Gordon Marshall is a local writer and outspoken character in the Boston music community. Every first Saturday we will go INSIDE THE MIND of a cutting edge, perhaps experimental and even improvisational artist or group who Gordon thinks is worth a damn. This month he spoke with mighty MA noise ensemble Birdorgan!
Where The Acid Mothers Temple is a psychedelic group that extrapolates from more popular groups of the past, like Jefferson Airplane and Black Sabbath, Lowell, Mass.’s Birdorgan evoke such trippier, more daring acts as Soft Machine and Taj Mahal Travellers. Drummer Michael Dailey even has Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt’s reckless abandon, once busting his head open on a radiator to trump Wyatt falling out of a fourth story window in 1973. Birdorgan takes shavings and seeds from ‘60s music, and creates a whole new garden that is fresh, but just as potent as the originals.
Guitarist Marc Bisson is deeply versed in the music of that era. The Byrds’ Roger McGuin seeps through his strings with their mélange of raunchy, sleek, and mellow. Dei Xhrist, Bisson’s wife, is the sexy blonde singer, with a voice as sweet and spiked as her hair. Xhrist updates the group, giving it a sound that is always contemporary, however steeped in the past. Mike Fun, on electronics, gives the group calm and nerve. Good looking, tough, and cool, he throws a gentle haze over the radical swerving paths of the other members. Birdorgan is a supergroup that haunts basements and art galleries. They are prolific recording artists, with many handmade CDs under their name. Their most recent are sammlung, a retrospective covering 2008-2012, and gorn (2013).
NEXT SHOW: Friday, March 15: with Phog Masheeen @ 119 Gallery, Lowell MA 8 pm