Hangedup
Hangedup is the Montreal-based duo of Gen Heistek (viola) and Eric Craven (drums). The two met in 1995 while playing in Sackville and formed Hangedup in 1999. They released their eponymous debut in May 2001. Kicker in Tow followed in October 2002 and Clatter for Control in April 2005.
Hangedup play battle hymns for shut-ins, tightrope walkers, and urban bicyclists. Hangedup channel dead Roma musicians from Slavic republics, playing east European folk tunes backwards, skipping every 3rd note. Hangedup write road songs for model train enthusiasts. Hangedup compose soundtracks for slow-motion automobile accidents and use leaded gasoline every chance they get.
Hangedup are unique operators of their chosen instruments, and have mastered a signature sound that is well ahead, and far behind, the times. Heistek’s vertigo-inducing viola runs through hallucinating loopers and warranty-voided amplifiers. Craven’s inimitable sound fuses auto shop discards with home-wiring experiments and fifteen-year-old drum skins. Sometimes soaring, occasionally distressing, Hangedup are the sound of tomorrow, only tomorrow was this morning, just before you left the house. And you left the stove on.
Hangedup has toured extensively in Europe and North America, including performances at All Tomorrow’s Parties in England, the Printemps de Bourges in France, the Domino festival in Belgium. At the Rhaaa Lovely and K-RAA-K festivals, also in Belgium, they headlined and were widely declared the highlight of these events. The K-RAA-K show led to friendship and collaboration with legendary violin minimalist Tony Conrad, who also played that night. Conrad joined Hangedup for several North American shows and a series of recording sessions in 2004. These recordings are set to finally see the light of day as Transit of Venus, to be released in June 2012 as part of our Musique Fragile Volume 02 box set.
Since moving to Montreal in 1987, Gen Heistek has been a member of many bands, including Pest 5000, Sackville, Set Fire To Flames and The Mile-End Ladies’ String Auxiliary. She has played with Sam Shalabi, Elizabeth Anka Vajagic and many others. She wrote for CBC Radio’s Brave New Waves and now co-owns Local 23 and General 54, the former a fripperie and the latter a purveyor of locally made stuff.
Eric Craven moved to Montreal in 1993, having previously played in various punk bands in his native Victoria. He has been a member of Shortwave, Sackville and Blackout, and has thrown down his unparalleled rhythm thing, on record and in concert, with Mitchell Akiyama, Polmo Polpo, Elizabeth Anka Vajagic, Silver Mt. Zion and Hrsta, among many others. He composes extensively for dance in Montreal, and is currently tending to an impressive bicycle graveyard in his back yard.
After a several year break, the band reunited to perform at the Godspeed-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties in December 2010.
Hangedup play battle hymns for shut-ins, tightrope walkers, and urban bicyclists. Hangedup channel dead Roma musicians from Slavic republics, playing east European folk tunes backwards, skipping every 3rd note. Hangedup write road songs for model train enthusiasts. Hangedup compose soundtracks for slow-motion automobile accidents and use leaded gasoline every chance they get.
Hangedup are unique operators of their chosen instruments, and have mastered a signature sound that is well ahead, and far behind, the times. Heistek’s vertigo-inducing viola runs through hallucinating loopers and warranty-voided amplifiers. Craven’s inimitable sound fuses auto shop discards with home-wiring experiments and fifteen-year-old drum skins. Sometimes soaring, occasionally distressing, Hangedup are the sound of tomorrow, only tomorrow was this morning, just before you left the house. And you left the stove on.
Hangedup has toured extensively in Europe and North America, including performances at All Tomorrow’s Parties in England, the Printemps de Bourges in France, the Domino festival in Belgium. At the Rhaaa Lovely and K-RAA-K festivals, also in Belgium, they headlined and were widely declared the highlight of these events. The K-RAA-K show led to friendship and collaboration with legendary violin minimalist Tony Conrad, who also played that night. Conrad joined Hangedup for several North American shows and a series of recording sessions in 2004. These recordings are set to finally see the light of day as Transit of Venus, to be released in June 2012 as part of our Musique Fragile Volume 02 box set.
Since moving to Montreal in 1987, Gen Heistek has been a member of many bands, including Pest 5000, Sackville, Set Fire To Flames and The Mile-End Ladies’ String Auxiliary. She has played with Sam Shalabi, Elizabeth Anka Vajagic and many others. She wrote for CBC Radio’s Brave New Waves and now co-owns Local 23 and General 54, the former a fripperie and the latter a purveyor of locally made stuff.
Eric Craven moved to Montreal in 1993, having previously played in various punk bands in his native Victoria. He has been a member of Shortwave, Sackville and Blackout, and has thrown down his unparalleled rhythm thing, on record and in concert, with Mitchell Akiyama, Polmo Polpo, Elizabeth Anka Vajagic, Silver Mt. Zion and Hrsta, among many others. He composes extensively for dance in Montreal, and is currently tending to an impressive bicycle graveyard in his back yard.
After a several year break, the band reunited to perform at the Godspeed-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties in December 2010.
You could certainly call us pleased to announce the imminent release of Musique Fragile Volume 02, the second in our series of limited-edition, artwork-intensive box sets featuring three full-length albums by three different artists. (See here for a refresher on Volume 01.)
Contributors to Volume 02 are:
KANADA 70 • Vamp Ire
PACHA • Affaires Étrangères
HANGEDUP & TONY CONRAD • Transit Of Venus
The set will be available June 26 on heavyweight vinyl and as a digital bundle. The vinyl set will be limited to 500 hand-numbered copies, lovingly designed and hand-assembled, available for pre-order here:
3x180gLP • PRE-ORDER
Each LP comes in its own jacket accompanied by a pull-out poster, and all three albums are housed in a lovely screenprinted slipcover box (pictured above). Records are pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl and the box, jackets and posters are all screenprinted by Jesse Purcell at Repetitive Press.
Brief descriptions of the albums are included below; for the full run-down check our release page. Over the next three weeks we'll be revealing album-specific artwork and some free MP3s, but for now check out this mixtape that features a half hour of music pulled from all three albums....
As always, thanks for listening.
Kanada 70 is the home-recording project of Toronto's Craig Dunsmuir (known for his work as one half of Glissandro 70 (with Sandro Perri) and as an encyclopedic musicologist on staff at Toronto's Soundscapes). Vamp Ire spans a wide range of influences, from abstract techno, industrial and noise music to prog-rock, African funk, no wave and metal, and opens a compelling window to Craig's subtle, introverted and brilliant sensibility.
Pacha is the work of prolific percussionist and composer Pierre-Guy Blanchard, a fixture of Montreal's various experimental and folk music communities, whose drumming has graced albums by Black Ox Orkestar and Sam Shalabi's Land of Kush. Affaires Étrangères, a product of Pierre-Guy's deep commitment to the development of his craft paired with frequent voyages abroad, features intensely satisfying rhythm-heavy instrumentals often propelled by fried, amped-up Middle-Eastern synth lines and sprinkled with guitar, bass and oud along with the odd looped field recording. Think early Trans Am if they had come out of Cairo or Beirut, or Oneida in their motorik mode and with an Arabic pop fixation.
Hangedup & Tony Conrad Transit Of Venus documents a fertile meeting of the legendary violin minimalist and one of the past decade's finest instrumental punk bands. Tony Conrad needs no introduction, having made crucial contributions to avant-garde experimental film and sound since the 1960s. Hangedup – the Montréal duo of Eric Craven and Gen Heistek – released three searing albums of steam-engine percussion and layered, distorted, dive-bombing viola on Constellation in the early 2000s. Culled from recordings captured during various sessions as this trio prepared for a series of collaborative concerts in 2004, the album includes some enormous slabs of drone rock alongside more decomposed pieces and gorgeously gritty string duos.
On November 21, the mighty Hangedup will shake the walls of Montreal's Sala Rossa, to accompany a premiere screening of the new documentary film Blood, Sweat & Vinyl:
About the film:
Featuring Neurosis, ISIS, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Pelican, Oxbow, Evangelista, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, Cave In, and many others whose music and art found ideal homes in the artist-run record labels of Hydra Head, Neurot, and Constellation.
These labels combine hard-to-define, heavy music with a visual aesthetic that has enraptured worldwide fans, without the need for radio or corporate media outlets. They uphold the legacy of treating music as an art form, not as a product.
Check out the trailer below, and listen to Hangedup's "Klang Klang" if you haven't already. There's a Facebook event here, if you're the type.
MP3 - "Klang Klang"
Yes, it's June, and yes, Suoni Per Il Popolo has started again, and we're excited/overwhelmed as usual. Among the long list of truly amazing shows at this year's festival, consider checking out some of the following:
KHÔRA + NICK KUEPFER + SILENT LAND TIME MACHINE
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June 10 • Casa del Popolo • $9 • FACEBOOK
2/3 of the first installment of Musique Fragile kick off a month-long tour with Silent Land Time Machine, from Austin. Download MP3's below and check out video of a Khôra performance in Toronto.
KHÔRA - "Body Aperture"
NICK KUEPFER - "Corpse in the Wildflowers"
Khôra (Live 11/19/10) from The Momo Art Law on Vimeo.
COLIN STETSON + HANGEDUP
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June 17 • Sala Rossa • $12 • FACEBOOK
People keep saying Colin and his saxophone are "a force of nature"; Said the Gramophone said his new LP is "like being struck by a comet." It's all true.
Hangedup returned this past winter from a long hibernation, having lost none of the power that gave us all such beautiful, beautiful headaches in the early 2000's. Drums and viola and all kinds of heavy. MP3's and video below.
COLIN STETSON - "The stars in his head (Dark Lights Remix)"
HANGEDUP - "Klang Klang"
Colin Stetson: The stars in his head (Dark Lights Remix) from Constellation Records on Vimeo.
ERIC CHENAUX + DEAD RAT ORCHESTRA + Ô PAON
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June 20 • Casa del Popolo • $11
Eric Chenaux, our beloved Torontonian guitar sage - whose Warm Weather with Ryan Driver was described as a "quiet victory of subtlety and refined musicianship" by Line of Best Fit - returns to Montreal with a pile of friends and some truly breathtaking tunes. Check out a gorgeous new video for Eric's "Warm Charleston" below.
ERIC CHENAUX - "Warm Charleston"
ERIC CHENAUX - "Old Peculiar"
Warm Charleston - Eric Chenaux from Constellation Records on Vimeo.
The full calendar, with links to buy tickets online, is right here. Tickets can also be purchased in Montreal at L'Oblique, Phonopolis and Cheap Thrills.
For Hangedup, this will be a rekindling of the flame similar to Godspeed – the band has not played in several years and last performed in Europe in 2005. Eric Craven and Geneviève Heistek have continued to play drums and viola respectively in all sorts of projects in and around Montreal since putting their pummeling duo on ice mid-decade; they are well-primed to fire up the machine once again, and will also revisit a previous collaboration with Tony Conrad,
UPDATE: Hangedup will be performing at ATP with their own set as the sense-rattling dynamic duo that they are. The band is planning some stuff with Tony Conrad for 2011.
Equally momentous will be the first ever European performance by Land Of Kush. The uncategorisable and mesmerising out-music orchestra led by Sam Shalabi will re-fashion itself as a small ensemble for this performance (ATP couldn't spring for 30 musicians apparently - cheap bastards). We've seen Sam play in much smaller formations and been floored in complete but different ways by the results. With Radwan Moumneh (Jerusalem In My Heart) and regular Kush vocalist Ariel Engle forming the core, LoK is sure to provide an intense but presumably more intimate take on their inimitable psych-arabique sounds.
More info at the ATP site here.
No shows scheduled.
LIVE
BIKES IN WINTER
Volume 02
Musique Fragile 3x180gLP / DL
 | Volume 02 Musique Fragile 3x180gLP / DL |
CSTMF02
 | Clatter For ControlHangedup CD / 180gLP / DL |
CST034
 | Kicker In TowHangedup CD / LP / DL |
CST022
 | HangedupHangedup CD / LP / DL |
CST016
