Playing Hooky 2015: Frankie Cosmos

Noveller is the solo electric guitar project of Brooklyn/Austin-based composer and filmmaker Sarah Lipstate. As Noveller, Lipstate's richly textured noise soundscapes are woven through with pulses, throbs, and loops, resulting in a perfectly orchestrated pandemonium. Tune in at 1pm to hear the whole set LIVE! Playing Hooky is Clocktower's live in-studio performance series featuring musicians of all ages and styles from cowboy music to pure noise. Recorded in our Red Hook studios at Pioneer Works and offered as a distraction from the mid-week blues. Sarah Lipstate has worked with No Fun Productions, Saffron Recordings (her own imprint), Weird Forest, Important Records, Taiga Records, Shelter Press, and Fire Records.

Tune in for a live in-studio session with Max Eisenberg aka DJ Dog Dick, a noise artist and illustrator working out of Brooklyn. From his signature tangle of wires and knobs he produces raw sonic stories with a tint of teenage angst. He was a member of Nautical Almanac and produces fine and edgy comic zines for his homegrown press/label Oceans of Missouri. Drop out and tune in for an hour of greasy fun as he takes control of our studios on June 24, 2014 at 2pm.

Jesse DeRosa is an interdisciplinary instrumentalist, composer, mathematician, and data hacker. As a solo artist, DeRosa relies primarily on synthesizers and his EVI, focusing on extended melody and undulating drone textures. Trained as an orchestral trumpet player and violist, he now focuses on the Electronic Valve Instrument and the integrations of experimental mathematics into the traditional orchestral discourse. Jesse is a member of Brooklyn doom-fusion-shredders Grasshopper (celebrating its 12th year with a new LP dropping this summer on Hausu Mountain), as well as the Hexbreaker Quartet, The Spiritual Switchboard, and occasionally is convinced to lug all his synths out of the house under the guise of Shingles.

Frank Hurricanes’s acoustic guitar-based musical project, described as Spiritual Mountain Psych Gangsta Folk, is also imbued with his singular and indescribable charm. Pleasant picking gives way to manic strumming, stuttering, and unpredictable motifs and meandering commentary. Drop out and drop in for our weekly musical diversion and live in-studio streamcast at 2pm on July 1, 2014.

Multi-instrumentalist and composer Ned Rothenberg joins Clocktower in the studio for a Playing Hooky session, to share his compositions that lie on the edge of jazz and new music, and draw influences from around the world, including the Hindustani and Japanese classical traditions. Tune in at 1pm to hear the whole set LIVE! Playing Hooky is Clocktower's live in-studio performance series featuring musicians of all ages and styles from cowboy music to pure noise. Recorded in our Red Hook studios at Pioneer Works and offered as a distraction from the mid-week blues. Ned Rothenberg performs primarily on alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and the shakuhachi - an endblown Japanese bamboo flute. His solo work utilizes an expanded palette of sonic language, creating a kind of personal idiom all its own. In an ensemble setting, he leads the trio Sync, with Jerome Harris, guitars and Samir Chatterjee, tabla, works with the Mivos string quartet playing his Quintet for Clarinet and Strings and collaborates around the world with fellow improvisors.

A guitarist of considerable moxie and a surprisingly tender singer, Ben Seretan restlessly employs a wide variety of sonic approaches in his immersive hour long Playing Hooky set: unending clouds of downtown minimalism, full tilt large rock ensemble crash cymbal workouts, the gentlest of 70s folk jams and country-pop love songs, and the upliftedness of power ballads, mega-church worship music, and ecstatic jazz. Tune in at 1pm to hear the whole set LIVE! Playing Hooky is Clocktower's live in-studio performance series featuring musicians of all ages and styles from cowboy music to pure noise. Recorded in our Red Hook studios at Pioneer Works and offered as a distraction from the mid-week blues. Ben Seretan is a graduate of Wesleyan University, a 2012 Wassaic Project resident, a 2013 Sitka Fellow, and a 2014 Flux Factory artist-in-residence. He is also an organizer and performer of sunrise concert series, and has performed in horse barns, bedrooms, churches, movie theaters, power plants, rooftops, and once on top of the wheelhouse of a tall ship.

Italian by birth, Gypsy by heritage, and Brooklynite by residence, Zeb aka The Spy From Cairo is the kind of musician that fits in perfectly with the downtown NYC music scene and with a Playing Hooky session live in the studio! Zeb brings together deep Middle Eastern and Jamaican sounds in a hypnotic and captivating hour of music that sits at the unique nexus of Dub and Arabic music. Tune in at 1pm to hear the whole set LIVE! Playing Hooky is Clocktower's live in-studio performance series featuring musicians of all ages and styles from cowboy music to pure noise. Recorded in our Red Hook studios at Pioneer Works and offered as a distraction from the mid-week blues. Zeb has been closely associated with the Turntables on the Hudson scene for close to 12 years – producing dozens of albums as Zeb, The Spy From Cairo and the Organic Grooves project, as well as remixing for everyone from Baba Maal to Tosca to Billie Holliday to Novalima, steadily garnering a worldwide collective of fans and followers.

Born in Florida to Ecuadorian immigrants, and influenced by the various Latin American cultures of southern Florida, Roberto Carlos Lange is the force behind the bilingual and hybrid persona of Helado Negro. He arrives at Clocktower studio for a set of innovative and dexterous tunes that balances myriad forms, such as electronic and krautrock, through meticulous music craftsmanship and suffused with mesmerizing rhythms, loops and melodies. Tune in at 1pm to hear the whole set LIVE! Playing Hooky is Clocktower's live in-studio performance series featuring musicians of all ages and styles from cowboy music to pure noise. Recorded in our Red Hook studios at Pioneer Works and offered as a distraction from the mid-week blues. Helado Negro constantly develops his music-making process and has produced experimental and refined full-length LPs Invisible Life, Canta Lechuza and Awe Owe as well as the original Island Universe Story series, released in three EPs. In 2012 he created a new collaborative group with Julianna Barwick called OMBRE, and released a debut album called Believe You Me. Also a visual artist working with video, sound, and performance, Helado Negro, beyond the persona, serves as a creative space that encourages a cohesive collision of art and music.

An hour long, in studio session by the New York-based singer/songwriter Frankie Cosmos, the musical alter-ego of Greta Kline. Gabrielle Smith (Eskimeaux, Frankie Cosmos) joins Greta for the Playing Hooky session, and the pair preview old and new songs from the lovely DIY group. Frankie Cosmos's backing band includes Aaron Maine/Ronnie Mystery (Porches) on drums and David Maine/David Mystery (Porches) on bass and Gabrielle Smith on keyboards/harmonies. The group has recorded with the labels, Pukekos and Double Double Whammy. Playing Hooky is Clocktower's live in-studio performance series featuring musicians of all ages and styles from cowboy music to pure noise. Recorded in our Red Hook studios at Pioneer Works and offered as a distraction from the mid-week blues.

Drop out and tune in for ambient noise space creations with the Future Shuttle quartet, performing an hour long set for Playing Hooky! Future Shuttle is Jessa Farkas (on synth and vox), Camilla Padgit​t-Coles (synth and bass), Lizzie Harper (flute) and Linnea Vedder (percu​ssion). Hometown: Plutonia, next stop: Clocktower studio. Tune in at 1pm to hear the whole set LIVE! Playing Hooky is Clocktower's live in-studio performance series featuring musicians of all ages and styles from cowboy music to pure noise. Recorded in our Red Hook studios at Pioneer Works and offered as a distraction from the mid-week blues.