These are the critic's picks I did that aired on WBUR's "Radio Boston" Thursday afternoon, "Superior Donuts," "Art," the Alloy Orchestra doing "Wild and Weird" and Shea Rose at Cafe 939

http://radioboston.wbur.org/2012/02/02/weekend-picks-6

Fri. Feb. 3

When you want to hear deep funk and psychedelia, where do you turn? To George Clinton, of course. (And George will be at Berklee in February doing a four-day session with students and concert Feb. 16.) But George isn't always around and at - well, ageless, it seems - he won't be around forever. So, how about ... Copenhagen? The Asteroids Galaxy Tour have been winning over audiences globally since 2007 with their unique brand of cutting edge, soulful, infectious pop. Nylon calls it: “A scintillating update to the Funkadelic sound” and Rolling Stone blurbs, that it's "a frothy retro-future party mix based in Sixties soul and Seventies funk, and buoyed by sci-fi synths and dub effects.” They begin a US tour at the end of January and land at the Middle East Downstairs Friday Feb. 3. Their new album, "Out of Frequency," dropped Tuesday. They are primarily sexy pixie singer Mette Lindberg and producer-keyboardist-songwriter Lars Iverson. Live, they're fleshed out by four other players including a horn section.

   They have a signature sound that infuses indie-pop with neo-psychedelia, dance and retro-futuristic soul. Consider the slinky “Major," a seductive slab of '70s blaxploitation-esque horn stabs and edgy vocals that are the perfect balance of commanding and sweet. Title track “Out Of Frequency” highlights the soulful side of the band with its smoky nostalgic atmosphere and “Fantasy Friend Forever” has all the elements of an ecstatic psych-pop explosion with it’s thumpin’ booty-shaking beat and addictive hooks.

Fri. Feb. 3

"In vain sounds like no piece you ever heard before," says Michel Galante, conductor for the Argento Chamber Ensemble, marveling as he introduces the 66-minute piece by Austrian composer Georg Freidrick Haas (in photo), a work he did 2000-2002. "When I first heard it in Vienna, I was shocked by the whole thing. .... this whole reainbow of sounds. you have the impression you're hearing electronic music and it's all done by acoustic instruments. you don't know where the sounds come from."

Here's what you'll hear at its Boston premiere at the Institute of Contemporary Art Friday Feb.3: Sound Icon, a 24-member chamber orchestra led by conductor Jeffrey Means, will play what's been called "an all-encompassing sensory experience, a masterwork for light and sound." For these rock ears, it sounds very Eno-esque, microtonal, a luminous sonic landscape of light and darkness. The idea? To expand the parameters of how listeners hear, see, and experience music, often while in total darkness. The work is monolithic yet intricate, with music that grows and re-circulates, gradually acquiring ­­new meaning in which light and dark become like sound and silence. Complete darkness falls during the most violent music, and the lack of any visual cues forces the listener to find new ways of coming to terms with the experience and the musicians to find ways of performing while blind. Haas explains, “We do not have any night in our modern life, but I think our body and our souls desire night, and I give this in my art. If we close our eyes, of course our ears are more sensitive." It's been on my earbuds for a while now and it's taken me to some beautiful, if, yes, dark places.

Take it in at http://youtu.be/9PtJH63D0YY

Fri. Feb. 3

In the last few years we’ve seen a lot of the Killers, the continued and surprising presence of the Killer (Jerry Lee Lewis) and even a reunion by Killing Joke.

However, the Kills, the noisy London based duo of singer-guitarist Alison Mosshart and guitarist-singer Jamie Hince, have been on the sidelines. Mosshart joined Jack White’s blues-rock project the Dead Weather and Hince, most famously, became engaged to supermodel Kate Moss.

But the Kills, formed a decade back in London, have released their fourth disc, “Blood Pressures,” their first in three years. We saw ‘em last spring on a club tour that stopped at the soldout Royale and returns there again Friday Feb. 3. About half of the raucous 70-minute set came from the new CD.

The disc is the Kills most expansive yet, with mellotron, piano and a backing choir, as Hince indulged his inner Roxy Music muse. But live, they churned out a minimalist attack, beginning with the ferocious duo, “No Wow” and “Future Starts Slow.”Hince’s guitar playing sounded like the aural equivalent of a vicious lightning strike.

It’s jarring, primal punk-blues with staccato bursts of agitated notes and chords coming mostly from Hince, with Mosshart contributing vocal wails. Programmed beats on the drum machine provided a backing that at times gave the Kills a big, roaring sound and a tribal beat.

ongoing – Sun. Feb. 5

Time stands still at Superior Donuts. It’s a small shop in uptown Chicago and the setting of Tracy Letts dramedy, also called, um, “Superior Donuts.” Has balding, pony-tailed owner Arthur Przbyszwski, played by great Boston actor Will LeBow, pissed his life away? Maybe. He’s 62. He fled the US for Toronto during the Vietnam War, and the last word his father said to him was a scream: “Coward!” He’s running the shop his father opened long ago because, well, it’s what he does. This place was here before Starbucks dominated the coffee landscape and before people began to view donuts as not the healthiest of breakfast options. The shop is certainly not bustling with customers – the only one we see is an old alcoholic woman, Lady Boyle (Ruth Gotha), who comes in for a morning freebee Most of what comes at him makes Arthur shrug; he’s past the point of caring much. His ex-wife is dead; he hasn’t spoken to his daughter in six years. Max Taresov (Steven Barkhimer) the Russian owner of a next-door electronics store would like to buy the place to expand his territory and Arthur resists. This may not be much, but it’s what he’s got and all he’s got.

As the play – directed by Spiro Veloudos and up at the Lyric Stage Theatre through Sunday Feb. 5 – opens we’re in the midst of that humble shop, just vandalized and graffiti tagged, with black and white cops James Bailey (De’Lon Grant) and Randy Osteen (Karen MacDonald) trying to figure out what happened. A feisty, but lonely, Randy wouldn’t mind dating Arthur, too.  

Ongoing – Feb. 12

Is Pompeii the most famous doomed city of all time? That’s not something any city aspires to, but due to the abruptness of what happened – the eruption of Mount Vesuvius wiping out the city in one day, that day being August 24, 79 A.D.  – it may be just that. Of course, we’d not have known so much about this – to say nothing of seeing the artifacts from it – if not for an accidental discovery in 1749 and subsequent excavations. Some of those artifacts – from pots and pans to statues, gold bracelets and surgical instruments – are on display at the Museum of Science’s “A Day In Pompeii,” which is up through Feb. 12.
    I took in the exhibit recently.  Like most exhibits of this sort, you need to get our head in the zone. That means ignoring your fellow exhibit trawlers and focus on what you see and feel, time trip as it were. Two things that help: The exhibit has these time-lapse films, one a computer-generated flyover of the city’s buildings, showing marketplaces, homes, courtyards and public baths. The second recreates the volcano’s eruption and how the city was engulfed.
    The most poignant, and haunting images are human. Most of the citizens escaped. Tourists, too, we assume as Pompeii was a destination vacation spot for Roman nobles. But some of the less connected (or maybe less prescient) tried to seek shelter and then, when that didn’t seem to be working, flee, which didn’t work out so well, either They ran then came the wet scalding ash. And there were the slaves. They didn’t have much choice in the matter. They were doomed. So, yes, the exhibit does make you consider the glory days of the Roman Empire, which was glorious for the prosperous, not so much for the underclass. (Sound like anything you know in modern days?)

Ongoing – Feb. 5

The hostility that lurks underneath the veneer of civility, the anger the courses below the appearance of moderation. It’s what fuels “God of Carnage,” up at the Huntington’s BU Theatre through Feb. 5, and it’s perhaps despite what I just wrote it’s an hilarious, sometimes vicious, dark comedy. Chances are who you like and dislike will zig and zag throughout the 80-minute play.

     Here’s how it starts: Two couples walk into a nicely appointed, pristine room. It appears that Alan and Annette Raleigh’s 11-year-old son Benjamin has assaulted Michael and Veronica Novak’s son, loosens two of Henry’s teeth with a stick. They’re both smart modern couples. Alan (Brooks Ashmanskas) is a lawyer representing a pharmaceutical company. Annette (Christy Pusz), we’re not sure. Michael (Stephen Bogardus) owns a successful household supplies store; Veronica (Johanna Day) writes books about the strife in Darfur. The Raleighs have come in peace; the Novaks, too, want to make things right. Set up a meeting between the boys? But make sure Benjamin is sincere in his apology.  It’s the “spirit of reconciliation,” as one character says. Everyone wants this to work out. We, however, suspect it won’t just as we suspect that schoolyard fight won’t stay the focus of the play. It merely provides the kindling for the psychodrama to come. (And we never see any of the kids.)

     I can’t remember when I’ve laughed as much at the theater, you know, the genuine LOL kind, not just the “knowing” laughter when you recognize irony or something clever. I was far from alone. I haven’t been around this many people vicariously enjoying others’ discomfort in a long time. Among the pleasures: taking joy in the come-uppance of a near-constant cell phone addict, a Linda Blair-worthy display of surprise projectile vomiting (yes, the cinema’s favorite new toy come to theater!) a debate over the cruel fate of the Novaks' daughter's hamster, Nibbles. It’s a talky play, but there’s plenty of physicality, as director Daniel Goldstein sends his actors up and down the elaborate staircase and through fits of pent-up rage and destruction.

    Yes, there’s a more than little bit of “Virgina Woolf” in this play by Yazmina Reza’s (translated from French to English) – two bickering couples, arguments fueled by booze.

Sat. Feb. 4

“I think you can imagine why we're calling this show ‘Wild and Weird,”says Alloy Orchestra musical director and junk percussionist Ken Winokur. “There are some crazy films here.”

      Alloy Orchestra – the Boston trio consisting of Winokur, fellow junk percussionist Terry Donahue and Mission of Burma’s Roger Miller on keyboards – has been setting new music to old silent movies for two decades. “We feel we revitalized these movies with our modestly modern music, that it’s no longer this dusty old experience; it’s exciting and fun," says Winokur. It’s something he readily admits they “stumbled into,” when then-Coolidge Corner Theatre programmer David Kleiler suggested it.

     At the Somerville Theatre, Saturday Feb. 4, they’re playing music set to ten films, among them “The Acrobatic Fly,” “Artheme Swallows His Clarinet” and “Filmstudie.”

    “Over the last 20 years that we've been doing Alloy, I've watched every silent film I can get my hands on,” Winokur says, “searching for the perfect vehicle for Alloy's scores. I kept stumbling on shorts that were really odd, films that didn't feel like the typical melodramas or slapstick comedies. They were films that really appealed to me for their wild creativity - films that really pushed the boundaries of film conventions. And, interestingly, many of the films are quite early in the history of filmmaking.”

“Since the films are wildly different from one another Alloy's music is also really varied. ‘The Acrobatic Fly” is a bizarre film of a fly that has been glued to a table upside down and spins miniature dumbbells or a ball like a circus performer. It has a totally improvised mostly percussive soundtrack that sounds a lot like the music of the groundbreaking percussion composer Edgar Varese.

“Artheme Swallows His Clarinet’ is about guy who wanders around trying to remove a clarinet that has been rammed through his skull. It relies on the sounds of a squawking clarinet to illustrate the poor guy's difficult predicament, and some sweet clarinet melodies.

“Filmstudie,’ by Dada artist Hans Richter, has Terry and Roger doing a spacey improv while I recite DADA poetry by Richter's college, Hugo Ball.”

“The other films,” adds Winokur, “are more scripted and have music that reflects Alloy's typical styles - sometimes humorous, sometimes overly dramatic and usually filled with percussion and off-kilter melodies.”

The Alloys star has been on the ascent for years – they’ve composed scores for 22 full-length films and a myriad of shorts– but Winokur says they got a real boost in 2010, when Turner Classic Movies invited them to contribute an updated score for ‘Metropolis’ (Alloys first film) at the US premiere of the magnificent restoration of the classic sci-fi film, which took place in Los Angeles’ movie palace Grauman's Chinese Theater. “It was a big bump of name recognition,” Winokur says. 

Saturday Feb. 4

I met Shea Rose after her performance at the Boston Music Awards last December. On stage, she was a dynamo, a knockout, a whirlwind of hip-hop energy, beats, and monster R&B grooves, rock ‘n’ roll guitars, ripping across genres like nobody’s business. She sported this cool Afro and took charge with songs like “Power (Rockstars & Posers)” Off stage, she was a petite, polite soft-spoken young woman, Braintree-born and Berklee schooled. I asked where she was coming from musically and she quickly dropped the references Lenny Kravitz, Lauryn Hill and Bette Davis.

“Shea’s a gentle soul, she’s kind, she’s grateful, and humble,” says her manager Ralph Jacodine, “and then she gets on stage and that’s gone and she becomes the star that she is.” At least, star in the making. I predict big things ahead and Jacodine says there is the distinct possibility a TV show will be built around her life and career.

Rose has played New York and Boston (as an opening act), but not toured yet. “We’re starting to build ripples around the nation nicely,” Jacodine says. “I’ve never had so much energy coming at an artist, so much interest and so much affection so early. She’s smart and poised. She’s thinking about making a mark already, how she wants to affect the world, the planet. It’s not grandiose or bold or bragging. She feels this is her calling.””

ongoing –Sun. Feb. 5

John Logan’s “Red,” which is at the Wimberly Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion through Super Bowl Sunday, is a 90-minute two-man play about, oh,, lots of things, even as it takes place in one room (art studio). It centers – oh, does it center - around abstract painter Mark Rothko and his angst as he hits the twilight of his career, specifically his bitter joy and explosive rage at being commissioned to paint a series of works to go up at a new Four Seasons restaurant in New York. It was 1958. And this was most prestigious, the grandest public commission an abstract expressionist had ever received and yet … well, it would also be background for a dining room in which blithe rich people would eat, people who Rothko felt he had no connection with or empathy for. Rothko’s works are huge slabs of red, maroon and black streaks. Not pretty, pretty dark.

^{_{Rothko – as brilliantly played by Thomas Derrah in the SpeakEasy’s production and directed by David Gammons – has a love/hate relationship with himself. And not a lot of empathy for anyone else. This isn’t part of the play, but there is a point near the end where you think Rothko’s self-hatred might explode (considering what we know about him). As the Guardian wrote in 2002, “Mark Rothko was found on the morning of February 25 1970, lying dead in a wine-dark sea of his own blood. He had cut very deep into his arms at the elbow, and the pool emanating from him on the floor of his studio measured 8ft x 6ft. That is, it was on the scale of his paintings. It was, to borrow the art critical language of the time, a colour field.”}}

_^“Red” won four Tonys in 2010, including the big one, best play. And it is tremendously involving, as Rothko invites a young art student Ken (Karl Baker Olson) in to be his assistant – not his friend, mind you. But over the course of time a relationship of sorts develops. The problem with Rothko – who says he wants his paintings to inspire a conversation with the viewers – is that he harbors contempt for most anyone who might approach his work, from galleries, to museums, to fans. And his involvement with himself – he’s a hermit, really, shut off from the world and shut up in his studio, scornful of natural light –is the horrible part about, let’s face it, a number of famous artists, whatever their field. One question “Red” raises is: Does talent and success isolate one from the world in which he ostensibly draws inspiration?

Saturdays

First, there is the smell.Familiar. Intoxicating. Some say ED-preventing.Then, just when you can barely take anymore, a smiling head pops through the door - “Anybody want some chocolate?”
 
Welcome to two-and-a-half hours of educational heaven, aka the Taste of Chocolate Workshop.
 
Run by the folks who have been bringing the legendary Mystery Café to Boston and beyond for years and hosted in the Elephant and Castle Pub in Downtown Boston (the same site as one of the most popular Mystery Café dinners), the Workshop tells you perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about chocolate (pretty much right down to the molecular level) and then lets you get into it up to your wrists (at least) through a hands-on truffle-making party.

ongoing

Thank God for Martin Scorsese. Authentic movie magic is a rare event these days, but Scorsese conjures it several times in "Hugo." This is the story of a boy who watches through small windows as other people live their lives. It is about the struggles of creative people, of artists, of failures and renewed victories. It is Martin Scorsese’s life, transferred and transformed into a version of Brian Selznick’s book, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret."

Paris during the 1930′s. Hugo Cabret is the son of a clock maker (played well but briefly by Jude Law) who dies in a fire. Hugo’s uncle, a drunk and a clock maker himself, takes him in and teaches Hugo how to maintain the clock at a train station in Paris. When the uncle disappears without a word, Hugo continues to take care of the station’s clocks on his own, all the while living within the walls of the train station.

Scorsese and rock-star cinematographer Robert Richardson take 3D and create artful investigations of the train station, the gear infested walls and the streets of Paris, seen from atop the clock tower. Snowflakes fall into our laps as we watch Hugo walk, chilled to the bone, along the frozen sidewalk. We feel the depth of his home within the walls, as we sweep through narrow passages and up and down ladders. My favorite, though, is simply seeing Hugo watch the train inhabitants through the face of a clock. The clock itself is in the foreground, while Hugo’s watchful face is farther back in the depths of his world, the one nobody knows about. The effect of the 3D in this case is an addition to the storytelling, rather than a slick, though impressive, technique.