vialka and the minor seconds...

Our inaugural ball

good people it has been 9 months since we received the keys to lang lab.

a perfectly acceptable length of time to spend in the womb unless you are an elephant. in that time we have: scrubbed scraped torn down rebuilt painted stripped sanded and gotten really dirty we are getting clean again, and really enjoying the color. is everything all done? no. but you gotta start somewhere.

like central France. specifically, le pic, France

in this town you will find a finely tuned, widely traveled, fiercely imaginative guitar/drums duo that goes by the name of VIALKA

but on may 1st, you won't find them there because they will be in the middle of the American leg of (one of) their epic world tour(s) specifically, they will be at lang lab was that nonchalant enough?

ok, wait wait,

the Minor Seconds are a young 6 piece from Michigan whose talent has to be seen to be believed you can see them here but if you don't want to see: 2 violins, piano, flute, glockenspiel and guitar, played by (with one exception) some charmers between the ages of 6 and 12

everything you need to know about vialka, including sights, sounds, press can be found at

www.vialka.com or www.myspace.com/vialka

but, if you'll allow me to quote::

"Vialka hail from deepest France, via everywhere and nowhere. They are a devilishly high-spirited guitar/drums duo who tour hard and fast across the world. Their music skips joyfully across borders, channeling desert blues, Chinese folk songs, scatter rock and European gypsy song dynamics in a whirlwind of dervish energy. Their endless gypsy punk folk rock tales, hard hitting poly-rhythms and yelps and howls make for a danceable and intoxicating brew. They have resided in Switzerland, Slovenia, Canada, and are currently calling a remote village in France their home between tours. Deriving its influences from traditional and modern underground music from around the globe, Vialka's music is based on the frenetic interaction between Marylise's syncopated drumming and singing and Eric's orchestral guitar playing - and is delivered with ecstatic energy, humor, lust for life, and a sophisticated musical language and subliminal connection all their own.

Vialka is not just a musical project, but a social scientific experiment, attempting to meet, communicate and work with extraordinary and little known musicians and artists from everywhere and nowhere - with particular interest in polluted dictatorships, bleak colonies, and monarchic democracies. They have toured extensively in over fifty countries (100+ concerts per year) across Europe, Africa, North America and Asia, and have collaborated with Chinese musician Xiao He, French mbira player/drummer Andrew Dymond, Italian saxophonist Jacopo Andreini, Macedonian artist collective OPA, Swiss cinematographer Sébastien Riond, French eco-designer Cédric Carles, the legendary former-CAN singer

Damo Suzuki, and New Zealand drummer Kieran Monaghan."