Join us for the 8th annual KURE Fest! Free, open to the public, all ages welcome.
Doors open at 5:30pm
LINEUP:
NONAME
Noname (born Fatimah Warner) is an American artist from Chicago, Illinois, who blurs the lines of poetry and rap through the music she creates.
Noname grew up in Bronzeville, a historic neighborhood on the southside of Chicago that famously attracted accomplished black artists and intellectuals of all types. Noname first discovered her love for words while taking a creative writing class as a sophmore in high school.
She became enamored with poetry and spoken word, pouring over Def Poetry Jam clips on YouTube and attending open mics around the city. Noname regularly attended and performed at an open mic at Harold Washington Library,YouMedia’s Lyricist Loft.
After sessions at YouMedia, Noname would participate in cyphers and started getting into freestyling. When she was just a senior in high school, she placed third in “Louder Than A Bomb”, a poetry competition with 120 Chicago high schools in participation. She remained connected with the artists she met at YouMedia and in 2013, her verse on Chance the Rappers “Lost” attracted the beginning of her large fan base, most of whom have been following her every move since.
On July 31st, Noname released her debut project entitled Telefone which was 3 years in the making and highly anticipated by fans and media alike. The project instantly gained critical acclaim, with a rave review in Pitchfork and praise from major outlets like Rolling Stone, Complex, and Dazed & Confused. Noname has been hailed by The FADER, Complex, and Rolling Stone as one of the most exciting and important new artists of 2016.
Thanks to Telefone’s success, Noname played some shows in support of Ms. Lauryn Hill, who handpicked Noname to open for her on tour. When first approaching the project, Noname set out to emulate the feeling of talking on the phone with someone for the first time. She describes Telefone as “an introductory conversation with someone you’re interested in”. But as Noname continued to work on the tape, it also transitioned a bit into mortality: the idea of life and death and the duality between those two things.
RINGO DEATHSTARR
Ringo Deathstarr began in Austin TX in 2005 as a project of Elliott Frazier. After trying to get off the ground for 2 years with a constantly rotating cast of members, Elliott met Alex Gehring and a year later, Daniel Coborn moved to Austin and joined. Since 2010 the band has released two full length albums, 3 EP’s, a compilation of old songs, and two 7”s. Because of this they have toured the world, performing in Japan, Europe, Hong Kong, Israel, South America, Mexico, The USA, and Canada. The new album has just been finished and will be out in a few months, along with more touring of the world.
GLOOM BALLOON
Nothing is absolute in the music of Gloom Balloon. Drying the Eyes of the Goddess of Gloom, Underneath the Stars and the Moon, Gloom Balloon’s sophomore album, dwells in the darkest shadows of the heart, where the sounds slide in all directions and ambiguity reigns.
This album is an audacious attempt to mount a fully orchestrated, classically minded conceptual work within the context of contemporary
indie rock. Both forward-thinking and backward-minded, a collision of bygone musical styles and one of the most ambitious records you are likely to hear this year.
Gloom Balloon is ex-indie rock troubadour/new father Patrick Tape Fleming’s musical canvas where he’s prone to express undying
admiration and withering disdain for the same person, often in the same sentence. The album kicks off with the lo-fi sounds of his newborn baby son Nilsson crying in the background while Tape Fleming sings:
“I’ll buy you a poster for your birthday, maybe a cookie cake? I know the password to your phone, you know how to make my heart break, I just wanted to let you know how pissed I was at you for coming into my life way too late.”
Just as you think this album is going to be a mess of IPhone-fidelity recordings by a broken man, the angelic gospel whispers of bandmate Christopher Ford (Christopher the Conquered) appear with the chant, “Oh Fuck Yeah”, hinting that you have wandered past Tape Fleming in his bedroom and into another world all together.
THE FUSS
The Fuss is a DIY Indie-Rock group from Des Moines, Iowa (est. 2015). Combining guitar-centric elements of ‘60s garage-rock, poignant lyricism and buoyant vocal melodies, they’ve crafted an engaging and energetic live set with a sound that’s been described as “sonically adventurous*” and “severely catchy**”. Beginning as the solo project of songwriter Joey Lyons, The Fuss now features Matt Nelson, Ben Waldschmitt, and Nick Lucs and has set itself apart in the Des Moines music scene. They have released two self-produced EP’s to date – “One” and “Two”. Tracks from these works have been featured in numerous volumes of “Life as a Minestrone” (a French indie music blog and series of compilation albums). The band has received numerous noteworthy acknowledgments from local organizations such as the Des Moines Music Coalition (song included in the CarpeDM Mix, Vol. III, featured at SXSW Des Moines Embassy) and the Iowa Music Project (song included in The Iowa Music Project, released on Maximum Ames Records). The band has quickly built a loyal local following and aims to expand its fan-base through touring in support of their forthcoming, self-produced record, Self-Titled.
