Vibraphones, various rigged percussion instruments and a mixture of live and recorded vocals will replace the traditional guitar, bass, drum combination that is the usual at the Union Bar & Grill.
nobrow.music.collective, led by graduate percussion student Aaron Butler with Joseph Van Hassel, Turner Matthews and Jake Schlaerth, will be performing a 30-minute, 11-movement piece titled “Hanuman’s Leap,” composed by Elliot Cole, who will join no.brow in the performance.
Cole originally composed “Hanuman’s Leap” for an eight-piece choir in New York, but this performance of the piece shows a much different composition, with Cole performing the vocal parts by himself using backing tracks, and joined by the no.brow.’s percussion quartet.
“I was impatient and scrappy and I wanted to (perform the piece) myself,” said Cole, a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton said.
The idea behind the piece was to tell a story by using his own voice in to tell it, backed by the percussion, Cole said. He ranges from extremely low registers reminiscent of throat singing to higher pitches to achieve it.
“I wanted to find some registers and use those different registers in a dynamic, fun, musical way,” Cole explained.
The piece blends many different genres together that may sound odd on paper, Butler said, but in the context of hearing Cole’s music, it sounds much more normal.
“It takes all these things like beat poetry and hip-hop and Elliot somehow slams all these things together and makes this thing you don’t even second-guess that he weaves all these disparate elements together,” Butler said.
Because the show is taking place at the Union, Butler said he booked other acts to make it more of a rock show than a performance at a concert hall.
In addition to no.brow.’s performance with Cole, a duo of ambient drone musicians Andrew Lampela and Jacob Koestler will perform, with projections to pair with the music. Cincinnati jazz group Us, Today and Athens experimental pop group Popsicle Rose will round out the show.
“This isn’t a normal thing that would happen in Athens,” said Turner Matthews, of nobrow. and Popsicle Rose. “It’s really cool to play at the Union because it fits the piece because it’s pretty metal and cool.”
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If You Go:
WHAT: no.brow.music.collective with Elliot Cole, and Andrew Lampela and Jacob Koestler, Us, Today, and Popsicle Rose
When: 9:30 p.m., Thursday
Where: The Union Bar & Grill,
18 W. Union St.
Admission: $5
