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Upcoming Shows
Birds on a Wire
FRIDAY & SATURDAY, March 26 & 27
PULLMAN
$35 Adv./$45 Door
$25 Group Rate of 10
Shearwater
w/the Hospital Ships & Wye Oak
FRIDAY, Apr. 30 8PM
@ The BellTower
PULLMAN
$12 Adv./$15 Door
Roadside Graves
w/TBD
THURSDAY, Aug. 5
@ TBA -
Stereopathic on Hypem
Nov
17
For her first ever performance in Seattle, cellist Alison Chesley, who performs under the name Helen Money, certainly deserved better than she got. Her set of experimental solo cello playing augmented and amplified by an array of effects pedals was shoehorned into a bill featuring hardcore rock acts, and her quieter moments were in constant threat of being drowned out by the unrelenting house music bleeding through the walls from the club next door.
The effects of all of these factors had an obvious effect on Chesley, who cut her set to a serviceable but woefully short 20 minutes. But during this abbreviated performance, she was able to stunningly bring to bear the many facets of her solo material. There was the elongated, almost jazz-y pieces that echoed the exploratory work of the Sun Ra and his Astro Infinity Orchestra album Strange Strings alongside some more aggressive and noisy pieces that used her mass of effects pedals, some of which looped in prerecorded sounds or helped to add meaty fuzz to her cello lines.
What frustration Chesley vocalized and exhibited in her furrowed brow was channeled right into her playing. She plucked at the strings with her fingers, used them percussively by hitting them with her bow, and eked out any number of raw tones and squelches. The tense feeling also added an extra bit of drive to her instrumental take on the Minutemen classic, “Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing”. Over a clattering, driving drum beat, Chesley scratched out D. Boon’s vocal melody on her cello, losing none of the grit and pent up distress in the translation. It was a breathtaking cover that felt heavier than anything the other bands on the bill attempted that evening.
Review by Robert Ham. Read more of his work at The Voice of Energy.
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