Wednesday, April 18, 2012

D-Trix — From dance to domination



Now entering its seventh season, MTV’s street-dance competition, “America’s Best Dance Crew,” has kept a mostly stable cast, with host Mario Lopez and regular judges J.C. Chasez, the former ’N Sync singer, and Lil Mama, the young rapper, in place from the beginning. Now in his second season on the judging panel, dancer Dominic “D-Trix” Sandoval has an especially unique perspective on what it takes to win, having earned the title three years ago with his group, Quest Crew.

“It’s something I take very seriously, because I come from that same world,” he tells LEO. “I care a lot about all the dancers; seeing them onstage reminds me of when I used to be on there, and how much it meant to me to win the show ... At the same time, I have a lot of fun with it.”

D-Trix, whose outgoing, goofy personality works well for television, has also competed on Fox’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” standing out for his flirtatious banter with host Cat Deely. It was only after he began entering TV competitions that D-Trix, self-taught as a hip-hop-inspired b-boy dancer, realized his ambitions went beyond being merely the coolest guy in the streets.

“I took b-boying seriously until ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ — that’s what changed my mind. I wanted to be an overall dancer. With that, I trained a lot, both as an individual and with a crew, and I just fell in love with dance in general. I think that’s really helped me get to where I’m at today, being able to judge dancers, ’cause I’ve studied. By being a street dancer, I can vouch for people on the show, and it’s all gone hand-in-hand. I never thought I’d be at this point.”

He continues to take classes in various forms of dance, going back to explore the roots of each style, while also expanding his performing skills on the YouTube channel YTF. The YTF group, a collective of comedians, singers and dancers who met after becoming YouTube mini-stars, is what D-Trix today calls his main job.

“We’re a bunch of friends, just hanging out, making dumb videos, and we’ve created a fan base online. With that, we want to spread the message of what YTF means to us, by touring and continuing to put out content. YTF is a group of friends who love being nerds online,” he laughs. “I think over the last year and a half, I haven’t really danced at all. I’ve been mostly just creating for YouTube, and, for me, my future is online.”

D-Trix acknowledges that a show like “Dance Crew,” which predominantly features young African-American and Asian-American street dancers, is a harder sell to mainstream America than a more traditional, faux-celebrity-driven dance program on a bigger network.

“It’s a sad thing. It’s probably because of the network, and who they cast on the show. It’s mostly an urban audience, and kids and teenagers, and it’s a very positive thing. It’s good for crews all over the world, and we stay off of the streets because we have crews and we dance. If people can understand that, they can appreciate it a little bit more.”

Dance crew Fanny Pak, a favorite from last year, is returning this season, the first defeated crew allowed to try again. “It’s amazing!” says D-Trix. “They want it really bad, and that’s the main reason why they did come back, they felt — and a lot of people felt — that they went home too early, and they’re back for redemption.”

So who will win?

“That’s a tough one. I don’t really have that answer yet ... It seems like a choreography team will win this. It might not be a crew that has crazy stunts, because, the first night, choreography alone was the most memorable. I think that’s a good thing — I think America needs to know that dancing isn’t always a double back-flip off the stage. And I’m a tricker, so for me to say that — I believe in crazy, dope stunts and crazy moments, but if you can blow people away with your choreography, that’s saying something else.

“But, that could change next week. You never know. That’s what’s amazing about this season is, you don’t know.”

‘America’s Best Dance Crew’
MTV. Wednesdays, 10 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Homemade by Woods



“I haven’t been to Louisville in years,” says Jarvis Taveniere, multi-instrumentalist for Woods. “I don’t think Woods has ever played there, actually. Me and Jeremy had an old band that played in a house ... I remember a cafĂ© with a cow in front or something.”

Vocalist/guitarist Jeremy Earl founded Woods in 2005 and has evolved the band from a lo-fi project to a full-fledged folk-ish band, quickly picking up plenty of critical praise, including numerous comparisons to the Grateful Dead reborn as an indie rock band. A new split EP with Amps For Christ was released on April 17.

The Shrimper label, known for their collaborative pairings, released some of Woods’ early recordings and is also releasing the new split, though Earl also runs his own established label, Woodsist.

“We recorded a bunch of stuff last year for our last record that just didn’t really fit,” explains Taveniere. “We were looking for a home for it ... so we thought we could do something with this batch of songs.”

The split features some of Woods’ more abstract, collage-style sounds, “more acoustic, meditative,” says Taveniere, more appropriate when paired with Amps’ Henry Barnes. “I think Jeremy really relates to him … not touring, not playing a lot of shows, just making these cool records. That homemade quality; he does his own artwork ...

“That’s why it was so freeing to start Woods — just do everything ourselves, make the records we wanted to listen to. They tend to be the ones that cover a little bit more ground. We didn’t really work toward it, it was just something we knew we wanted.”

LEO: It seems that you’re in a very secure place now, especially putting out your own records —
JT: Yeah, we do what we want (laughs). I mean, I partially assume that that’s what everyone does. Maybe that’s naive of me, but I couldn’t imagine doing things I didn’t want to do. Outside of just compromising with my friends and bandmates for the greater good.

LEO:
Some bands do ...
JT: Maybe if there was more money at stake, or I was a younger man, I could get in a situation like that ...
I try to treat every project with that innocence, like it’s the first time. The fact that Jeremy and me are still friends and really enjoy getting together and playing music, after this long, I think says something. Might not work for everybody, but it’s how we’re doing it.

LEO:
How do you keep that as you get older?
JT: You find little glimpses of it. Definitely, making records in a home environment, I still feel that same ... I don’t know, it just feels right ... You’re listening back to something on a 4-track, and you’re like, “Let’s start working on some cover art!” I’d love to retain that innocence and excitement.

LEO: Hand-stuffing the records?
JT: Ugh, yeah, no more of that. But everything else.

WOODS WITH MMOSS AND GANGLY YOUTH
Sunday, April 22
Zanzabar
2100 S. Preston St. • 635-9227
zanzabarlouisville.com • $10; 9 p.m.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

Bear In Heaven’s dizzy dance days



Bear In Heaven’s members live in New York now, but all grew up in the South. Drummer Joe Stickney grew up in Alabama — he’s so Southern, his mom was in a book club with Jimmy Buffett’s mom. LEO spoke with him from the band’s rehearsal space in New York on the eve of their current tour.

Bear In Heaven’s third album, I Love You, It’s Cool, was released two weeks ago to positive reviews, part of an organic evolution the band has gone through from an arty rock group to a more overtly dance-based electro-pop group. The band also gained attention for how they previewed the album online, slowing it down 400,000 percent for streaming — the intended pop heard as 2,700 nonstop hours of drone — that played out between December and early April, as a “comment on the current state of album promotion, hype cycles, countdowns and all the marketing ploys that we accept as a reality of existing within an Internet age.”

LEO: The new album has a very 1980s European feel, and you told someone that you weren’t “feeling as testosterone-y” this time out.
Joe Stickney: Yeah, yeah! I think we all would agree with that. We’re not, like, a bunch of super testosterone-y dudes; I mean, we like college football, but we’re not aggro people. I think the last record definitely had a lot of heavier, cathartic … this one is coming from a more low-key place.

LEO:
In terms of subject matter, or musically? Musically, it’s pretty upbeat.
JS: I just mean, like, low-key emotionally. It’s not coming out of a tempest of crazy emotions. I feel like it’s pretty calm. It’s upbeat, for sure, but I think it’s calm in the overall emotional content.

LEO: More calm because you’re more successful now, as a band?
JS: Well, that has yet to become easy (laughs). I think it definitely comes from where we’re at, at this point. We all came to better terms with everybody’s roles in the band, how we can make things work more smoothly. We’re all working together as a good team at this point, and it’s pretty smooth — you hit snags, but it’s pretty smooth sailing so far. I think that definitely is going to influence the kind of stuff you’re doing.

LEO: How’s the live show going to look this time out?
JS: We’re trying to amp up the whole synesthetic experience, have the lights and the music play off the way — where they create a greater whole than the sum of their parts. You know the end of (the movie) “2001: A Space Odyssey”? If you just listen to the music, it’s great; if you just look at the visuals, it’s great. The combination of that is, “Holy shit!” Your mind’s blowing. We’re hopefully going to be able to achieve something like that … Hopefully everything works together to make an experience that you can’t get just from the record. That’s the idea — the live show should be something different, but equally stimulating to the record. If you just get up there and play the songs exactly like the record, it’s like, “OK, well, that was louder than my stereo can play … and I got to watch the people doin’ it. Other than that, it’s not very interesting.” We want to try and bring a little bit more.

LEO: Speaking of visuals, the video you guys did for the new song “The Reflection of You” made me dizzy.
JS: A lot of people have that reaction! Personally, it doesn’t really affect me in that way, but I’ve got pretty solid equilibrium, I think (laughs) … I think it’s great. I love hearing people’s reactions to it, too, because the reactions are definitely extreme, in both directions. There’s not a lot of people who feel lukewarm about it. I’ll take that.

BEAR IN HEAVEN
WITH DOLDRUMS AND BLOUSE
Friday, April 20
Zanzabar
2100 S. Preston St. • 635-9227
zanzabarlouisville.com
$10; 9 p.m.

Photo by Shawn Brackbill


c. 2012 LEO Weekly

album review: Seluah



A Spiderland for a new generation, Seluah’s long-gestating first full-length album is nothing short of a masterpiece. A hypothetical soundtrack for a chilling, sexed-up Nicholas Ray film noir filled with double-crossings, misbegotten sex and stolen money, Red Parole is a precise, sensual overload of cutting riffs, floating rhythms and haunting vocals. While the well-sequenced album progresses with a steady tone, close inspection reveals that every note has been carefully placed and executed. Some songs begin slowly, building up steam until they explode with just the right amount of ferocity; “Hell and Back,” with its galloping, rockabilly-in-the-Old-West pace, is the most obvious exception to what could be called Seluah’s formula, while some (especially closer “Elysian Fields”) will haunt you for a long, beautiful time. If you only trust LEO once this year, this is that time.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly

album review: Joel Henderson

Joel Henderson
Locked Doors & Pretty Fences
TROUBLECURE



In popular music, the awkward years come between 35 and 50 — too young to be a grizzled vet, too old to be hungry and fresh-eyed, just right to begin the Dad Rock years. Thankfully, Joel Henderson does a surprisingly lively variation on the genre, employing skilled accompanists to support his confident, engaged performance. While Henderson’s themes are universal and time-proven (relationships, growing up, etc. — y’know, Springsteen without the social justice), his blending of middle-aged folk and youthful pop-rock, a la Ron Sexsmith, often works. Heidi Gluck’s backing vocals especially help keep it interesting, and Mick Sullivan (banjo) and Bill Mallers (keyboards) outshine the rest of the band, alumns of John Prine, Buddy Miller, Over the Rhine, and The Lemonheads. This record was years in the making; it’s not quite Woodford Reserve, but this collection aged well.

c. 2012 LEO Weekly