The Wexner Center for the Arts will begin its fall series of black box concerts tonight with Canadian post-rock bands Fly Pan Am and Do Make Say Think. The concert series will feature some of the most acclaimed up-and-coming musicians in the underground music scene.
“We want people to start thinking of the Wexner Center as a music venue,” said Karen Simonian, spokeswoman for Wexner Center.
Tonight’s bands have acquired quite a following in Columbus having played here before, both in their current forms and as members in other bands.
“We did a show here about four years ago…at this little basement club called ‘The Legion of Doom’,”said Charles Spearin, bass player for Do May Say Think, “but that was a long time ago; we’re a much different band now,” .
Spearin said when they started they were much more of an improvised, kind of psychedelic band.
“We would do whole shows that were improvised and a little more free-jazz, a bit more space-rock, a bit more synthesizer-based trips and things like that,” Spearin said, “and now we’ve gotten a little bit more into arrangements and composing I guess.”
Spearin said in the second record they focused more on actually getting songs down rather than just getting a good jam recorded.
“This last record is another step in that direction with slightly more intelligent and slightly more complicated arrangements,” Spearin said, “but there’s a few songs that still have the sort of raw, improvised sound we started out with.”
Their current tour, with label-mates Fly Pan Am, follows the release of Do Make Say Think’s latest album “& Yet & Yet” and Fly Pan Am’s “Ceux Qui Inventent N’ont Jamais Vécu”.
Fly Pan Am is a project of guitarist Roger Teller-Craig from Godspeed You Black Emperor!, a band that performed in last year’s black box series. Fly Pan Am’s instrumental pieces are minimalist versions of the musique-concrete influenced style that dominates Teller-Craig’s other band.
“They all have a common thread as kind of a form of art music,” said Charles Helm, Director of Performing Arts at Wexner Center. “I’m not looking to do things that would be better suited at some other venue in town. In my mind, it needs to have a direct connection in an art context.”
Due to renovations the Fly Pan Am and Do Make Say Think show will be the last of the concerts to be located in the Wexner Center Performance Space. Following concerts will be held in Mershon Auditorium.
The bands and the audience will share the stage in typical black box format, giving the shows a more authentic underground atmosphere.
“We’re trying to compliment what groups like Firexit and ele_mental have done in the past,” Helm said. “We are able to do things they couldn’t because we have better equipped facilities and a bigger budget.”
Helm said they are bringing a lot of shows to Columbus that otherwise wouldn’t be here, shows that in the past you had to drive to Detroit or Chicago to see.
Upcoming shows include a variety of musical genres, from indie-pop and avant-rock bands such as Clinic and Apples in Stereo, to Electroclash giants like Peaches and Chicks on Speed.
Tickets to tonight’s show are $8 for students and members, and $10 for the general public. The doors open at 9 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at Wexner Center or by calling 292-3535.
