Sans Temps Morts is Nate Dorr’s weekly New York City events guide.

No rest for the music-addicted! It’s another fairly packed week with some pretty amazing bills from far-flung corners of NYC music and beyond. So let’s just go STRAIGHT TO THE LISTINGS:

Tuesday, 15 April ::

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone is either the best or worst possible name for Owen Ashworth’s ongoing dissection of the lo-fi pop song. It’s almost misleadingly pathetic — Ashworth’s talents as a songwriter are formidable, and the simplicity of his arrangements increasingly deceptive — and also suggests a level of kitsch-potential that his unadorned, affecting compositions deftly sidestep. And yet, this is a man playing rickety, sadness-stricken music for casio keyboard, for which the moniker seems admittedly perfect nonetheless. He hasn’t put out a full album in several years, but the last, Etiquette was a doozy, and he’s lately been spewing 7″ in all directions, which is sort of an amazing thing for someone to do instead of recording full albums, right when they’re starting to get noticed on a broader scale. Ashworth will be playing two shows this trip, both with Adelaide, Australia’s psych-ish synth-pop Clue to Kalo (sorta simpler-Caribou-ish at times), but this one’s also got excellent near-instrumental punk-rockers Fiasco and High Places’ Rob Barber playing in rarely-seen solo configuration as Urxed. I have heard rumors, but nothing allowing speculation into what Urxed actually sounds like that would be more than… speculation. Also on the bill: Crytstal Stilts. All at the Knitting Factory, 74 Leonard St at Church, Tribecca. 8pm doors, $8.

Want your keyboards a little glossier, and maybe not totally depressing? Try recent Kill Rockstars signees, just back fromlong expatriation in England, drum and keetar duo Shy Child. I saw their first show back on US soil in Austin, and it actually boded really well, seeing their old dance-punk tendencies balanced with a British nu-rave angle apparently picked up while opening touring with the Klaxons. And they’ll be opening for equally notable label-mates the Gossip, who continue to infuse punk roots with a surprising level of soul. With Duchess Says at Webster. 7:30 doors, $20. (Note: as of press, I’m told this is sold out, though ticketmaster is still sort of being coy and acting like there might be available tickets.)

Want your keyboards to be be pretty much unrecognizable? Experimental electronics pioneers Autechre have a new album, complete with fittingly unintelligible MySpace page. And they only seem to hit U.S. soil on the most occasional basis, so if architecturally detailed rhythm-design and oozing broken-time synth sculpture makes you go all starry-eyed, this is not to be missed. Graham Massey of 808 State / Bjork production / star remixer fame will be opening as Massonix. At the Music Hall of Williamsburg. 8pm doors, $22.

Want your keyboards to be frequently atonally noisy, letting a stunning string section handle the melodic development, over eerily EBowed bass skritch and hum? Your new favorite improvisational drone ensemble is Lonely Ghost. With Magnets for Teeth and Sudan at Don Pedro’s, 90 Manhattan Ave at McKibben. 9pm, $3.

Super extra non-keyboard-related bonus level: H-Alpha at the Stone. That’s DNA drummer Ikue Mori on laptop, Jim Black on drums, and Briggan Krauss on alto saxophone. If you know the Stone, you know the basic drill by now: very talented people charting the weirder reaches of modern jazz and experimental improvisation. At the Stone, 2nd St and Ave C, nw corner, East Village. 8pm, $10.

Wednesday, 16 April ::

For all those devoted noise-jazz fans that I know are out there right now asking themselves “when is Sans Temps Morts going to get back to the spastically complex rhythms and cacophonous instrumentation I love?”, look no further: Talibam!, Little Women, Ettrick and Tony Dryer. Talibam! is, of course, drummer Kevin Shea and keyboardist Matt Mottel spewing molten 60% improvised noise skronk, Little Women involves Zs’ Ben Greenberg, two sax players, and a drummer leaping gracefully from seeming chaos to precise coordination, and SF’s Ettrick stands as striking proof that NYC hasn’t by any means cornered the market on highly compelling near-atonal woodwind technique. This is the next in a very promising procession of shows from new booking crew Entertainment4every1, by the way, so get excited. At the Lucky Cat, 245 Grand St btwn Driggs and Roebling. 8pm, $6.

FREE: It’s some kind of tech demo night for the new Yamaha Tenori-On synthesizer, a rare electronic music device which, thanks to an intuitive blinky-light-grid-based interface, should inspire even the least tech-savvy viewers with some kind of interest and desire to try it out. Which is probably why Yahama wants you to see it in action free. They actually have a pretty exciting line-up of electronic notables on hand to incorporate these things into their sets, too: German minimal dub artist Pole, To Rococo Rot’s Robert Lippok, dual SF electronics manipulators Sutekh, and Safety Scissors. At Southpaw, 125 5th Ave, Park Slope. 8:30pm, and not only free but also involving a free drink ticket if you are one of the first 500 people in the door.

The second of the two Casiotone for the Painfully Alone dates may not have the Urxed or Fiasco, but surely inclusion of the lo-fi fuzzed-out harmonies of Vivian Girls help make up for that omission. Plus, it’s at Death By Audio, which is always a plus, especially if you want to watch Jodorowsky films splayed at weird angles on the wall (and, really, who doesn’t?). 49 S. 2nd st btwn Wythe and Kent. 8pm doors, $6.

Just up-river at Studio B, Brooklyn noise-punk anthemists Parts & Labor have their first show in New York since they left on tour for SXSW at the start of March, which means it’s also their first date here to feature the new fourth member, very talented experimental guitarist Sarah Lipstate, formerly of richly textural drone acts like Sands and her solo project Noveller. They’ll be joined by Yacht, the solo pop project of the one-time production half of the Blow, and ever-shifting instrumental ensemble Stars Like Fleas. At Studio B, 259 Banker at Meserole, Greenpoint. 8pm doors, $12.

In other news, Miguel Frasconi will be playing glass instruments at Barbes in Park Slope. Glass instuments! I admit I’m not entirely sure what this entails, besides that he evidently crafts them himself, but I’d sure like to find out. 6th Ave and 9th St. 8pm, FREE.

Finally, long time sound-designer and experimentalist Alan Licht and vocalist Kenneth Goldsmith have a show at the Stone, which would probably be a real highlight of some other less crammed week. 2nd St and Ave C, nw corner, East Village. 10pm, $10.

Thursday, 17 April ::

Is Brooklyn the next Baltimore? Wham City is back in town. Last time it was for a theater adaptation of Jurassic Park. Time before, it was in mass support of a Dan Deacon Whitney Museum date. What next? You guessed it: they’re here to hold a talk show, of course. “Television” personality Ed Schrader has apparently brought his semi-regularly recurring live talk show on the road, like Prairie Home Companion or something, allowing New Yorkers a chance to serve as “studio” audience. Guests this episode include comics Michael Showalter, of the State and Stella, and Eric Fensler, of the eponymous Awesome Show with Tim (Great Job!) and the musical guest will be none other than Dan Deacon. This stands to be really really bizarre and fun and basically unmissable, and I probably really overuse the word “unmissable” but I am totally serious this time. Don’t you wish you’d seen Johnny Carson back when he was still taping out of his mom’s attic in Corning, Iowa? This is the next best thing. At Ridgewood Temple, 1054 Bushwick Ave, at Gates Ave (J or Z to Gates ave or L to Myrtle/Wyckoff). 8pm, $tba.

Jeremiah Cymerman plays electroaccoustic music so varied and inventive it’s like an improvised musique concrète without need for actual sampling. Audible components in a random selection of his pieces include: atonal extended-technique clarinet (he is, first and foremost, a clarinetist), indeterminate electric chirping, tape hiss, amplified breath through wind instrument, something like a chair squeaking and a bunch of papers rustling. He has a new album on John Zorn’s venerable Tzadik imprint, and it’s getting a release party at Monkeytown with notable guest trumpet players Peter Evans and Nate Wooley in duo formation (both similarly engaged in creating new vernaculars for their instruments), and notable guest violist Jessica Pavone. 58 N 3rd St, Williamsburg. 8pm, $10 + $10 food min.

Friday, 18 April ::

This week’s Market Hotel megabill includes five bands all independently quite capable of justifying a show.

The breakdown:

High Places — Rising Brooklyn polyrhythmic pop stars, currently prepping a debut full-length album, still a charming, lushly lovely mix of layered percussion, guitars-which-refuse-to-sound-like-guitars, little electronic whickers and flourishes, and affecting but unaffected voice.

Ecstatic Sunshine — Baltimore guitar duo turned live drone/noise three-piece, now with a new album on Cardboard Records.

Cex — First: co-founded seminal turn-of-the-century American IDM label Tigerbeat 6 with Kid 606. Then: became a rapper. Then: moved home to Baltimore and befriended that whole bunch of crazy people, released like a million things last year including a bootleg rap mix-tape under appropriated moniker Girl Talk. Now: ???.

Evangelista — the new moniker of Carla Bozulich and co’s darkly ornate noise-pop, channeling, at turns, punk rock’s lo-fi fervor, psych’s delerious shimmer, and drone’s obsessive detail-and-texture fixation.

Zs — After working on a new set list all winter and spring here’s the reformed avant-jazz/noise/rock/classical ensemble Zs (minus guitarist Charlie Looker, who left to concentrate on his new Extra Life project), with presumably all new material. These guys are among the best of their oeuvre (whatever their ouevre, exactly, is), and their last show in December was fairly breath-taking. No idea what they’ll sound like now, but that’s part of the allure.
At Market Market Hotel, 1142 Broadway at Myrtle, Bushwick. 9:30 doors, $8.

On the other side of the spectrum, Death By Audio is hosting something called the HiFi New Music Festival (not be confused with the Hyphy New Music Festival), with three ensembles — Grenzenlos, the International Contemporary Ensemble, and Mantra Percussion — all performing works by Steve Reich, Giacinto Scelsi, Isang Yun, and Lukas Ligeti. 49 S. 2nd St. 8pm, $10.

Saturday, 19 April ::

Highly promising new These Are Powers EP Taro Tarot has been out, or at least circulating for a little while already, but it’ll get formally released this week at the Knitting Factory. The self-described ghost-punks (aptly chosen, in fact, for a self-descriptor) have really been stepping it up lately, so expect good things in the spooky precision atonality department. You’ll be nodding your head along before you have a chance to realize that the main melody hook is actually some kind of broken-guitar sproinging sound. With noise-semi-rock dynamo Sightings and Talk Normal. 74 Leonard St at Church, Tribecca. 10pm doors, $10.

Then it’s another chance to catch Evangelista, this time with local folk-pop outfit Air Waves, and the Minetta at Cake Shop. 152 Ludlow btwn Stanton and Rivington, LES. 8pm doors, $7.

FREE, for the brave: Regina Spektor at Soundfix Records, 110 Bedford. Williamsburg. But be warned: She’s only playing some undisclosed handful of songs, rather than a full set, and people will be lined up around the block for this. You can’t even come in early and get a table for Soundfix Cafe waffles, as the shows set for 1:00pm with doors at 12:45. So get there at about 11:00, or hope the rest of Brooklyn is laid low by especially crippling hangovers.

Sunday, 20 April ::

Did anyone else leaf through the booklet they gave out at CMJ with descriptions of all the bands? I feel sorry for the guy that had to think up about 1,000 unique music descriptors, probably only on the basis of myspace pages, leading to hilarious lines like “The Most Balls-Out Funkadelic band in Israel”. I can’t recall who that was in reference to, but it probably wasn’t Monotonix . They get two of the three (Israeli and “balls-out”, assuming that to mean something like “totally crazy”) but they’re much more classic rock-derived than funk. Like Deep Purple, except that the lead singer just flipped backwards over the bar without missing a note, and now he’s just snatched away your half-full plastic cup of beer and leaped, pirouetting almost gracefully in midair despite the sweat flying off his streaming hair, and right at the top of his arc chucked the cup out into the audience, who are also going completely nuts right now, like that shirtless guy over to your left wearing only sweat-drenched tie, cut-offs, and a baseball cap and doing some kind of hands-over-head-pelvic-thrust-move and what I am trying to say here is that Monotonix are really, really fun to see live. With enormous Athens, GA psych collective Dark Meat, turning similarly classic rock influences (albeit more 60s than 70s) into massive, cacophonous explosions of horns, percussion, and many-voiced backup, plus Heavy Hands, and Bad Wizard. At Cakeshop, 152 Ludlow btwn Stanton and Rivington, LES. 8pm doors, $7.

Sunday also sees the weeks’ second show from new booking team entertainment4every1, this time for two touring bands highly resistant to my attempts to learn what they sound like (i.e. they seem to lack useful MySpace pages). Those bands: Skaters and Dolphins from the Future. With Watersports, an electroaccoustic project containing a couple of Blues Control members, and John Chavez’s Hard Bop, at cozy neighborhood record joint Eat Records, 124 Meserole, Greenpoint. Probably free!

Monday, 21 April ::

FREE: Antipop Consortium at Other Music, E 4th St. and Lafayette.

And then:
22 Apr :: Golden Error, Jay Reatard, and Cheap Time at Europa
23 Apr :: Cinematic Orchestra at MHW
23 Apr :: FREE: Tokyo Police Club at Soundfix Records
23 Apr :: Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog at Sullivan Hall
24 Apr :: Ches Smith’s These Arches at the Stone
24 Apr :: Warper vs. Splice at the Tank
24 Apr :: Nate Wooley Quartet and Trevor Dunn at Zebulon
24 Apr :: Japanther, Videohippos, and NinjaSonik
25 Apr :: Monotonix and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth at Death by Audio
25 Apr :: Black Dice and Psychic Ills at MHW
25 Apr :: John Zorn at the Stone
26 Apr :: Talibam! at the Silent Barn
26 Apr :: Double Dagger, So So Glos, DD/MM/YYYY, and Shark Attack at Market Hotel
26 Apr :: WBAR-B-Q at Barnard College. Japanther, Videohippos, The Skaters, Awesome Color, caUSE co-MOTION!, Crystal Stilts, Tickley Feather, Megafaun, Takka Takka, Les Sans Culottes, Thee Yetis, Liturgy, Food Will Win The War, Bear, Wizards of the Coast.
26 Apr :: Fiery Furnaces at Southpaw
26 Apr :: Bent Festival with Aa at the Tank
27 Apr :: Rings at Cakeshop
27 Apr :: Atmosphere at Webster Hall
27 Apr :: Rings, Tickley Feather, and Kristin Valtysdottir (ex-Múm) at Cakeshop
27 Apr :: Talibam!, Stay Fucked, and Multitudes at the Charleston
29 Apr :: High Places and Gang Gang Dance at Southpaw
30 Apr :: Vivian Girls and the Perenials at Lit
30 Apr :: Bethany Ryker with Mary Halvorson, Bryan Noll, Jeremy Viner, Jess Pavone, and Jim Black, plus Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle) at Barbes
30 Apr :: Bad Dudes, Drunkdriver, Abstract Artimus and Animal at Death By Audio
30 Apr :: Golden Error at Lulu’s
01 May :: Telepathe and the Kills at Webster Hall
01 May :: Mahogany at Mercury
02 May :: Stars of the Lid for the Wordless Music series
02 May :: MV Carbon and Hahn Rowe at Issue Project Room
02 May :: Abe Vigoda at Silent Barn
03 May :: Awesome Color album release party with USAISAMONSTER and Mean Motion (Holland) at Market Hotel
03 May :: Team Robespierre and the Teenagers at MHW
03 May :: Cake Shop 3rd Anniverary Party: Vivian Girls
04 May :: Extra Life and Walter Weasel at Zebulon
05 May :: Team Robespierre and the Teenagers at Bowery
05 May :: F*ck Buttons and Sightings at Mercury Lounge
05 May :: Dizzee Rascal and El-P at Webster Hall
06 May :: No Age, Fiasco, and High Places at Bowery
07 May :: ICETANK VIII: Tres Generaciones - New Music from Mexico
08 May :: Ecstatic Quartet at Issue Project Room
09 May :: Vivian Girls TBA
09 May :: Video Hippos, Lymbyc System, Hot Lava, Boys Lie, and the Glaze at Death By Audio
10 May :: Team Robespierre at Maxwell’s
10 May :: The Apes, CPC Gangbangs, It Lives, and The Golden Error at Don Pedro’s
11 May :: Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls benefit with Vivian Girls at Cakeshop
11 May :: Golden Error at Union Pool
12 May :: Yea Big and Kid Static at Union Hall
12 May :: Aa at Death by Audio
14 May :: UnTapped at the Tank: Cornelius Dufallo, Jessica Schmitz, Rusty Limited Company
14 May :: The Death Set and Bonde Do Role at Europa
15 May :: Suicide, Aa, and Child Abuse at Europa
15 May :: High Places at Rhizome benefit at the New Museum
15 May :: The Death Set and Bonde Do Role at Bowery
16 May :: No Fun Fest!
17 May :: Golden Ghost at Union Pool
17 May :: Fiasco, Chubby Behemoth, and Air Waves at Death By Audio
17 May :: Blarvuster at Issue Project Room
17 May :: No Fun Fest!
18 May :: Alva Noto at Issue Project Room
18 May :: No Fun Fest!
19 May :: FREE: Peter Evans Quartet at Zebulon
20 May :: Little Women, People, and the Dead Science at Zebulon
21 May :: KTL at the Knitting Factory
21 May :: Extra Life with the Dead Science and Kyp Malone at the Knitting Factory
21 May :: FREE: Talibam! and Peeesseye at Zebulon
22 May :: Glenn Branca and Paranoid Critical Revolution at Issue Project Room
23 May :: Lucky Dragons at the Whitney
24 May :: Islands at Webster Hall
31 May :: Ponytail, Thank You, and Wzt Hearts at Knitting Factory
07 Jun :: Lucky Dragons at East River Music Project
08 or 09 Jun :: Jamie Lidell at Bowery
13 Jun :: Oneida: The Wedding, at the Kitchen
14 Jun :: Oneida: The Wedding, at the Kitchen
14 Jun :: Extra Life and Carla Bozulich at Mercury Lunge
19 Jun :: 65daysofstatic at Mercury Lounge
21 Jun :: Made in Mexico and Curse of the Birthmark TBA
22 Jun :: Child Abuse, Gay Beast, and Corima TBA
11 Jul ::: Oneida TBA

Until next week, live without dead time.