75 Dollar Bill / Bill Orcutt
8:00pm Doors / 8:30pm Music
$10 Guests / Free for Members
Reserve Seats: member login or guest registration
75 Dollar Bill was formed in 2012 by percussionist Rick Brown and guitarist Che Chen. Played on a deeply resonant plywood crate, Brown’s earthy, elemental rhythms are both the foundation and foil for Chen’s ecstatic, modal guitar style. The duo’s electric, richly patterned music can shape shift from joyful dance tunes to slowly changing trance minimalism, an uncategorizable hybrid which draws on early electric blues, the modal traditions of West Africa, India and the Middle East, Sun Ra’s space chords and the minimalist and No Wave histories of their home town. While Brown and Chen are always at the band’s core, the duo frequently expands into other configurations live and on record, from trio to 25-piece marching band. They have released a string of cassettes and two LPs, the most recent of which, Wood / Metal / Plastic / Pattern / Rhythm / Rock, met with wide critical acclaim and appeared on numerous "Best of" lists for 2016. It is now being released in Europe (on vinyl, digitally and, for the first time, on CD) by Glitterbeat Records, on its brand-new tak:til imprint.
Percussionist Rick Brown has been in bands in NYC since the late 70s, including Blinding Headache, V-Effect and Run On. Guitarist Che Chen was previously in the band True Primes and has been an energetic collaborator in the American and Japanese undergrounds over the last decade. 75dollarbill.bandcamp.com
“75 Dollar Bill performances are rich in the ways a moiré pattern is rich. Pit small differences in phrasing and meter against each other, wait, and waves of detail follow. You are not likely to hear a traditional solo in a 75 Dollar Bill song, no matter how many musicians are in the room. The band does its research beforehand, sets up the active ingredients, and lets them interact for as long as it takes to bring up the heat. It is a sound that conjures the old in the specific sense of music that is suitable for various kinds of social activity: dancing, mourning, commemorating, or simply beginning again.” – Sasha Frere-Jones, The Village Voice
Born in Miami in the year of Cuban missile crisis and educated in Florida's finest institutions, Bill Orcutt is usually recognized as the co-founder of the band Harry Pussy. Sometimes clanging and ominous, other times mournful and slight, strangely alienating, but simultaneously vulnerable and cathartic, his music is compared with equal frequency to avant-garde composers and rural bluesman. palilalia.com