A few fresh events worth adding to your calendar.
Kamasi Washington.
We’ve always got an eye on shows being announced in Madison. Here’s what stands out from the past week’s newly added events.
Peaking Lights. Aug. 27, High Noon Saloon. One-time Madison duo Peaking Lights have traversed a lot of dub-informed ground between full-on atmospheric experiments and gently psych-tinged pop. They return here behind the recently released album The Fifth State Of Consciousness.
Snake On The Lake. Sept. 9, Frequency. WSUM’s annual fall shindig is always something of a hodge-podge, with little thematic or musical continuity from year to year. In its second year at The Frequency, the lineup features the blissed-out pop of New Jersey’s Ducktails and the Hawaiian music/funk hybrids of Madison’s Kainalu.
Metz. Sept. 23, Majestic. In addition to having a couple of solidly skull-rattling noise-rock albums under their belts (a third, Strange Peace, is due out the day before this show), Toronto’s Metz are a viscerally satisfying live band.
Cousin Stizz. Oct. 18, High Noon Saloon. The promising Boston rapper visits behind his latest release, One Night Only.
Kamasi Washington. Nov. 8, Majestic. We’re already getting a Thundercat show this fall, so it’s a treat to get another of the transcendent searchers from the Brainfeeder/Flying Lotus/Kendrick Lamar orbit. Tenor saxophonist Kamasi Washington and band play jazz that sprawls from restrained tenderness to exuberant, overloaded territory that recalls Pharoah Sanders or Sun Ra. I’m not big on predictions but it’s hard to imagine this not being an intense and beautiful live show.