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Concert Mon Jun 20 2011
Testing positive for Bran in the diet
Jake Rodriguez was reportedly a child actor way back in the day. As the stacks of memoirs lining the bookshelves of any modern day fame-junkie will tell you, that'll mess with anyone's mind, especially the impressionable youth. Just look at that face up there -- born to sell soap flakes and castor oil. Regardless of his past, Rodriguez's project The Bran (...another plight of medic's...) Pos, usually shorted to Bran Pos or Bran (...) Pos, is a project headed for the future.
I first saw The Bran (...) Pos here in Chicago back around 2003, and the now-defunct Deadtech gallery. There are plenty of people who tried to act strange (or mystical, or shamanic) these days, but Bran (...) Pos truly operates from a different set of celestial signals from most mortals. His home-build or home-modified electronics sound like the machines (and staff) of the MIT electronics department circa mid '60s being fed through a chipper shredder, the heart-stopping cascades of electronic arpeggiations matched by the strange facial contortions and facial puppetry that accompanied. (Again, see illustration above.) After several largely abstract albums, Bran (...) Pos released Coin-Op Khepri on the C.I.P. label a few years back, which brought structure to the oscillations via a concept album about casino gambling in the dark night of an imaginary Egypt. The best songs could have been outtakes from any number of Ralph Records "Buy Or Die" compilations from the '80s.
Another opportunity to see this strange force of the universe will come this Wednesday at Enemy (1550 N. Milwaukee, 3rd Floor) at roughly 9 p.m. Also on the bill will be Crucifagium, the solo project of Greg Ratajczak, guitarist of Anatomy of Habit and musical collaborator in Plaguebringer; synthesizer humanist Neil Jendon; and Enemy's whip-cracking scoutmaster Jason Soliday. $5 is asked to support the out of town act's addiction to putting gas in his car to make it go to the next town and eating food.