Mike Wexler + MAN BENU
Monday, September 19th Mike Wexler is a self-taught guitarist and singer whose long-form songs incorporate extended instrumental fingerstyle guitar passages, a post-lyric lyrical sensibility and the desire to reconcile the demand of song structure to those of contemporary investigations into the nature of acoustic phenomena à la the spectral school of composition. His musical inquiries probe the progression, the drone, the single tone as a complex of sounds--in short, to make of the tension between harmonic movement and stasis something more than an equilibrium. Wexler also draws inspiration from songwriting auteurs past and present who bring to bear the influence of forward looking musicians and writers on their work (Scott Walker, Robert Wyatt and Annette Peacock spring to mind as spiritually kindred, although not particularly apt as comparisons). MAN BENU is a recently formed trio of two guitars and drums. Songwriter and singer Bentley Anderson strives for a marriage between minimalism sonic drone noise and the pop hook. The constant yearning for wanting to thrash is somehow avoided for well-crafted dueling guitar parts and inventive drumming. Or, that could be total bullshit. |
