NOISE NOISE NOISE. That’s what this weekend is all about, from a noise rap showcase at the newly beautified Red Eyed Fly to new noise in the surf rock scene at Mohawk to amp melting brutalism at Red 7. Best pack yr ear plugs, kids.

Friday

I’m as surprised as you are that our weekend recs are led off by a Red Eyed Fly event, but here we are, in the new Red River era, where former pay-to-play hubs have been resurrected as hail maries for whatever the fuck a cultural district actually is. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised, though, since this is an event headlined by the one and only B L A C K I E, whose battle cry is ALL CAPS, WITH SPACES and whose mission is to tear people’s faces off in spaces both traditional and absurd. I remember watching B L A C K I E at Free Week one year with Dylan Garsee, over at Club DeVille (shout out to further Red River death rattles). For some incomprehensible reason B L A C K I E had been paired with Sorne and all of our friends with less, uh, open minded taste flocked inside while a handful of us gathered for B L A C K I E’s outdoor stage performance. That show started with B L A C K I E throwing the mic onto the ground, shouting “fuck this” as he leapt off the stage and proceeded to stomp into the middle of the crowd and deliver an unmic’d performance right into each of our stunned visages. It wasn’t a gimmick, B L A C K I E is just the kind of performer who wants you looking right in his eyes as he does his thing. So props to Chief and TheDoomsdayDevice for celebrating his Transition Man album release by pairing up with a human doomsday device.

Saturday

Seattle’s La Luz have been of interest to me for a while, so it’s nice to see the surfy girl group charm of their new album Weirdo Shrine picking up some big time accolades. What hasn’t been as nice is the general critical ignorance of La Luz’s status as a natural evolution of a Pacific Northwest tradition– surf music. I mean, the AV Club’s review of the album even went so far as to claim Weirdo Shrine was very odd because the “Puget Sound is not a place particularly renowned for its tasty waves,” to which I say, are you fucking kidding? As a former PNWer, I’ve got to call bullshit on that remark since the genre was more or less birthed by Tacoma’s own The Ventures. What I’m getting at here is that being surprised by Seattleites La Luz absolutely killing it at modernizing surf is like being equally surprised that Austinites Kay Odyssey are doing similarly tasty modernization of psych. So I am shocked– SHOCKED, I tell you!– that Transmission would think to pair these two excellent revivalists at Mohawk Saturday night. Fucking critics, amiright?

Since absolutely nothing is happening on Sunday, we’re doubling down on Saturday plans. Hometown heroes Carl Sagan’s Skate Shoes landed a choice gig opening up for Toronto brutalists METZ at Red 7 and we can say with no hesitation whatsoever that this will be the heaviest show all month. CSSS packs a heavy punch on their own but to bring them together with METZ is like basically daring the New Madrid Fault to buck until the Mississippi river runs backwards again (we’re pretty much right on schedule, anyway). But where CSSS harbors a secret melodic edge to their SST meets Touch and Go assault, METZ give no fucks for tunefulness and just want to mess you up.

Nick Hanover got his degree from Disneyland, but he’s the last of the secret agents and he’s your man. Which is to say you can find his particular style of espionage here at Ovrld as well as Loser City, where he mostly writes about comics. You can also flip through his archives at  Comics Bulletin, which he is formerly the Co-Managing Editor of, and Spectrum Culture, where he contributed literally hundreds of pieces for a few years. Or if you feel particularly adventurous, you can always witness his odd .gif battles with his friends and enemies on twitter: @Nick_Hanover