August 25th, 2009: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

NEW YORK: Terry Dame's ELECTRIC JUNKYARD GAMELAN announces "Life On Marz" CD Release and National Tour

 

"…transporting...beautiful and inspired sounds" _Village Voice

"Terry Dame is one of those eccentric musicians for whom composing isn't
enough, she has to create new instruments as well. A downtown fixture."
_Time Out New York
…

NY1 Television profile August 14, 2009
www.ny1.com/Default.aspx?ArID=104062

 

NYC CD Release show
Tuesday, September 8th 7-10pm
DROM
85 Ave A
NY, NY
www.dromnyc.com
Electric Junkyard Gamelan @ 9pm
with special guests
Joshua Fried's Radio Wonderland @ 7pm
Ken Butler's Hybrid Visions @ 8pm

Saturday, September 12th 7pm
CULTURE FEST
Appalachain South FolkLife Center
Pipestem, WV
www.myspace.com/culturefestwv

Sunday, September 13th 7pm $10
Bower Center for the Arts
Bedford, VA
www.bowercenter.org

Monday, September 14th
Performance/workshop (private event)
Concord University
Athens, WV

Tuesday, September 15th @ 8pm $3
The Dame
Lexington, KY
www.dameky.com

Thursday, September 17th
Venue TBA
Fairfield, Iowa

Friday, September 18th daytime
Performance/workshop
Metro High School
Cedar Rapids, IA

Friday, September 18th @ 8pm
Benefit for New Bohemia Art Festival
African American Museum
and Cultural Center
Cedar Rapids, IA
www.newbohemia.org

Saturday, Sept. 19th 5-7pm
Mojo's@RiverMusicExperience
131 W 2nd Street
Davenport, IA
www.rivermusicexperience.com

Sunday, September 20th @ 9pm $10
Chicago World Music Festival
Uncommon Ground on Devon
Chicago, IL
www.uncommonground.com

Monday, September 21st @ noon FREE
Chicago World Music Festival
Under The Picasso
Daley Plaza
Chicago, IL
www.underthepicasso.us

Tuesday, September 22nd @10pm $5
The Black Sparrow
Lafayette, IN
www.blacksparrowpub.com

Wednesday, Sept. 23rd 8pm $5
The Lodge
101 E. 6th St.
Bloomington, IN
w/ n_drew

********

Thursday, September 24th@ 8pm
Canturbury House @ Uof Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
www.canterburyhouse.org

Friday, September 25th @ 8pm
Russell Center for the Creative Arts
1600 Clay Ave.
Detroit, MI
www.rccadetroit.org

Sat, Sept. 26th 5:30 & 9:30pm
Ingenuity Festival on the Bridge
Cleveland, OH

www.ingenuitycleveland.com

Thursday, Oct. 1st @8pm
Bennington College
Bennington, VT

********

Friday, Oct. 2nd @8pm
Time & Space Limited
434 Columbia Street
Hudson, NY
518-822-8448
www.timeandspace.org

Saturday, Oct. 3rd @8:00pm
Pioneer Arts Center of Easthampton
Easthampton, MA
www.pioneerarts.org

Saturday, Oct 4th@ 8pm
The Buttonwood Tree Art Center
605 Main St.
Middletown, CT
806-347-4957
www.buttonwood.org

Monday, October 12th @9:30pm
Joe's Pub
425 Lafayette St.
NY, NY
www.joespub.com

ABOUT THE GROUP
Led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Terry Dame, Electric Junkyard Gamelan plays original groove-driven music on invented instruments and objects.
With instruments fashioned from rubber bands and coat hangers, bed frames,old farm equipment, turntable platters, saw blades and truck springs these four musicians play hypnotizing melodies and syncopated strings that ride on funky bass lines and layers of interlocking rhythms.Formed in 1998 Electric Junkyard Gamelan is a four-piece ensemble that performs original compositions on sculpturally striking instruments invented by Ms. Dame. Its style was initially inspired by traditional Gamelan music of Indonesia but today incorporates influences from funk to eastern modal styles to hip hop. The music is shaped by the sensibility and humor of this unique composer. The group performs on Dame's innovative instruments such as the Rubarp and Big Barp (electric rubber band harps), the Sitello (an electric cello/sitar combo), the Terraphone (copper pipe horn), the Clayrimba (a three octave tuned clay pot "marimba") and an arsenal ofpercussion instruments fashioned from bed frames, old farm equipment, turntable platters and truck springs. The result is a super original sound with haunting melodies, funky bass lines and layers of danceable interlocking rhythms that ride over clashes of metal on metal and colorful harmonic washes. Audiences are transfixed by the beauty of the unusual collection of instruments on stage and the amazing array sounds they produce.

 

ABOUT "LIFE ON MARZ"
"Life on Marz", co-produced by Dame and Julz-A is the band’s third record. It takes EJG on a new adventurous route adding rap style lyrics on a couple of tracks (Hipchak and Ode to Fred Beans) while the rest of the album remains true to their original brand of funky instrumental gamelan fusion. One standout track “Get Your Barp On" features the RuBarp family of instruments as the title suggests. The hypnotic melody of the RuBarp, an electric rubber band harp, interweaves seamlessly with the twang of the Kachapitar bending notes over a syncopated percussion track to evoke a far off land part real, part imagined. On “Cark Nogg” the group makes use of traditional Balinese hand cymbals known as Ceng Ceng to create a high energy rhythmic bed for the bright percussive melody line played on the Clayrimba, a three octave tuned clay pot marimba. The album wraps up with a bonus track, Dame's remix of a song co-written by band member Lee Frisari called "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Rock". Adopting the bands motto in the title, this song underscores their green theme and is performed on all recycled materials including an electrified bicycle wheel and a mason jar.

ABOUT TERRY DAME
With EJYG, Dame fuses her two passions, making music and inventing and building things. While studying Balinese Gamelan in graduate school in 1997, she became intrigued with the interlocking rhythms and the amazing ring of overtones created by the ensemble of metal gongs and xylophone-type instruments used in traditional Balinese music. An inventor by nature, she began experimenting with making mainly percussion instruments out of objects. For her thesis project she created a full-length concert on these object instruments that included a piece for kitchen implements and a piece on office supplies and machines. Terry Dame, a native of Huntington, MA is a saxophonist and composer by training. She has studied music from around the world including Indonesia, the Middle East, the Balkans and India. Ms. Dame has been living and working in New York City since 1985, composing and performing for film, video, theater, dance, and concerts. Recent accomplishments include the score for Maria Maggenti's new feature film Puccini for Beginners that premiered in competition at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and was theatrically released in early February 2007. She was also chosen to be a 2006 Sundance Institute Composer Lab Fellow. Dame was the music director, composer and saxophonist with the seven-piece new music group Monkey on a Rail from 1998-2002 and a founding member of the improvisation trio Trophy Wife. She was composer in residence and saxophonist with Jennifer Miller's New York based Circus Amok from 1994-2004. She is also a member of Gamelan Dharma Sara, the traditional Balinese Gamelan based at the Indonesian Consulate in New York City, and Paprika, Brooklyn's acclaimed all-female international dance music band. She was an artist in residence at HERE Art Center in New York City during 2003 & 2004 and has received commissioning funds from theMary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The Rockefeller Foundation, New York State Council for the Arts and the Meet the Composer Fund.

ABOUT THE ENSEMBLE
The four musicians in EJYG hail from diverse musical backgrounds. Terry Dame met Julian Hintz aka Julz A, a singer, accordionist and classically trained percussionist, while in grad school at Cal Arts. Mary Feaster, Lee Free and Dame met while playing together in the Circus Amok Band. Feaster, also a member of the trio Trophy Wife, is a bassist who plays everything from punk to funk, Latin and Klezmer. Lee Free is a classically trained percussionist; drum set player and song writer.

PAST PERFORMANCES
EJYG has been performing together since 1998. The highly adaptable group has performed at every type of venue possible from prestigious art centers and musieums (MoMA-NYC, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Kitchen in New York City) to experimental music venues (The Stone, NYC and Barbes, Brooklyn) to rock clubs (The Knitting Factory and CBGB's) to underground music parties and outdoor festivals.

PRESS CUTTINGS
"Electric Junkyard Gamelan makes music that is the product of a highly personal vision, and Dame's originality is alone enough reason to come check out the Big Barp in person".
--James Heflin, Valley Advocate

"Electric Junkyard Gamelan makes music so original they had to create their own instruments to play it.
Its wild enough to please fans...regardless of genre".
--Global Rhythms Magazine

"transporting...beautiful and inspired sounds"
--Alisa Soloman, Village Voice, NYC

"Dame has created a panoply of homemade instruments that are not only visually fascinating but sonically stunning."
-- Iris Hiskey Arno, The Rivertowns Enterprise, Hastings, NY

“ a scattered mix of foreign music that mixes jangling and banging with worldly sounds. The EJG definitely knows what it’s playing. It never feels disjointed or awkward, but always feels out of this world; at times natural, earthy...”
--Michael Levy, New Haven Advocate"

...rhythmic, near-hypnotic music."
--HX Magazine

"Terry Dame is one of those eccentric musicians for whom composing isn’t enough, she has to create new instruments as well. A downtown fixture."
--Time Out New York

"...powerful, mesmerizing and ever changing."
--Ellie Covan, Founder/Director of Dixon Place, NYC

 

 

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