Tonight Willow Creek Winery in Silver Creek is going all out to close their summer "Homegrown Music" set with a full scale blow out called Wild Wild Fest, featuring Well Worn Boot, Lazlo Hollyfield, Funknut, Honey Spine, Jack Topht, and others. Camping is available and recommended (cuz it's in Silver Creek for Jebus' sake), especially because beer and wine slushies will be available along with chicken dinners for both winners and losers... but there won't be any losers with a line up like that. The fun and eventual and inevitable bacchanal starts at 5 PM.

Nietzche's hosts a packed local bill tonight. Lazlo Hollyfeld has been playing out pretty intermittently these past few years, but are now back with a vengeance. Their set at the Botanical Gardens Night Lights event was a musical and visual match made in heaven. Tonight, per their event page, they promise to dust off some old material that hasn't been played in a while. BuffaBLOG Birthday Party veterans On Beta will be joining them, along with another blog favorite, Applennium. I'm excited to see Applennium return to the stage, as the singles they've been releasing over the past year hint at a promising upcoming release (I hope?). Doors are at 9, and for a paltry $5, you can't afford not to go.

Here is what you need to do tonight: go see Lazlo Hollyfeld at Night Lights at The Buffalo Botanical Gardens. They are billed as one of Buffalo’s favorite creative bands, but I’ll attempt to be a little more specific: Lazlo Hollyfeld plays the perfect type of spaced-out jam-trance that turns an ordinary, laser-lit walk through the gardens into a magical one; visually and sonically stimulating at the same time. There is this sense you get, as you’re listening to them, that this kind of music was meant to be listened to in a certain context; it’s perfect background music, and The Botanical Gardens on a winter evening is as good a foreground as any. Night Lights goes from 6-10pm, with Lazlo Hollyfeld expected to take the stage at 8.

Formed in 2003, Lazlo Hollyfeld is certainly one of the most diverse Buffalo bands as they have shared their fresh brand of electro-rock for almost a decade now with Western NYers. The group prides themselves on constantly scanning their musical psyche for new expansive ideas and sounds, and their live performances are usually no different, often accompanied with visuals to supplement their distinctive sonic offerings. The group released their fourth studio album Desert in 2010, which shared conceptual songs inspired by a season of budgeted touring and all of the blessings and hardships that come along for the ride, and its listening experience breeds all of its striking themes with  minimal instrumental builds, congested percussion, and synth and guitar swells. 

Their anticipated follow-up is currently in the works, but that wont stop Lazlo Hollyfeld from playing buffaBLOG’s Holiday Party this Saturday at Duke’s Bohemian Grove Bar (DBGBs) which will be a gathering not to be missed, as they will be joined by several other prominent local groups including Well Worn Boot, Dr. Ooo & Mic Excel, KOPPS, and Cultr Club. The party starts at 10 sharp.

Last week the pro-local DIY-ers Steak & Cake Records released Sonny Baker’s record Here are those freaks you’ve been asking for. The 5-track collection is the debut effort from Baker, a local storehouse of indie talent as he currently divides his time between three other projects, that being Lazlo Hollyfeld, A Hotel Nourishing, and Wooden Waves, all of which have played a prominent part in WNY music scene in the past few years. That being said, you might want to check out our interview with the musician from yesterday here. 

Here are those freaks is Baker’s indie pop record realized, and it covers a hell of a lot of ground in 5 short tracks. While many of these songs have started out as folk demos via an acoustic guitar and tape player, they have blossomed into multi-instrumental collages of textural songwriting. Front and center is Baker’s crowded, chaotic vocals. His thoughts are sporadic as they are plentifully multi-layered. Intricate splashes of guitar and percussion bubble-up in each track, but the record never loses its froth even as each track is piecemealed into various directions, shaking-up the traditional pop song mundanity of verse and chorus.
“Cripple Fantastic” is an intriguing start to the record with it’s looped guitar fade-in and teeth-chattering snare, and Baker’s voice coats it all in its gradual complexities. It’s hard not to appreciate Baker’s signature fast-paced vocal style. The songs can get a bit labyrinthian, which could result in a difficult listening experience for those with short attention spans looking for a immediately catchy song, but if you pay close attention you’ll notice Baker’s songs are more like developing photographs in a darkroom--they slowly unfurl, and you suddenly see the images coming into focus. 

Another track brimming with detail is “Up to my Chest, Covered In Lead.” With wild guitar riffs amid organ blips, Baker’s vocals sprint a hilly landscape as convoluted instrumentals pant in their attempt to keep up. “Hallucinating, it’s a Steady Moan” gives us a moment to catch our breath, even if it’s a brief two minute cool off. Baker yawns a lo-fi drawl as he sings, “I try to find a heartbeat / Who cares any more,” even as electric guitar riffs start to infiltrate the folk-rock track.
Unlike a lot of failed pop records, Baker’s never gets boring to listen to because he is constantly shifting colors and speed in an attempt at a sonic bouquet that comes very naturally to him. There are certainly comparisons to be made, Born Ruffians and My Morning Jacket to name a few, but there is something so varied about Baker’s style that makes you wonder why he’s not in two or three more bands, if not only to offer a guitar track or two. Much like a drive from Buffalo to Toronto, Sonny Baker’s music covers a vast and densely populated landscape, as it progresses from lo-fi, humble beginnings to vast and uber-developed songs, and even when you’ve arrived at the conclusion of the record, there is still so much more to discover about it. 

Having played in Buffalo for over ten years now, Lazlo Hollyfeld is one of the city's most established groups. Since the initial birth of the project however, the line-up has changed, with members switching in and out. Today, the band consists of Scott Molloy (keys), Chris Gangarossa (Bass), Sonny Baker (guitar),  Matt Felski (percussion), and Bill Wachowiak (drums) who most recently joined, giving the Felski (the drummer prior to Bill) the opportunity to experiment with other percussive instruments.

Last Saturday, they opened up for Holy Fuck at Soundlab, and two days prior to that I got to catch up with four of it's members. During the interview I slowly began to understand that their longevity is a product of their mutual loyalty and experiences, a sort of dedication to creating a sound that experiments with different sides of the instrumental spectrum. It's music that proves to be not only intriguing in the live-setting kind of way, but intriguing through the headphones while taking a walk outside, during any season. It's meditative but it pulses with an appropriate amount excitement, the kind of excitement that makes you try to guess what's going to happen next- all created right in the heart of Bufalo.  

BUFFABLOG: How did you guys come together?
Scott Molloy: Me and Chris knew each other, a long time ago.
Chris Ganarossa: We were in an older band together, but we broke apart and the two of us started writing music together.
Scott Molloy: We've evolved a couple times, the drummers have been the biggest plague. Billy was supposed to be the original drummer but then he jumped shit
Bill Wachowiak: It was a weird thing, I wanted to play in some band, something I didn't know, something that was different then what I was doing, something like this. I put an ad on WBNY and Chris responded.
Chris Gangarossa: Billy joined around a year ago. Matt was the original drummer, he joined around 2005.
Matt Felski : Right after I graduated from UB.
Scott Molloy: A mutual friend of ours suggested I go check Matt out. So I went to check him out and told him he was joining the band when he was done with his set.

BUFFABLOG: What would you considered your genre to be, what sort of bands do you draw the most inspiration from?
Chris: Post apocalyptic sub-African Rock.
Matt: The title we've always used in the past is post-rock.
Scott: That's kinda the genre we fall into.
Chris: We've been called "art-rock" But you know, it's just experimental.  Boards of Canada is my biggest influence, I can't get enough.
Scott: Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, bands like Tortoise, a lot of electronic influence. Aphex Twin, Bonobo, real heavy influence, DJ Shadow, David Axelrod.
Matt: Obviously whatever you're listening to is going to come through, but I think really the sound of the group is developing, based on who's on what instrument and whatever people contribute. Sure you bring in your influence, but at the end of the day it is what it is.
Bill: It's not like I think "Ok, I'm going to play a DJ Shadow beat here"

BUFFABLOG: So you said you started leaning toward an electronic influence, how did that change your set up?
Chris: We tried some sequencers, before we got Billy.
Matt: We wanna go more in that realm, where you have live musicians really contributing something from there hands but on top of that you got loops or arpeggiations.
Scott: Yeah absolutely, it's the only way we could pull off playing half the stuff off the new album too.
Chris: Our last album, Desert, was very electronic influenced.

BUFFABLOG: Speaking of which how many albums how have you guys come out with?
Chris: Four.
Scott: Well five, but the fifth was download only.

BUFFABLOG: When you guys decide to make a new album, what's the process like? How has it changed with the addition of Billy (a new drummer)?
Matt: Just us sitting together and writing music as a group. The last album was a concept album. But I feel like right now when we write tunes we just meet up and write it.
Bill: And this one is going to sound different because there are different members, it's a different deal now.
Chris: It's gonna sound different, whether there are different members or not.
Matt: In the past with Lazlo, it's been ok here's the drum beat, now we have that as a framework, but Billy plays around with that much more.
Scott: I like that integration, he's using more of an actual electronic kick, a live acoustic kit in conjuction with electronic pads and electronic sounds, so it creates a live electronic drum sound.

BUFFABLOG: What's song-writing process like?
Chris: There's an idea usually, someone has an idea, and we just build on it.
Billy: For a lot of songs, Scott writes it on his keyboard at home and plays it to us.
Chris: But when we get together, we alter it tremendously.
Scott: Yeah, they never end how they started.
Chris: Usually if we come up with a lick, by the end of the song that lick isn't even in the song anymore, that happens a lot.
Matt: So it'll be someone having one little idea, a loop, one small little idea, and everyone comes up with their part for that, and then we'll try to come up with another part. It's a more tedious, slower process, but it works.
Scott: We've tried a lot of different ways of writing over the years too, some straight improvisational, hit-record and see what happens, see if we get something good. Some of our best material we've ever done we were all in a room together, and it came together in like 10 minutes, almost magically, all of a sudden we have this song. Other things, were written with words.
Chris: We took ten days on the previous tour, and wrote down what happened each day, and converted that into music with a series of formulas.
Matt: It helped us have a process so we could move forward with the music.

BUFFABLOG: Can you go into that further?
Chris: The formula part, we took a notebook and wrote down what happened each day for ten days, generalized them. The tour was 2 months.
Scott: He picked a ten day stretch that was very unique to life experiences I guess you could say.
Chris: We took the synopsis of each day and changed it into a few words. The overall gist into a few words. Suddenly we had a few words for each of the 10 days. We took that and tried to describe to each other what you would play to convey that emotion or feeling.

BUFFABLOG: How do you guys go about recording? It's probably different each time right.
Chris: It is, this time it's different yet again, this time we recorded a bunch of drum-tracks and adding to those tracks, changing the track.
Scott: A lot of the time they become something new too, in the recording process, we wrote it for live performance first and when we find ourselves actually trying to put it on a song on an album, sometimes we'll find a part doesn't really work anymore, so we'll do something different it.

BUFFABLOG: Speaking of which, how would you characterize the difference between material for a live show and the material for recording.
Matt: I think ideally, they're not too far off.
Scott: I'm sort of on the other end of the spectrum, I think they're completely different mediums. The studio can be an opportunity to do something you can't do live. One of our albums, "The Pacer", we wouldn't be able to play live.

BUFFABLOG: How would you guys characterize the Buffalo music scene?
Matt: I can't speak for everyone, but the way I look at is it there are a lot of people playing music and as long as you keep in touch with your friends and talk to them, you'll find good music. And that's what I love about this city. Obviously we play in a band that shares the bill with other bands, so you get to know what other bands are doing just in nature of, "Oh, we're playing with this band tonight? Ok." But there are other things going on, like I love Jazz, so I'll go check some of that out.
Scott: I feel like we've been doing this long enough, and I guess aggressively enough in the region, that over the years it feels like we've gotten to know a very, very broad group of different people in different styles. And know them well. Totally different genres of music all across the board.



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Holy Fuck is a four piece live-electronic music ensemble whose ecstatically charged style has given them the reputation of being a band whose music is one that must be experienced live. Well, we are all in luck- cause tonight, these Toronto natives be playing at Soundlab. 

Keyboards, bass, and a drum kit alongside a myriad of unique sound-creating devices is incorporated within their live set-up-  one music critic has said of them- "It is a billowing, danceable sound, huge rhythms married to a billion electronic blips and ostinato figures, painting futuristic Technicolor soundscapes as loudly as possible." In addition, much of their live material is improvisation, but not of the jam-band sort, but the sort that has the initiative of recreating the essence of danceable electronic-tunes in a live-setting.

Lazlo Hollyfeld, the locally established post-rock band, will be opening up for them, delivering instrumental tunes that are a product of  influences as far reaching as Mogwai and Boards of Canada.

Together, the two bands will be casting the sonic equivalent of lightning upon the dark, cozy venue. Needless to say, it's not something to be missed. Doors open at 9 and tickets are $15.