Bowery Boston presents
Doors: 8:00 pm / Show: 9:00 pm
This event is 18 and over. Patrons under 18 admitted if accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.
Tickets on sale Fri. 5/12 at 10AM!
Tickets available at AXS.COM, or by phone at 855-482-2090. No service charge on tickets purchased in person at The Sinclair Box Office Wednesdays-Saturdays 12-7PM. Please note: box office is cash only.
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Nick Murphy (fka Chet Faker)
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What’s in a name?
Chet Faker took everyone by surprise. Including Nick Murphy.
“It was always meant to be a temporary project,” says Murphy of his musical moniker. “But so much has changed. And I moved through some things. To the point where I finally realised, Holy shit this isn’t temporary. This is not the be all and end all of what I want to do.”
At 28 Murphy has done a lot. Emerging in 2012 with the Thinking in Textures EP, Murphy took Chet Faker international with the release of his self-produced 2014 debut LP, Built on Glass.
As Chet Faker, Murphy has performed sold out shows on five continents, and appeared at the likes of Coachella, Lollapalooza, Glastonbury, and Primavera. He performed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Boiler Room, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Built on Glass won Murphy five ARIAs, including Best Male Artist and Producer of the Year. His tracks have been streamed in the tens of millions.
So why put that recognition in jeopardy?
“Chet Faker was me trying to prove something to myself,” says Murphy. “But my tastes are pretty dynamic and I realised I’ve spent time resisting that. Now I want put everything in. It’s not conceptual anymore. It’s just me, and it made sense to show that in a name. It feels like a rediscovery.”
That feeling brings Murphy full-circle. Thinking in Textures came easily — something he conjured between study and work commitments. But making Built on Glass was difficult. “Everything had to be finished to perfection,” he says. “I recorded it alone. I was so meticulous. I think now I was punishing myself just to see if I could do it.”
Its success, creatively and commercially, proved he could. In early 2015 Murphy moved to New York and began stockpiling new ideas. By early 2016 he’d sketched out the beginnings of a second Chet Faker album, and flew to Rick Rubin’s Shangri La studios in Malibu to begin work. Then, a hitch.
“I remember having this ‘ah-ha’ moment,” says Murphy. “I was in Shangri La. I could do whatever I wanted. And I thought, ‘OK. Well, I’ve ‘made it.’ But how do I feel about the music? I didn’t like it. I wasn’t getting anything from it. And I think that’s where all this stemmed from.”
Murphy returned to New York emboldened. He sought new dialogues with friends, most notably guitarist and producer, Dave Harrington (Darkside). The explorations he’d left behind when establishing Chet Faker returned as fresh creative avenues. By the time he released the brooding ‘Fear Less,’ under his own name, followed by ‘Stop Me’ in mid-2016, he knew everything was different.
“This huge wave came out,” says Murphy. “And I broadened the framework. Instead of having to make finished tracks, I could just explore. That felt like the missing link between where I was and where I’m going now.”
The Missing Link EP is a snapshot of that wave in motion. Opener ‘Your Time,’ bears traces of Murphy’s previous incarnation, but the central motif of ‘Bye’ is voice-less distortion. ‘I Am Ready’ embraces opposing movements; ‘Forget About Me’ is a grand, escalating “purge” unlike anything Murphy’s done. Closer, ‘Weak Education’ is a personal callback — a reminder to have fun. It’s the sound of Murphy exhaling.
“I haven’t been this excited since I started,” says Murphy. “I’m so happy to be doing what I’m doing right now. I’ve knocked down some big walls. It’s going to help me out for a long time. So many ideas have been flowing since that switch. Since I let go.”
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Charlotte Cardin
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At only 21 years old, Charlotte Cardin has already shown promise of being one of 2017’s breakout songstresses. Her debut single, the minimal electro-jazz ballad “Big Boy,” garnered instant online buzz. Since then, the young singer’s career has been a series of milestones. Her long-awaited debut EP was released July 2016 and instantly jumped to number one on iTunes Canada. The success of the EP is being fueled by a 60-date Canadian tour which has so far included stops at the CBC Music festival, Osheaga, and le Festival d’été de Québec (the latter of which saw her opening up for Sting and Peter Gabriel). By road-testing her material with her tight-knit three-piece band, Charlotte seems to have hit a sweet spot between the minimalism in the songs’ arrangements and the larger-than-life quality of her live show.
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Heathered Pearls
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Heathered Pearls is Polish-born Brooklynite Jakub Alexander, whose career in music was deeply rooted before ever releasing his own. Curator for Tycho’s ISO50 blog, co-founder of the Moodgadget label, and A&R at Ghostly International, Alexander has been entrenched in the industry since 2002. He was first introduced to the power of ambient music by his mother at an early age, discovered techno as a teenager living in the Detroit area, and gradually learned to create his own vision of the genres.
In 2012, Heathered Pearls wrote and released his first album. Loyal mimicked the hypnotic and swelling motions of ocean waves at night with melodic, loop-based ambient music, and was well received across the board. But Alexander would only move on from there, inescapably drawn to dancefloor ideas and memories of the engrossing techno mixes he pored over as a kid. The second Heathered Pearls album, Body Complex, was conceived in that mindset—transforming Loyal’s gritty, soporific textures into immaculate 4/4 figurines, glacial tone drifts, and starry synth plateaus. It’s the beginning of a new phase in Alexander’s ever-evolving project, the possibilities of which expand seamlessly into the realms of music, art, and performance.