Like all good Asian kids, I was born with a calculator in my left hand and a violin in my right. Well…not quite, but as fate would destine all the little Asian children in America, 12 years later I found myself screeching away to Bach in my dedicated practice room/prison confines. For many years, up to when I entered college, my violin was my own best friend and worst enemy, providing a great elective class in school that had no real homework, epic horse-around antics during 4^th-5^th periods doubling as “math homework time”, and a couple killer orchestra QTs to ogle at, but also imposing conditions on my TV and internet porn time.

A violin is unlike a guitar or any modern instrument in that it is decidedly low-tech; no frets to guide your fingers, no effects or pedals to dork out on, or girls to impress for that matter. A classical, stringed instrument is an unforgiving, grating device in mediocre hands, and a graceful, dulcet bard in experienced ones. Playing an instrument like the violin is not about learning some chords off a TAB music website, inviting a girl into your dorm room, and telling her you “wrote a song for her.” It is a long, deliberate, and plodding process that you really can’t appreciate unless you grew up playing one.

Which is why I give the following band, made up of only classical stringed instruments and your standard drum kit, so much love. Not only did these guys actually stick with violin/cello/bass after all their friends “sold out” and took up sax/oboe/flute in 8^th grade, but continued this arguably understated profession through college and beyond. It is a testament to their will and dedication to music that they put up with hundreds of hours of private lessons, bullshit orchestra politics, and straight up brutal competition with mad Asian kids to get where they are. You also gotta give them props for somehow meeting each other in college (in this case, Princeton), forming a band in a pretty shitty town for music (Princeton being the home of BAL crew), and furthermore actually all moving to Brooklyn, post-college, to make real music in a city overflowing with lesser musical talent.

Enter Miracles of Modern Science, staffed by Evan Younger (Bass), Josh Hirshfeld (Mandolin), Kieran Ledwidge (Violin), Tyler Pines (Drums) and Geoff McDonald (Cello). Their compositions may be classically inclined but their product is 100% rock. As singer/bassist Evan Younger told NPR in a recent interview, “We’ve gotten mistakenly booked on folk bills, and there will be people there earnest strumming acoustic guitar, and we’ll go up and be like…ready to rock!” One of their first singles, “Eating Me Alive” opens with bit straight out of Schubert, but trotting cellos soon give away to a bursting chorus, followed by a slow stringed section punctuated by light pizzicato, and a raucous bridge leading into another verse. By the end of the song, we are firmly in rock and roll territory, with the mandolin and drums leading the charge to a stirring conclusion. For a bunch of Ivy Leaguers from Princeton, you gotta give hand it to the “Jeremy Lins” of indie rock for reimagining the types of sounds we thought these instruments could make together.

We shot this session a couple months ago during the brick bleakness of winter, at a lovely little studio in Greenpoint called Spaceman Sound. Our friends Tom Tierney, Patrick Southern (from Tidal Arms) and Alex Meade-Fox did an awesome job recording the live sound and quite frankly, dealing with our bullshit both during and after the shoot. Stringed instruments are not only a challenge to learn and master, but to record as well, and these guys really did a great job given the circumstances. Hats off to them for a job well done. And no acknowledgements would be complete with thanking MOMS themselves, who all chipped in and bought us all pizza that night. Even though it was not stuffed crust, we love you anyways.

BAL And Spaceman Sound Present: Miracles of Modern Science – Friend of the Animals
A BAL Production
Recorded live at Spaceman Sound
Engineered by Tom Tierney, Alex Meade-Fox, and Patrick Southern
Shot by Steven Levine, Will Xu, Eric Schutzbank, and Aleks Gezentsvey
Edited by Will Xu
Lighting by Will Armstrong

For a long time now I have been very cynical about the state of indie music and the commercialization of indie culture. For me, The Arcade Fire winning best album at the Grammys wasn’t a moment of celebration, but rather a cultural event where all the worse aspects of indie rock – lack of imagination, stagnant progress, obsession with the past – were unduly celebrated by an establishment hoping to capture a piece of indie “coolness”. And this isn’t to say that The Arcade Fire made a bad album, only that The Academy foisted an award upon a band that wasn’t necessarily doing what they did best: creating new and innovative sounds. Bon Iver winning the award for Best New Artist the following year only confirmed the tired state of mainstream-indie music, as he was neither “new” nor “best”, only “boring”.

But then I remember what got me into this game in the first place. I remember the electrifying feeling I felt when I first heard Panda Bear’s Person Pitch for the first time. It was like nothing I had heard before, and this coming from a long time Animal Collective fan who had gotten accustomed to some of their zanier, far out sounds. Or when Santigold self-titled dropped new wave sounds complimented by dance floor beats that rocked my shit for months straight. The kind of genre-defying sounds that reinvigorates your faith and hope in music. The excitement of discovery. In the last ten years, only a few acts have emerged that have truly broken new ground in our little community, and even fewer who have had the critical mass to actually define a style. AnCo. The Walkmen. Even Grizzly Bear, with whom we still have mad unresolved blog beef with. As musicians they are goddamn amazing; as people, they truly do suck. I digress though.

As much as the bands I mentioned above differ, they all share in them an innate curiosity for new styles and sounds, and a desire to constantly redefine our notions of who they are as musicians. Maybe music is less about personal preference, and more about discovery. Maybe if our ideals and expectations were less rigid and more open minded, we’d avail ourselves to discover new tunes that we might have ignored before. The most compelling artists today – St. Vincent, Diplo, Santigold are just a few that come to mind – are defined by precisely their inability to be easily classified. So I think, if we look at music from a different perspective, that which is somewhat more disconnected from ourselves, we can stop focusing on how X artist is a disgrace to rock, or ___ is ruining dubstep. There are a million new sounds by a million different artists and maybe it actually hurts us all to focus on the bad ones instead of just going out and finding new ones.

In contrast to summers past, I’m feeling super optimistic about the possibilities for music, both live and recorded. New Liars album out soon. New Santigold just dropped. Mad Decent Block Parties. Radiohead twice in Newark, once in Camden. Moomahton. Zoo in August. All good stuff that gets me super pumped to be back into music, and hopefully bring you some killer footage. We’re back baby!

Peep the quality Google Calendar technology below. Notice how we've color-coded each entry depending on type of booze. Yellow for free beer events. Green for hard alcohol sponsored events. Blue for a mixture of both, or an unspecified open bar. Red for BAL events that we squeezed in. Click on each entry to load more details like where the event is located, or how to RSVP. You can even subscribe to this calendar on your Android/iPhone and get alerts as you get wrecked. What less do you expect from BAL? Oh yeah, a beastly 4 band rock showcase (open bar from 8-9 PBR + well) Wednesday and a dubiously dicey 8 band loft party on Saturday. 

RSVP For this show on Facebook

We all know that CMJ is the most anarchic music festival in the world, but did you know that a majority of CMJ events are non-official and “off the books”? In the spirit of things, we decided to “cook the books” with a delicious smorgasbord of ear-tingling goodness. With 8 bands occupying two separate stages, this is our most ambitious, devious, and straight-up diciest show yet.

Straight out of Brooklyn’s favorite “artistic community” of Bushwick, BAL Presents: The Graveyard Smash, a mini music festival with all the rapport of a big fest, with none of its comforts, prestige, or celebrity. Instead of $4 waters, help yourself to an unlimited supply from the bathroom tap. Instead of the fresh air of an outdoor fest, breathe in the stale air of a dodgey, 100+ year old industrial loft. VIP bracelets? Everyone is VIP!

With so many bands spanning so many genres, there’s bound to be something for everyone. From the pop-deconstructing Idiot Glee, to visceral art-rockers Grandfather and raucous hardcore noisemakers Descender, our lineup is chock full of new sounds, up-and-coming talents, and animated sets.

Filling in the bill will be Brooklyn-based solo troubadour and loop machine master Idgy Dean, Shoegazers Sight Seeing, and experimental rockers Leonia. Get ready rock out, cocks out, in a massively fucked-up concert only BAL could have possibly dreamed of.

NEVERLANDS STAGE:
Grandfather: http://grandfathermusic.bandcamp.com/

Descender: http://descender.bandcamp.com/

Life Size Maps: http://lifesizemaps.bandcamp.com/

Leonia


BAL STAGE:
Idiot Glee: http://idiotglee.bandcamp.com/

Idgy Dean: http://idgydean.bandcamp.com/

Sight Seeing: http://sightseeing.bandcamp.com/

Gospels: http://facebook.com/gospelsnyc

L train to Jefferson Ave, hang a LEFT on Wykoff till you get to Flushing Ave.
Make a LEFT on Flushing Ave till you reach Stewart Ave, make a RIGHT
Take a LEFT onto Johnson Ave ½ block. There will be people outside to let you in.

BAL Presents: The Graveyard Smash
Live at The Neverland
538 Johnson Ave, Brooklyn
8:00 doors
$5 to get in
For help dial (646) 481-7032

RSVP for this show on Facebook

Four months ago, when we brought you the first BAL showcase at Northside Festival, we told you to come support us in our first attempt, and how important it would mean to us if you were there. Unfortunately, many of ya'll were bad friends and decided to sleep on it. You know who you are. Kids we grew up with, went to college with, drunkenly hooked up with... Thanks for coming through for us when we needed you the most.

As for the rest of you who came that night and left with ringing ears of festive merriment, we’re glad you got to see things our way. You know how we roll. We give you the full sensory package - great music, chill atmosphere, and this time around, free tater tots. That’s right, we’re doing our next CMJ Showcase at Trash Bar in Williamburg. Home of the $6 Jack and Back, elaborate neck tats, and of course free, on-demand, and pipingly delicious tater tots.

On Wednesday, October 19th, BAL presents an astonishingly focused and curiously compelling CMJ showcase featuring four caliber bands of our day: Boston’s expressive yet piercing noisemakers Pile, Brooklyn bulwarks Tidal Arms, the wistful and strident King Owl, and of course our boys Grandfather, who played with us at our previous Northside Show. All worth seeing on separate occasions; all together for one awesome night that defies the usual haphazard CMJ experience.

BAL Presents: The CMJ Showcase
Wednesday, October 19th
Trash Bar
Brooklyn NY
$5 at door

FEATURING

Pile: http://pile.bandcamp.com

Tidal Arms: http://tidalarms.bandcamp.com/

Grandfather: http://grandfathermusic.bandcamp.com/

King Owl: http://kingowl.com/

In our final set of videos from our BAL Northside Showcase, we look at one of the more genuinely intriguing bands that graced our stage: Dirty Dishes. Hailing from Boston, this 4-piece shoegaze troupe create an enveloping, yet finely developed sound that follows in the tradition of great 90’s bands like The Smashing Pumpkins, My Bloody Valentine, and Sonic Youth. Anchoring the group’s vast and widely encompassing influences, singer/Guitarist Jenny Tuite delivers dreamy vocals that embody the title of their first EP, In the Clouds.

Many thanks to all who helped out in this show, in particular Jon Silverman who handled post-production sound, Brian Butnick who provided additional photography, and Will Armstrong for his amazing light show that amazed us all. Don’t forget to check out our events during this year’s CMJ…more info to follow!

As you all know, BAL can shoot a diesel video, but did you know that we put on a mean concert as well? For proof, look no further than these sweet videos taken from our last BAL Showcase at Northside Festival. Fresh of their new EP Chibimoon, Grass is Green blew into New York from their Boston home to play an explosive, raucous, and sometimes quirky set reminiscent of old school Built to Spill and the now-defunct cult favorite Burning Airlines. We liked them so much in fact, we decided to book them again for our next show, co-hosted with Exploding in Sound, which takes place this Friday at Cameo Gallery. They play with three other deliciously deafening acts: our boys Grandfather, Pile (fresh off a new 7” released today), and Me You Us Them. Don’t be foolish. RSVP here on Facebook.

Link: Grass is Green bandcamp

I know some of ya’ll slept on the BAL Northside Showcase. What’s a matter with you? I know I know, the L Train was fucked that day. Maybe you were too beat from the Guided by Voices show in McCarren Park. Yeah it was a balls ass day - so balls in fact, I made Paul run to Duane Reade for some Gold Bond. Or maybe you just figured, “Hey, BAL will post the video anyway, so what am I really missing?” If this last thought occurred to you, then you were only half right. Yeah sure, the videos slay - such is the minimum expectation from The Lens. But look at what you missed: a multi-sensory experience, ears that don’t stop ringing for weeks, a night of joyous boozing with the boys from BAL, and most of all - a supremely tight performance by Willy’s own Madam Trashy.

Between Brian Murphy's thicker-than-blood basslines, Jake Bloomfield-Misrach's swirling, psychedelic jams, and Garth MacAleavey's crushing drum kit, you'd be hard pressed to find a band with the ease of performance, tinnitus-inducing loudness, yet striking simplicity as Madam Trashy. They are as catchy as they are punishing; kaleidoscopic as they are cleanly in step; and as flashy as they are humble. We really dug these guys and hope you'll give them a look, check out their bandcamp, and buy their record (available on bandcamp for $name-your-own-price). Madam Trashy is also playing a free show, this Saturday (August 13th) at Spike Hill in Williamsburg if you're around.

After seeing these videos, you’d be an idiot to skip on our next showcase presentation. Lucky for you, we’ll be doing more soon. Enjoy the videos and keep checking back, as we got tons more in the pipeline. You heard?

Artwork by Eric Schutzbank

RSVP for this event on Facebook

When we first launched Big Ass Lens two years ago, one of the first festival gigs we got access to was then then-fledgling Northside Festival in Williamsburg. At the time, Brooklyn didn’t have it’s own legit music festival to highlight all that was going on musically in our little borough, and the addition of Northside was a natural progression for the community. 

That first year was a good one. Sunset Rubdown played, along with The Hold Steady, and a newcomer named Kurt Vile. Back when Studio B was still around, providing sick city views and drug-friendly bathrooms. Right before The Pool Parties moved to the waterfront, and a Chuck Schumer became a hipster folk hero. The year Merriweather Post Pavilion came out and The Dirty Projectors blew up, vaulting experimental indie rock into the sort-of mainstream. The good old days when we were somewhat younger but considerably more carefree and willing to break all sorts of rules that govern the concert-going experience. Times were good, and The BAL crew hustled hard to bring you the illest in HD content for your eyeballs. This often meant sneaking in huge cameras without press passes, crawling beneath VIP barriers, and staging elaborate back stories as to why we were packing huge lenses with pepper spray dispensers built into them. Might have even murdered a few people. So while it might be all fun and entertainment for ya’ll, we have to deal with the troubling emotional consequences of our actions for the rest of our lives.

And while over the years many things have changed, one thing has not: our love for the most compelling and interesting bands that elevate our musical standards and deliver superb live shows that combine popular appeal with raw talent and musicianship. To say that we don’t update enough because the quality of talent around us does not merit it...only partially excuses us for the lack of said updates. But to be honest, we haven’t been exactly thrilled with the state of indie music these days, and wish that more deserving bands would get the credit and attention they deserve.

Which is why we are so very excited to bring you the first ever Big Ass Lens Presents showcase at the place where it all began: The Northside Festival. Mad daps to L Magazine and to ourselves, who have spent months planning, organizing, and finalizing this most chill and fascinating lineup of killer up-and-coming acts. We deliberately chose bands who embody the ideals of music that we have come to embrace over the years: artistry and skill, advancement of new sounds, and exciting live performances. After all, we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all bands are not created equal, that some are endowed with actual skill, talent, and mastery of their respective instruments. It is in the pursuit of quality music that brings us true happiness.

So get ready to piss your pants, lose your socks, and grab your cocks for the winning lineup we have in store for you.

Hailing from Boston, The Dirty Dishes are a psychedelic/shoegaze band led by Jenny Tuite, whose lush and haunting voice has stuck in our heads for a hot minute now. Combined with a eclectic rhythm section that accentuates their music’s idiosyncratic qualities, Dirty Dishes remind us of classic Smashing Pumpkins/My Bloody Valentine jawns; with an extra dollop of pop sweetness and manic energy ala Deerhoof. The Dirty Dishes have shared the stage with the likes of Passion Pit and Autolux, and recently played the Converse showcase at this year’s SXSW. We didn’t go to SXSW because honestly - fuck Austin and that cheater Lance Armstrong. New York has it all: automatic touring destination status, dope venues, free summer concerts, and a surfeit of braless, unemployed hipster honeys who make the Saudi summer balls heat oh so very bearable for us.

Also hailing from Boston, are the prolific and recklessly raucous quartet Grass Is Green. Straight up this band packs an eff’ing wallop while touches upon the sounds of some of our favorite bands – Fugazi, Minutemen, and Unwound. Their knotty and frantic homespun songs double back on themselves with fascinating and intricate playing, and reach a fevered pitch live in concert. Grass Is Green have toured this year relentlessly, sharing the spotlight with no less of acts than Trail Of Dead and This Will Destroy You.

But on the real, it wouldn’t be Northside without some quality New York talent. For any of you who know us you’re well aware how hard we rep NY. To this end we have two killer up and comers from Brooklyn: Grandfather and Madame Trashy.

 

Grandfather have gotten a lot of love from us this past year for their searing live show and really freaking solid debut Why I’d Try. Since recording their Steve Albini-engineered debut, the band has been blowing through shows here in the Northeast, including opening up for the immortal Mission Of Burma. Recently beefing up their sound by adding a new drummer and bassist and sliding drummer/vocalist Josh Hoffman to lead vocals, the band has emerged with a cleaner and more physically intense presence and sound. If you can imagine that!

Also on tap are Williamsburg’s own Madam Trashy, whose debut Book Of Dead was mixed by Jack Endino (Nirvana/Soundgarden) and brings forth all that stoned goodness we love from listening to bands like Queens of The Stone Age, Kyuss and The Melvins. Trashy’s simplicity is why we mess them with so hard. Expertly mixing the captain crunch rumble of the aforementioned bands with their own driving melodies and clean arrangements, this band is strikingly composed only one record in. They let their songs come to the fore, simply and directly without mucking things up with unnecessary sonics. 

No lo-fi fuzzy snorefest here: these are bands that demand precision, clarity, and a deliberating compositional process.

Another potential but possibly worthless benefit of coming to our showcase is to come out and meet us, the brain trust behind Big Ass Lens and the countless crimes that were committed in it's name. To find us, look for a bunch of the koolest kats you’ve seen wielding large camera lenses and possibly being too housed to shoot usable footage. Might even buy you a drink and and let you touch the lens if you are chill and have brought 2-10 paying customers to the show.