Fri 6/19 @ 8PM
Akron quintet Golems of the Red Planet has a unique mission: to apply 3rd wave surf-style exploration to avant-garde composer John Zorn’s Masada songbook. These were songs he started composing more than 30 years ago, based on modes found in Ashkenazi (European) Jewish music. It now comprises three books and 613 songs.
“Each of these compositions is written on half a sheet of staff paper (no more than five staves) and written to be performed by any instrumentation,” Golems’ website tells us. “These pieces have been performed by genres as diverse as piano jazz, string quartet, hardcore, all female acapella, salsa, afrobeat, and many many more…. but never SURF! And as many of us know, the best surf music uses middle-eastern scales.”
Well, that’s certainly … off the beaten path, you might be thinking. In recent decades, other bands have tweaked classic ’60s surf music in unusual ways but none has done what this one is doing.
But if you look at the five Golems’ backgrounds, you’ll see that “off the beaten path” is where they’ve always wandered. Guitarist Harvey Gold was a co-founder on Akron’s most iconoclastic band on the 1970s, Tin Huey. Devo was more famous but Tin Huey was the most experimental.
Golems’ drummer Bob Ethington is a fixture in the Akron music scene: he also played with Huey but is best known for his years with the city’s New Wave stars Unit 5. Currently in addition to Golems, he leads an “ambient free jazz fusion” ensemble.
Bassist Mark Allender is classically trained but has played with avant-garde jazz groups. He’s the band’s main connection to Zorn, a superfan who manages the Masada World website. Cellist Matt Reese also has classical trained and played in the 90s with Flying Carpet People; he’s also played with former Tin Huey/Waitresses member Chris Butler.
And the band’s newest member, violinist Jen Singleton Richeson is yet another classically trained musician gone astray, as it were, picking up her skills and taking them into parts unknown. She and Allender played together in Kent’s Pointless Orchestra.
With violin and cello, Golems of the Red Planet is unlike any surf band you’ve heard. Now they’re celebrating the release of their debut album, Surf Masada: The Compositions of John Zorn, with a show at the Beachland Tavern. They’ll be joined by another adventurous 3rd wave surf band, Jupiter 2.
Go here for tickets.