In the duo Cleared, multi-instrumentalist Michael Vallera launches surges of jagged guitar chords and looming electronic fog banks against Steven Hess’s unyielding drumbeats. In solo settings Vallera sticks to an electric guitar and pedals, but his music hardly sounds limited; without another player to establish a rhythm or set boundaries, he stirs up masses of sound that feel as big as weather systems. Tone and texture can vary drastically from one set to the next; I’ve heard him drone like a squadron of WW II bombers and swirl like he was auditioning for the Cocteau Twins, and on the upcoming EP Dead Suns (Nihilist) he lets fly with some shredding that sounds like someone fed steel girders into a lumber mill. —Bill Meyer Johnny Young headlines; Michael Vallera, MT Coast, and Double Morris open.
$8, free with RSVP at rsvp@emptybottle.com
According to a Village Voice profile by Michaelangelo Matos, San Francisco postrocker turned Brooklyn dance-music producer Daniel Martin-McCormick considers Malcolm X his primary fashion inspiration and says that he tries “to exclusively wear Bob Marley shirts”—in other words, he’s either a completely radical guy or the worst kind of obnoxious smirking ironist. But I don’t care which—Dream On, the 2012 album he released under the pseudonym Ital on incredible British label Planet Mu, is so good that I’d forgive behavior more egregious than fake Marley fandom. Martin-McCormick also plays in noisy experimental group Mi Ami, where his work has grown increasingly electronics-based, but nothing he’s done there has suggested that he was developing into what Dream On has revealed him to be: a full-blown techno producer with one foot in the form’s Detroit roots and one in its wiggy, art-damaged fringe. The album is full of odd sounds and challenging ideas, but more crucially it’s also the sort of thing that can get a crowd moving. —Miles Raymer Chrissy Murderbot and Hieroglyphic Being open.
$8
Local folk hero Al Scorch assembles some of the city's best instrumentalist for a musical revue that promises "alternate instruments and room for improvisation."
Group show featuring work by members of the museum. Reception Fri 12/1, 6-9 PM.
The Reader's readers favorite dance party, an infamous occasion rife with debauchery and good tunes.
$7