by Hannah Jones in her home studio. Liberty Seeds was recorded a track at a time, each track building on the next. The New Sound of Numbers feels as though it started as a solo project that expanded and evolved into a band whose members each contribute to the song-forming process.

You can find Sound Houses‘ new MySpace page here. Hopefully some music will be added to it soon.

I am utterly indifferent to the name change–or, at least, much more enthusiastic about the fact that there’s new Hannah Jones music in the pipeline.

PSL has posted this lovely acoustic performance from The Ladybug Transistor, with (L-R) Kyle Forrester (Great Lakes), Gary Olson, Julia Rydholm, and Michael O’Neill (The Ballet) performing “Three Days from Now” on an empty street corner in Stockholm.

Speaking of the Ladybugs, this last week I added a Ladybug Transistor wing to our Optical Atlas art gallery.

If you’re in New York, you’ll have a couple of opportunities coming up to see them live: May 31st they’re playing a free show at 2PM at the Brooklyn Public Library Grand Army Plaza, and June 14 they’ll be playing NYC Popfest at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. Thanks to Gary and Becky for all the info.

The 10th annual Mask Project is a charity auction to benefit the Denver Hospice, featuring masks designed by hundreds of celebrities and artists. Dressy Bessy’s own Tammy Ealom is one of the contributors this year, providing the mask seen at left: the official Dressy Bessy mask.  (Click on the image to enlarge it, and you can see “Dressy Bessy” written into the goggles!)  You can bid on this online through May 30th, or view the masks in person at the Cherry Creek Shopping Center in Denver, Colorado, through June 1st.

Dressy Bessy is still at work on their fifth full-length album, due out this fall.