Sunday, October 25
Sick Gazelle
Cyrus Pireh
Doors and tickets TBA
Sick Gazelle
Cyrus Pireh
Doors and tickets TBA
With their second LP Veld, Sick Gazelle take their cosmic and instantaneous group communications to new levels of clarity and structure, without losing the spark of the jam. The band’s debut album Odum happened when longtime Chicago underground players Eric Block (Veloce) and Bruce Lamont (Yakuza) invited Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) to join them for a last-minute improv recording session. Those scattered hours in the studio laid the groundwork for Sick Gazelle’s sound; Shelley’s rolling rhythms interlocking with sometimes dissonant, sometimes celestial guitar textures from Block, and layers of saxophone and processed vocalizations from Lamont gliding over the surface.
Veld expands on these beginnings in every way, most significantly by bringing Douglas McCombs (Tortoise) into the equation on bass. Though these five tracks are sculpted from improvisations, they’ve been refined into song forms that illuminate the strengths of both the individual players and the chemistry of the quartet version of the combo. This comes through in Veld’s moments of reflective subtlety on tracks like “I’ll Come Running,” in the foreboding tension of the cinematic “Ocean Always Wins,” as well as in the charged grooves and dubby undercurrents of the sideways rocker “Hippies.”
“Cyrus Pireh's new release Thank You, Guitar, [is] his latest stab at ‘transcendental shred electric guitar music.’ Pireh, a self-professed anarchist and presumed enemy of music-as-sport, upcycles the 32nd-note neck sprint into a mesmeric boil played and recorded with little intervening electronic trickery other than a Digitech DD5 and mysterious amp modifications.
The end result sounds like Pireh's plugged a quarter-inch jack into each of the listener's eardrums, a quick digital delay ping-ponging across the frontal lobes, the wet and dry signal of his nine-string axe all but indistinguishable. Indeed, Pireh views his maximalist double-handed scrabble as a mirror in which the listener might visualize all manner of details in its rapidly self-propagating tonal and rhythmic tapestry.” –Tom Carter
GISES A New Celestial Film by Kevin Jerome Everson
On view 11 am–5 pm
Thu. Oct. 15 • Thu. Oct. 22 • Sat. Oct. 24
Thu. Nov. 5 • Sat. Nov. 7 • Thu. Nov. 12 • Sat. Nov. 14
Clara Stanton Jones Friends Auditorium, Detroit Public Library | Main Branch
On view 11 am–5 pm
Thu. Oct. 15 • Thu. Oct. 22 • Sat. Oct. 24
Thu. Nov. 5 • Sat. Nov. 7 • Thu. Nov. 12 • Sat. Nov. 14
Clara Stanton Jones Friends Auditorium, Detroit Public Library | Main Branch
Globally recognized for his prolific body of work featuring over 300 films, Kevin Jerome Everson has developed a distinctive moving-image practice attentive to labor, gesture, duration, and the textures of everyday life. Gises (2026) is Everson’s newest celestial film, shot from the unique vantage point of metro Detroit, and is the ninth work in his ongoing body of films devoted to celestial phenomena. Created at the Stargate Observatory in southeastern Michigan with generous assistance from the Warren Astronomical Society, this new film extends Everson’s decade-long engagement with all things superlunary: the sun, the moon, eclipses, and other stellar phenomena.
Working with Super 8 and 16mm Bolex cameras fastened to Stargate’s Kalinowski-Khula telescope, Everson observes the heavens through the material and optical possibilities of photochemical film, tracing the sun’s movement through changing registers of light, duration, and perception. The title Gises comes from the Potawatomi language, referring to the sun but also encompassing the moon and seasonal changes tracked through celestial cycles that have guided traditional harvesting and life in this region for millennia.
This project is made possible by many funders and partners, including the Knight Arts Foundation, Detroit Public Library, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council. Gises (2026) is a production of trilobite-arts DAC and Picture Palace Pictures. All films appear courtesy of the artist, trilobite-arts DAC, and Picture Palace Pictures. Images © Kevin Jerome Everson, courtesy the artist, trilobite-arts DAC, and Picture Palace Pictures.
Special thanks to Madeleine Molyneaux, Picture Palace Pictures, Cully Sommers, Detroit Public Library, and Warren Astronomical Society / Stargate Observatory members Jonathan Kade, Riyad Matti, Adrian Bradley, Mark Kedzior, and Jeff MacLeod.
Portrait © Oona Mosna courtesy Media City Film Festival.