One of Cleveland’s hottest bands is almost ready to unleash its
full-length debut. HotChaCha has finished recording The
World’s Hardest Working Telescope & the Violent Birth of Stars with Ryan Weitzel, who engineered and co-produced with the band. He’ll
release the all-girl quartet’s album in October on his Exit Stencil
label.
“What you hear [live] is what you will get,” says singer Jovana
Batkovic. “There are a couple more layers of sound on the album.
Most of the songs have been played live, and there are a few that have
not. So it will be a nice change for fans.”
The disc includes nine songs and a short guitar interlude. Weitzel
says he thinks they capture the group’s raw-nerve alliance of
garage-pop, melodic punk and jarring alternative. The band plans to
release another EP this winter.
HotChaCha plays the Grog Shop (2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland
Hts.) on Sunday, Aug. 30. Child Bite, DD/MM/YYYY, and Tiger Fighter
open. Doors 9 p.m.; tickets are $6.
The overdue book about Nine Inch Nails’ Cleveland-birthed
Pretty Hate Machine may never arrive. The editor
of the 33 1/3 series — a book series about classic albums —
says he’s “pretty sure [the] book isn’t going to happen.” Youngstown
native Daphne Carr, series editor of Da Capo’s Best Music
Writing, was working on it.
After wrapping a midwest tour to Minneapolis and back, the La
Rock Inc. collective returns home with a three-CD release party on
Friday, Aug. 28, at Bela Dubby (13321 Madison Ave.). The indie
microlabel will unveil Presque Vu‘s Capgras, Mush Mouth‘s To Be Continued … and Soapbox Prophet‘s Sermons on the Subtleties of Love and Hate.
Label head Johnny La Rock says, “The Presque Vu disc is sort
of [like] the Postal Service meets Atmosphere. Mush’s disc is very
old-school — sort of a modern-day Sugarhill Gang or Kurtis Blow.
Soapbox Prophet is folk-punk, [with] some spoken-word.”
All three perform, along with MC Homeless, Mic Ra and DJ Furface.
Admission is free. CDs are $5 each.
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2009.