The Mercury Lounge (Venue Partner)
217 E Houston St
212.260.4700
This event has passed.
- When
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Friday Apr 2, 2010 (10:30pm)
- Where
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Directions: F, JMZ at Essex and Delancey or F, V at 2nd Ave
- Price
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$12
"Megafaun has a thing for extremes: In August 2005, the trio and four of its best friends left the wintry climes of Eau Claire, Wis., arriving in Raleigh, N.C. in the middle of the hottest summer on record. Brothers Brad and Phil Cook and best friend since high school, Joe Westerlund, played with Justin Vernon in the quartet DeYarmond Edison for a year down South. In August 2006, the band, in the middle of recording an EP and challenging itself on every artistic level, called it quits. Vernon left for Wisconsin to record alone, but the Cooks and Westerlund stayed put. Megafaun played its first show a month later. Before 2007 was a month old, they were in their own studio, recording Bury the Square, the record that should be in your headphones. But this story is not so simple. After finishing the album and selling it in hand-stamped vinyl cases cut and sewn on kitchen tables, Megafaun got two phone calls: Akron/Family, the New England trio Megafaun had long respected for its ability to invert divergent idioms into ecstatic hybrids, asked if the trio would be available to tour for six weeks. Megafaun would open each show, then join Akron/Family and experimental electronicist Greg Davis for a seven-member spree. And on their way to those first Pennsylvania practices with Akron and Davis, Table of the Elements founder Jeff Hunt who'd released some of the band's favorite records of the last two decades, from Tony Conrad and John Fahey to Jim O'Rourke and John Cale called. In a breathless conversation, he offered the band a spot on his new Radium imprint. Puzzled and pleased, Megafaun agreed and rode on.
