John Heller, Post-Gazette Junction Dance Theater's Melanie Miller makes adjustments to "i.e. harmony." Click photo for larger image.

Music: Power Pill Fist

If the songs on Power Pill Fist's "Extra Life" remind you of the time you spent a week's allowance trying for the high score at your favorite video arcade, well, that's because the album is composed entirely of manipulated sounds from an old Atari. No, really.

The music critic at www.Smother.net responded to the local group's high score with: "Wow, I'm stunned. Composed and manipulated completely on an Atari 2600 by the bassist of Black Moth Super Rainbow, 'Extra Life' is the perfect platform for the video game generation. ... Loud, distorted tones smash atoms in your inner ear, giving you almost familiar tastes of the past beautiful games that you dared your neighbor to."

The album can be purchased at www.atariage.com, of course. Or you could pick one up tonight at Kiva Han in Oakland, when Power Pill Fist shares a bill with Black Moth Super Rainbow and Dreamend.

As Black Moth Super Rainbow's Tom Fec says of cousin/bandmate Ken Fec's Power Pill Fist shows, "He's got this reel to reel his dad's band used to use in the '60s, and he's dumped most of the backing beats from the Atari onto that. And he's just been jamming along on the Atari.

"We played a Black Moth show in Hermitage in August, and the kids, when it came to the Power Pill Fist set, I could tell no one had ever heard anything like it. But he's a really weird performer, and all these kids who had probably never heard noise music before and had no idea what was happening by the end of the set were loving him."

The show begins at 7:30. Tickets are $5.

-- Ed Masley,
Post-Gazette pop music critic

Dance: Junction Dance Theater

Combining a classical heritage with the folk art of his adopted homeland, Elie Nadelman was the subject of an exhibit at the Frick Art Museum in 2001, when the museum commissioned Junction Dance Theater's "i.e., harmony." Artistic director Melanie Miller has adjusted several segments for an encore performance at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater in East Liberty tonight.

The work is equal parts play and dance, written "in a fever" during a two-week period at Miller's former Wilkinsburg home. "I wrote nonstop," she recalls. "It just came to be what it was."

Nadelman was known for subject matter, often vaudeville or circus performers, that was imbued with a sense of movement. Choreographer Lincoln Kirstein once wrote, "His work seems to dance within itself." But Nadelman would most notably combine these elements of low art with the grace and form of high art.

Miller immediately saw that, and incorporated pieces, like Nadelman's most famous work, "Man in Open Air," into the fabric of the choreography. She particularly came to love Nadelman's small figurines, produced late in his life and not discovered until after his death. "I thought they were fun and funky and had a certain beauty, although some people thought they were ugly," says Miller, who used them as inspiration in the final section.

She sees "i.e., harmony" as "a nonlinear narrative spanning a lot of different times in [Nadelman's] life. It's an overall experience of his experience with really relevant themes" she says, one that includes the war and the loss of his possessions. But above all, according to Miller, "it's timeless."

Junction Dance Theater will present "i.e., harmony" at the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater in East Liberty at 8 tonight. Tickets: $10-$30 (which includes a post-performance reception); call 412-394-3353 or visit www.proartstickets.org.

-- By Jane Vranish,
Post-Gazette dance critic