Make a Rising:
Weird is so appealing

Music Row
By Brian Rademaekers

It has been more than three years since West Philly’s Make a Rising debuted with its lo-fi and wonderfully weird Rip Through the Black Hawk Night.
But Make a Rising (now expanded to sextet status) is back, and the bizarre beauty captured on the group’s virgin voyage has been taken to new levels of lovely nonsense.
Their second album, Infinite Ellipse and Head with Open Fontanel, is due to hit the official networks of distribution on April 8, but a February CD-release party and some online leaks have seen the 10-track freak-out happily ingested by hungry fans.
Dished out by Mount Airy’s High Two records, Infinite Ellipse and Head with Open Fontanel is a 50-minute work of art that the band wrapped up in September after a full year of plugging away. All that hard work shows, too.
The album as a whole is a kind of fearless foray into a new branch of experimental sound. But broken down, each song stands out as its own blithering and fractured kaleidoscope of sonic beauty.
The group also manages to follow a baseline of musical decency oft-ignored by other bands of the experimental vein: it sounds good.
Weird and wild though they may be, Make a Rising makes music that is pure good listening. Violins, saxaflutes, accordions, clarinets, twisted keyboards, pianos, guitars, marimbas and more are squeezed into tracks on Infinite Ellipse and Head with Open Fontanel to create lush compositions that are strung together by off-kilter harmonies, melodies and a goofy sense of spontaneity.
The primary minds behind this melee are brothers Justin and Jesse Moynihan. Besides wielding a wide range of the aforementioned instruments, the Moynihan brothers also put their minds to much of the composition.
Also joining the fun are John Heron on percussion, Brandon Beaver on guitar and vocals, John Pettit on bass and trumpet, and Andrew Ciccone on clarinet.
The album also takes on a hearty dose of area musicians. On that list is Fishtown’s Margie Wienk, of the freaky-folky Fern Knight, who offers her well-established cello skills. Wienk is among 10 other musicians who contribute to the album, from bands like Normal Love to Shot x Shot, and it’s another factor in the intricate web of noise woven by Make a Rising.
Over the last three years, the band has been known to share the stage with some pretty good company, including Dr. Dog, Dirty Projectors, Lightning Bolt, Man Man, Uz Jsme Doma, Pattern is Movement, Gang Dance and Neil Hamburger.
That reputation for combining mind-numbing networks of musicians is bound to call to mind other collectives in the experimental scene, but Make a Rising is on a different track.
Perhaps the closest thing out there right now is Brooklyn’s Akron Family. However, where Make a Rising prefers to wander off on a weird tangential harmony, Akron favors a more pop-oriented structure and shamanistic repetition.
Make a Rising is returning to its hometown haunts after a tour of the South that included several appearances at Austin’s SXSW festival.
After the show in Philly, the band will be exporting more of its eccentric jams at venues across the U.S.
And, if YouTube is any indication, we’re all in for a performance that should be as striking as the songs that Make a Rising has patched together in the studio.
The show is set to take place at the Pi Lam Human Barbecue, a West Philly performance space that is nuturing a reputation as a focal point for the kind of avant-garde madness that is Make a Rising’s specialty.
Also appearing are New York’s Pterodactyl and Toronto’s Off the International Radar. And it’s all just $5. ••

Check it out . . .

Who: Make a Rising
What: The newest compositions from one of West Philly’s best
Where: The Pi Lam Human Barbecue, 3914 Spruce St.
When: Friday, March 28, at 9 p.m. Tickets are $5.