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Dock And Roll: How To Dress Well, Lucius, Kingdom highlight ICA Boston 2015 Wavelengths series


The Institute of Contemporary Arts’ annual Wavelengths series has been one of our favorite summer programs for a few years now, bringing cutting-edge bands, performers, and producers to perform against the backdrop of the city’s waterfront. It bills itself as “Boston’s only waterfront music series,” but doesn’t rest on its location in order to bring a stellar party — the music that fills the cool-breeze air is always on point.

This morning ICA Boston released its 2015 Wavelengths series lineup, and this year it’s a collaborative effort between the museum and Boston Calling Music Festival. Co-curator Aaron Dessner of the National teamed up with John Andress, Associate Director of Performing Arts at the ICA, and the lineup is stellar.

Jumping out at us on first glance are Boston-born pop group Lucius, New York electronic music producer Kingdom, and Chicago’s How To Dress Well.

Check out the full slate below..


WAVELENGTHS PRESENTED WITH BOSTON CALLING | FRIDAYS | JULY 10 – AUGUST 28 | 6:30 PM

JULY 10 | Martha Wainwright / Zs
$20 ICA members + students / $25 nonmembers

From following in the footsteps of her acclaimed musical parents to launching her career singing backup for older brother Rufus, folk seems to be singer/songwriter Martha Wainwright’s birthright. Self-deprecating, sometimes brash lyrics pair with melodic intensity to create, as Pitchfork pronounces, a “startling wealth of shiver-inducing moments.”

Zs, named “one of the strongest avant-garde bands in New York” by the New York Times, combine disparate elements: progressive jazz, minimalism, no wave, musical abstraction, rock, lengthy repetition, and unpredictability.


JULY 17| How To Dress Well
$20 members + students / $25 nonmembers

From his debut 2010 album Love Remains, dubbed “the biggest breakthrough in home-recorded lo-fi in years” by Pitchfork, Tom Krell’s project How to Dress Well has provided audiences with
an energetic mix of electronic pop and R&B. Though laced with wistful words, a steady beat infuses the songs with confidence and optimism. In How to Dress Well’s latest album, What IsThis Heart? experimentation has fermented into a minimal, highly produced record full of confessional dance-pop ballads.


JULY 24 DJ SET: !!!
$15 ICA members + students /$20 nonmembers

!!! was named after the click sound of the Khoisan language that, when written down, was signified by an exclamation point; while most commonly pronounced as “chk chk chk,” the band says any monosyllabic sound repeated three times will do. The Sacramento-based dance-punk band’s sound ranges from quirky indie rock to funky electronica, both infused with high energy, heavy bass, and an art-disco vibe. As the Guardian says, they are “positively raring with the joys of sproingy bass, synthesized squelches, and stubborn, repetitive beats” sure to propel you to the dance floor.


JULY 31 DJ SET: Picó Picante / Otto Von Schirach
$15 ICA members + students / $20 nonmembers

Picó Picante is a “non-stop dance party driven by global music influences.” Organized in part by 2015 Foster Prize winner Ricardo De Lima, the Boston-based monthly party features DJs from across the country and dance music from Latin house to tropical bass, to Moombahton and electronica.

Otto Von Schirach, the self-titled “King of the Bermuda Triangle” grew up in Little Havana, Miami, surrounded by Miami bass, Cuban tropic music, Afro-Cuban noise, gangsta rap—and a White Magic–practicing grandmother. These musical and supernatural influences come through in unhinged and chaotic songs that merge dubstep, 80s dance music, grind, noise, psychobilly, garage rock, and tropical calypso: Pitchfork called one track “a fevered hallucination,” another “just the right mix of mutilated party anthem and breakneck cut/paste lunacy.”


AUGUST 14 Lucius / Lisa Hannigan + Aaron Dessner
$20 ICA members + students / $25 nonmembers

With her soulful, mystical vocals, delicate instrumentals played on vintage instruments, and self-knit album artwork, Lisa Hannigan has perfected a quirky musical ambience. She appears at the ICA with The National guitarist (and Wavelengths co-curator) Aaron Dessner. Beyond writing, performing, and producing for the National, Dessner is known for multi-genre collaborations including Matthew Ritchie’s The Long Count/The Long Game at the ICA, and for co-curating the Boston Calling music festival.

Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, the retro-fabulous lead singers of indie-pop quintet Lucius, met at Boston’s Berklee School of Music. One part 60s girl group, one part endearing alternative Americana, and one part hyper-stylized indie-rock, Lucius is “the missing link between Arcade Fire and Haim,” says The Guardian.


AUGUST 21 | Mykki Blanco
$15 ICA members + students / $20 nonmembers

Mykki Blanco is a genre-blending, gender-bending rapper known to feature spoken word by original riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna. With a punk hip-hop act that merges electronic music, rap, noise, and performance art, Blanco has worked with collaborators from British electronic dance music duo Basement Jaxx, to experimental hip-hop group Death Grips, to Björk. She cites influences Lil’ Kim and Beyonce, Marilyn Manson and GG Allin, Anaïs Nin and Fiona Apple. Hip Hop Giant XXL wrote, “Blanco’s strength is that she sounds like no one else in rap, and her presentation is still more innovative than ever.”


AUGUST 28 | Kingdom
$15 ICA members + students / $20 nonmembers

Brooklyn-born, Los Angeles–based DJ, producer, and label CEO Kingdom (a.k.a. Ezra Rubin) has been climbing the electronic music ranks with futuristic hybrids that merge mainstream and underground, resulting in mercurial, tightly produced, and irresistible tracks. Kingdom creates dance-floor-ready, bass-heavy, genre-bending remixes and originals, melding techno, electro, underground club, crunk, grime, and hip-hop with R&B vocals. “The genres Kingdom dips into range across the board,” says collective and label Night Slugs, “but his mixes create within themselves a new logic, a gutter-house aesthetic that just makes sense.”