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Andy Meyerson , percussionist and co-founder of iconoclastic chamber ensemble The Living Earth Show, is as proud of his debut solo album, My Side Of The Story, as he is amused by its cover art.

An established champion of innovative and experimental percussion music both in and out of his home region of the San Francisco Bay, Meyerson has commissioned dozens of new works from important voices of his generation, performed with Kronos Quartet and Sō Percussion, and serves as the Music Director for the multimedia dance company Post:Ballet and the drummer for rap-rock collaborative C O /\/\ /\/\ /\ /\/ D O, musical juggernaut dedicated to dismantling heteropatriarchy through militant, violently queer rap metal.

My Side of the Story is Meyerson's first recording project without his duo partner, guitarist Travis Andrews, yet fans of The Living Earth Show's progressive, ambitious energy will vibe with the album’s sonically diverse anthology of works for solo percussion and electronics, written for Meyerson by a bicoastal roster of composers stationed in The Bay (Samuel Carl Adams, Danny Clay) and The 5 Boroughs (Adrian Knight, Brendon Randall-Myers, Jude Traxler).

The five works span a gamut of aesthetic, from the physically-demanding performance of Brendon Randall-Myers’ raw, noise rock-influenced Sherlock Horse: Disintegration Machine, to Danny Clay’s viscerally relaxing ASMR production May you find what you're looking for, and remember what you have. Adrian Knight’s Humble Servant, a eulogy for Lisa McPherson, a member of the Church of Scientology who died under dubious circumstances, is a still life with vibraphone speaking in fragmentary, bittersweet melodies, in which the composer evokes his memory of McPherson.

Samuel Carl Adams’ Percussion Music for Robert and Andy, billed as a duo with choreographer Robert Dekkers, Meyerson’s partner in Post:Ballet, features agile square waves and rhythmically-panned drones supporting an airy-still passage for mallet rig. Conversely, Structural Harm leaves the convention of notating for performance altogether, sandblasting the MIDI data from Meyerson’s trigger-rigged drums with a digital kit of sound artist/composer Jude Traxler ’s own design.

My Side of the Story comes three years after The Living Earth Show’s High Art (Innova), which also featured works by Knight and Adams, and concurrently beside the band’s second LP, Dance Music (New Amsterdam). 

video: Sherlock Horse: DIsintegration Machine

M.O.T.H, the analog melodic noise project led by Grand Rapids stalwart ­turned­ Brooklyn transplant­ Matt Finch, has completed its sophomore album Westside Industrial. A reflection on social and commercial patterns of a changing city, M.O.T.H's sonic novella draws from firsthand perspectives of shifting demographics in Grand Rapids’ manufacturing district, the hyper-­renovated factory town of East Williamsburg, and Hamtramck, a Detroit neighborhood with a long history of coexisting arts and commerce.