5 Straight Years Of Bending Your Ears Thanks for picking up Compass #62! March is the Compass birth month and this March marks our monthly’s 5 year anniversary. We are proud of each edition and the time and energy it takes to produce every one but 5 years is such a serious milestone that we feel compelled to pause and reflect on it for a moment. No doubt about it: We are ecstatic to have made it this far and we couldnt have done it without you, dear reader. Something about the winter of 2010 put it in my head that if there was a tangible, reliable resource for outsiders around here (and if it stuck around long enough) it just might do some good in the music and art community. It was inspired by the people here, the scattered crews of active yous, and the desire to be their glue. After 5 years of this project I am convinced that we are in the middle of a
cultural movement. I’m working the door at this show here at the hostel in Chinatown for Frank Hurricane and Little Howlin Wolf, sitting here with Foam daddy and Conrad. Nausicaa is helping me edit as I write and Ipek is hoping we get done so she can submit this damn thing on time. It’s all of us: me with my fingers on the keyboard, you with your eyes on the page and everyone in the region (us included) creating art like there is no tomorrow. We are talking about cultural activism here, what’s going on in New England is truly extraordinary. The Compass is yours. Let it be your resource, your springboard and your portal. This project is all about YOUR projects. It would not exist without you. So use it! Contribute! Go see stuff! Participate! But most of all, enjoy yourselves out there, my friends. Thanks for 5 awesome years and here’s to many more. - Sam Potrykus
ART BLAST...........................................................PAGE 2 Best
Dress
Signs,
&
the
Otherside
Cafe
photobook
HASSLE BRIEFS & PURE IMPACT......................PAGE 3 EATEN, Prefab Messiahs, Laika’s Orbit, & Venom. PI: Leather Daddy
HERE BE THE SHOWS....................................PAGE 4-5 Punk Night, Break the Chain, Myriad, Rad Castle, Pink Noise & More
THE TARDY EAGLE...............................................PAGE 6 Advice from a Legit Pro Comedian, a Legit Sensible Person y MAS
FILM FLAM...........................................................PAGE 7 Here be dragons! New films, horrific and fantastical, grace our screens
COMICS...............................................................PAGE 8 Places
ya
CAN’T
hang
&
art
for
your
eyeballs
The Boston Compass is produced by the BRAIN Arts Organization. Email us at: ThatBostonCompass@gmail.com. Visit us online at: www.Brain-Arts.org.
KTB Tour Homecoming & Super Secret Member Upgrade
Soaked in the scummy bilge-sewer where hip hop, noise, drone, broken electronics, and punk rock may perchance swirl together floats the disembodied head of a specter muttering its own name. Listen: “K… T… B…” Bled from a capillary branching off that experimental, post-formal hip hop–ish vein where sickle cells like Death Grips and B L A C K I E hath heretofore flowed, this duo (soon to be trio(?)(!)(I dunno we’ll see)) of Guerrilla Toss and Bugs And Rats members churns utterly pissed and discordant guitar/machine/tom/vox arrangements whose roots reach some untouchably harsh, dirty, and primal places. Sheesh. Go: Cassette release w/ Father Murphy, OMEI and Ursula @Deep Thoughts 3/16. - Zach Peckham
und
Off the Gro ecords Gets R h at e D le Litt
While the majority of us good, goddamned alt-cherubs wish to be chaste and dutiful with one another, it’s quite the crystalline lightning bolt straight to the tip of your spine to dip your toes into that wayward creek. To offer up the next charge that’ll get us through this fallible human disaster through which we walk is the nascent LITTLE DEATH RECORDS. Tim & Trav of WAKES & NEW HIGHWAY HYMNAL, respectively, will be co-fathering cassettes in hand-screened encasings, petites éditions style. Watch for their inaugural release with dream-pop duo MINI DRESSES hitting shelves 3/10. “Not ostentatious, but chic.” LittleDeathRecords.com - Anthony Richards
Prefab Messiahs back with New Record after 30 Years!
Let the BOSTON TAX HELP COALITION help retrieve some of your hard-earned money from Uncle Sam’s greedy claws. Located in centers all over town, from Allston to South Boston, offering FREE one-on-one tax preparation, filing and a financial education for future reference, from now until 4/15. If you’re employed and read the Compass, you probably qualify (<$53K/year). Go to BostonTaxHelp.org to find out where to go and what to bring. Gotta tip our hat to Mayor Marty Walsh for pushing this program to demystify tax breaks for those who need them most. - CEEK
S’n o
Eat The Life // The Life Eats You
Pro
ble
m!
After the month of blizzards, I’d just like to take a ladylike moment here. I’ve done a lot of shoveling lately and I’m pretty tired. But I want to thank those who kept it together. Thanks to all who helped a neighbor, drove carefully, worked overtime, remained patient, or stood aside on a treacherous sidewalk. But mostly, I’d like to say to the snow, did you want to marry me now? Are we at least going steady? Because boy, I have never met a dude anywhere who made so wet, and so sore, for so many weekends. - Angela Sawyer
Feelin’ Yrself Shout out 2 all the women/queer folks from outta town bringing their talent 2 boston dance parties this winter: Venus X + Mike Q @Together NYE, Princess Nokia @Pico Picante, DJ Sprinkles @Make It New, DJ OHSO @Pvrple, The Black Madonna @Social Studies, and any others i’ve missed. even bigger shout out to the talented women and queer djs, producers, and performers who are constantly overlooked in this town and everywhere. and a shout out so big it makes u humbled to stand beside it to all the post-trauma babes who use yr spoons to come out and move yr unconventional bodies and express yrselves in risky capitalistic spaces. u brave af. much respect. PINK NOISE is featuring MALPORTADO KIDS @The Milky Way on 3/28. - XOXO DAYGLOW
SATURDAY 3/7 get ready for an EAT THE LIFE RECORDS Boston takeover. Blowing in from the Windy City MUSCLES PLANT will be bringing their version of fast hardcore with obnoxiously catchy leads. Pick up their new demo at their gig @The Boiler Room. You’ll have to ask a mutant freaker for more details. Across town @Boylston Church NYC’s NANCY will be rocking/rolling with Nice Guys, Gymshorts and Robot Death Kites. Both gigs are All Ages and will be all kinds of fun. Can’t get enough of EAT THE LIFE? Head to their webstore and treat yourself to something loud: eatthelife.bigcartel.com - Ali Donohue
Join The Movement And MARCH FOR THE ARTS If you’re reading this rag, it’s assumed you give a shit about the arts. Well, MASSCreative is asking you to walk the walk downtown on Wednesday 3/25 from 9am–2pm. Meetup is @Citi Wang Theatre where there will be speakers and performances followed by a march to the State House to meet with our legislators. The House and Senate are gonna be announcing the 2016 budget this spring, so there’s no time like the present to demonstrate your dedication to the creative and innovative thinkers that make up our cultural landscape. Go to www.Mass-Creative.org/AMADrsvp and show support! - CEEK
People Are Still Making CDs Up in VT - Beautiful Music CDs! CD buffs: dust off your boomboxes and take note: Vermont folk hero/musician Joey Pizza Slice and his partner-in-crime have unveiled BEAUTIFUL MUSIC CDs, Burlington’s own CDR-based label. Proving already to be the stuff of glimmering, off-beat eminence, BMC’s growing list of releases span genre, decades, maybe universes? We’ll see. Artists include Puerto Rican/Vermont post-punk, goth-adjacent duo The Dead Souls, one-man synth magician Facebat (with his inaugural release), as well as now-defunct weird-pop duo Lawrence Welks & Our Bear to Cross. Keep your sights set on our northern musical friends and the wonderful sounds they continue to create. beautifulmusiccds.blogspot.com - Dana Burns
Destro y Poser ton
Compil ation L P
*New Dance Night* 3/19 MYRIAD Surfaces @Goodlife, Goes Late Those dedicated fools behind Open Loop and Boston Hassle shows (the very same DIY show booking concerns who collectively brings you SCANNERS night) is throwing another funky monthly dance party in the mix. It’s called MYRIAD and it will command your hips with INTERNATIONAL jams, both live and spun, in the killer, cozy basement nightclub of @Goodlife downtown. This brand new monthly party of ours will be celebrating the universal language of getting weird. The first installment features afrobeat/ funk unit Opposite People and Atlanta’s experimental/psych children Aalborg Group. Plus resident DJ Won’t spinning international disco, funk, post-punk, no-wave, house, dub, & beyond… 9:30pm–2am 21+ $5 - Sam Potrykus
Total Fucker and Smash Art finally offer a soundtrack to your favorite subculture comic, LIFE IS POSERS. Destroy Poserton Volume 1 is an international, inter-generational compilation featuring 14 of the best obscure punk bands out there! Don’t collect vinyl? Who cares? Buy it for the cover art! DPV1 comes in a beautiful, full black & white sleeve featuring original Life is Posers artwork. Also included is 14-page zine with contributions from each band, as well as a screen printed beer bag. GET IT: lifeisposers.bigcartel.com For Destroy Poserton wholesale contact: pantyhuffinghardcore@gmail.com - Smash Art and Total Fucker