meatspirit

Alice and Michi

Alice and Michi is a collaboration with my friend, Michi Wiancko, a violinist/composer who splits her time between Brooklyn and rural Massachusetts. We met in Cleveland in the mid-nineties and decided to write and record an album together about 15 years later.

 

It was just before 2011, a jazzy feel-time season. Michi wrote Alice a letter urging her to come to New York and collaborate on a musical project. Alice was driving around Los Angeles deep in her annual autumnal malaise. Skimming the message at a stoplight before stopping at her favorite Subway, she only read the remainder just before going to bed.

Three months later Alice arrived in NYC with two suitcases, a snare and cymbals but it was unclear who would be playing what instrument. Would Alice be attacking the drums and Michi the violin? Would they record the sounds of appliances and street fights? Who would be singing? Nobody knew but Michi welcomed Alice into her home and the musical experiments began.

The resulting album ‘Strange Bloom’ incorporates lush vocals, richly-stacked violins, bizarre forays into electronica, and an arsenal of unexpected instruments: cardboard tubes, trash-filled wastebaskets, live trumpets, howling wolves, and setting 065 on the Casio. It is the fruit of a 6-month collaboration between two friends who learned the beauty of experimentation, hard work and living according to the creative dictum of “Let’s try it!”
 

VIDEOS

 

AUDIO

 

Website: www.aliceandmichi.co.uk

 

Eagle and Talon

Experimental rock duo with Kim Talon & friends from 2003 to 2011. Met in Los Angeles via Craigslist. Cut teeth on open mic nights at Mr. T’s Bowl and played first show at Solutions (audio repair shop). Recorded 2 EP’s and an LP, and traumatized many sound engineers. Toured the east coast, west coast and Europe (the German squats tour!).

 

BIO EXCERPT

LA experimental rock duo, Eagle and Talon, have been confusing people since their formation. Splicing angular guitars and intricate rhythms with casio and scraps of musical theater, Kim and Alice Talon forge a sound that makes you wonder whether you’re being pet by a kitten or mauled by a lynx.

Kim Talon started composing music to temper the arctic conditions of her hometown, Winnipeg, Manitoba. At 18, she moved to NYC in search of warmer climates and a career in tap dancing. Meanwhile, Alice Talon was busy abandoning a career in classical piano to search for her ancestors. She left Cleveland for Taiwan, where she spent afternoons drumming in the basements of Taipei.

The two met in LA and played their first show on Valentine’s Day. In 2006, they self-released their debut EP ‘Eagle and Talon Cares.’ Following their North American with Sia, the group retrenched in Los Angeles, began working on a new album and became fixtures of the Eastside music scene. They have shared stages with Scout Niblett, Obi Best, Clues, Efterklang, the Airborne Toxic Event, Benji Hughes, The Mae-Shi, Bodies of Water, the Pity Party and the Happy Hollows.

In June 2009, Eagle and Talon released their first full-length record, ‘Thracian.’ The album was praised as an intelligent and difficult collection of “wild, wonky post-punk” (Washington Post), “a perfect antidote to all the magisterial synth irony that’s been all the rage… for fans of Mary Timony, Sleater-Kinney, and the Breeders’ Pod” (Elle). The LA Weekly called the album “positively entrancing.” Kim and Alice toured the US and Europe in support of the album.

In February 2011, Eagle and Talon released their second ep `IN MANILA.’ Featuring comedian/musician Reggie Watts on bass vocals as well as other close friends in the LA music community, the 5-song ep saw the duo accessing some of the dancier/Caribbean aspects of their repertoire.

VIDEOS


Directed and animated by JC Wegman. (2012)


Directed and animated by JC Wegman. (2012)


Directed by Eagle and Talon. (2011)

 

LISTEN TO MUSIC AT: www.eagleandtalon.com