TRIO KOBAYASHI @ Echo

5pm / $8 / 18+

Come and celebrate in your costumes with Timur and the Dime Museum the WICKED NIGHTMARE HALLOWEEN. Featuring very special and renowned guests from around Los Angeles and beyond: Noah and the MegaFauna, Ann Magnuson, Ursula Knudson, Veronique Chevalier, Dorian Wood, Charles Bernstein, Kristian Hoffman, Trio Kobayashi, Liberty Larsen, and Kari Rae Seekins.

Timur and The Dime Museum || Facebook|| Watch
The dark glam opera band Timur and the Dime Museum fuses indie & vaudeville sounds, creating a rich amalgam of sensibilities with Bjork fierceness, Rufus Wainwright sensitivity and David Bowie spark. Formed in 2010 as part of America’s Got Talent spot & a close collaboration with the Klaus Nomi songwriter Kristian Hoffman, the band was recently profiled in LA Weekly’s BEST OF LA PEOPLE ISSUE 2011. The band always strives to create unconventional sounds in familiar and original songs, combining voice with electric guitar, upright bass, accordion, bass clarinet, viola and drums. “The charismatic tenor” (LA Times) Timur, a noted Kazakh-American interpreter of contemporary and cross-cultural music, and the members of the band, all are graduates of California Institute of the Arts, and individually, have performed in countless major projects, productions, festivals and venues around the world. The band’s stunning intensity brings flourishing and heart-breaking songs to cure the new depression with imagination and steampunk attitude.

Noah Lit & Megafauna || Listen
When Noah Lit’s former indie rock band Oliver Future went the way of the mastodon, he did the only logical next step… gave up electric guitar and dove head first into the world of acoustic Gypsy Jazz guitar. Practicing the dizzying scales, arpeggios, and antiquated chords and patterns opened a song writing treasure trove and thus… Noah and the MegaFauna was born.
Digging into the world of Gypsy Jazz guitar reminded Noah that while rock and roll is a large part of his record collection, it is only a part. Django Reinhardt, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong, not to mention Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, Jacques Brel, and Leonard Cohen all loom as large as The Beatles, Radiohead or The Kinks. As Noah puts it, “Anthems for a Stateless Nation is a humble attempt at making a record that sounds like my record collection.” It is a new vision of old world aesthetics. It aims to bridge Noah’s love for Django Reinhardt Gypsy Jazz’s guitar chops and violin solo’s, the orchestrating colors of Ellington and Mingus, the passionate story telling of Waits or Dylan, and the harmonic hookiness of The Beatles or The Kinks. Thematically, it is a pre, and post-apocalyptic tale of displacement, wandering, panic, and ultimately redemption.
To accomplish this admittedly ambitious vision, Noah was clearly going to need help. He contacted his friend and longtime producer Adam Lasus (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Yo La Tengo, Clem Snide) and began scheming. His brother Joshua Lit (Oliver Future) was added on Piano and Accordion. His brother Gabriel Lit on clarinet and Bass Clarinet and was assigned to help arrange the horns and string parts. Gabriel’s girlfriend Naomi Wen supplied the virtuosic violin licks and played the Erhu, a 2-string traditional Chinese fiddle. Shiben Battacharaya and Chris Lovejoy supplied upright bass and symphonic drumming, respectively. Noah’s cousin Travis Knight added to the family affair by playing percussion. An eight piece horn section was recorded in The Bronx, New York with the help of Joe Rogers (Back to Blonde, Moby). World renowned Gypsy guitarist Gonzalo Bergara was added on bandoneon and lead guitar on “Never Go Home”. Finally, guest drumming was Noah’s boxing buddy Steve Ferrone (Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers, George Harrison).
To accentuate the cinematic feel of the record, Noah arranged several duets with amazing singers and jazz vocalists. Kat Edmonson, Marianne Dissard, Emily St. Amand-Poliakoff, Mindy Gaspar, and Joshua Lit all make appearances. The record also allowed Noah to collaborate with several of his favorite writers. Josh Lit, and Noah’s friends Josh Seidenfeld (Boy in the Bubble) and William Chancellor (author: A Brave Man 7 Stories Tall), helped craft lyrics and imagery for several songs. The final stage was the visual art work created by artist Michael Garza (A Scanner Darkly, Oliver Future).
Anthems for a Stateless Nation was conceived, recorded to tape, and mastered in six months and will be released July 2011. The majority of what the listener hears was recorded live and often in one take to capture the energy and uniqueness of each performance. While it is technically Noah Lit’s first solo project, all of the names mentioned above reveal it as a vision brought together by collaboration, trust, and friendship.
It is Nightmare Pop, a modern day allegory of Noah’s Arc, a zombie apocalypse, Global Warming: the musical, indie folk run through music school, a big band swinging, a small gypsy ensemble moaning, a convergence of influence and orchestration that represents the ever shrinking world we live in, a wanderer’s diary played on instruments that can be carried on your back, a singer/songwriter/ indie-jazz record that dares it’s player’s to growl, squawk, squeak, and squeal, and it’s listeners to climb aboard for an eclectic but concise vision.