Sunday Night Music Preview

Welcome to the music portion of MUSEXPO 2009, where we’ll be both previewing and blogging live from the nightly music showcases at the world famous Viper Room and Whisky A Go Go. Kicking off the festivities on Sunday night at 8pm at the Viper Room will be Lay Low, the musical alter-ego of Lovisa Elisabet Sigrunardottir, who was born in London to a Sri Lankan father and Icelandic mother but relocated to Reykjavik, Iceland at an early age. Her first album, Please Don’t Hate Me, was the best-selling original album in Iceland in 2006 and was nominated for four Icelandic Music Awards, winning three. n early 2008 Lay Low returned to London to work on the follow-up album with producer Liam Watson (White Stripes, Pete Molinari, Holly Golightly). The resulting effort, Farewell Good Night's Sleep (available in North America May 26), reflects Sigrunardottir's affection for the honky-tonk sounds of such seminal artists as Patsy Cline, Lefty Frizell, Dolly Parton and Ernest Tubb, among others, while imprinting her own personality upon the songs, resulting in the music team at iTunes hailing Lay Low as one of the best discoveries of 2008.

Leading off the entertainment at the Whisky at 8:30 is Our Lunar Activities, which was formed by brothers Kevin and Charles Clark on the Isle of Lewis, an island off the northwest coast of Scotland near where the Atlantic Ocean meets the North Sea. It was while touring Europe with +44 that Our Lunar Activities attracted the attention of frontman Mark Hoppus (also of Blink-182), who was so impressed by the group's sound that he invited them to Los Angeles to record in December 2007 and ended up producing the album himself, utilizing engineering aid from Christopher Holmes (Red Hot Chili Peppers) to capture the raw energy of the group's scintillating live performances.

Back at the Viper Room at 9pm for Black Room, a rising young Norwegian trio who got their name from a most unfortunate circumstance: the house they rehearsed in burned to the ground, leaving little behind but songs for an album. Undeterred, singer Ole, guitarist Anders and synth-man Paal relocated to a room without windows but overflowing with guitars, synthesizers, records and computers, working on their debut album, Pop Noir--which also serves as a perfect two-word description of their music, which is reminiscent of some of Elbow's darker moments while also containing hints of artists such as U2, Coldplay and Snow Patrol.

At the Whisky at 9:30 we’ll be treated to a set from Dead Letter Circus, who in less than two years have risen to the forefront of promising Australian rock acts. In 2007 the group released their eponymous debut EP and the reaction was immediately positive, with it being deemed "Album of the Week" by Sydney's Brag magazine and Melbourne's Beat magazine that May, with the latter describing it as, "Epic, immeasurable and downright frightening, it is an EP which pulls a loaded gun, pushes it to your temple, forces you in the car, then drives at dizzying speeds on the freeway." By September 2007 they were on the Triple J Presents national tour and had signed a worldwide publishing deal with Universal, which was followed by an incendiary performance at the hometown stop of the Big Day Out tour in January 2008. In November 2008 they released a new single, "Next in Line," which debuted at No.1 on the AIR charts and also was playlisted at Triple J.

In the last four years the British band Purple Melon, which takes the Viper Room stage at 10pm, has changed guitarists three times, drummers twice and decided against keeping their keyboard player. Happily, though, they now feel they have the perfect lineup: Tom Hill (age 20) on vocals and guitar, Eric Joyce (19) on bass, Owen Barry (24) on guitar and Jason Ganberg (21) on drums. After relocating from Birmingham to London the group attracted the attention of many leading producers, ultimately deciding to work with Paul Stacey (Oasis, Black Crowes). They recently relocated to Los Angeles to put the finishing touches on the album and begin winning over North American fans through extensive gigging.

Taking the stage at the Whisky at 10:30 is Los Angeles’ own Bigelf, who with the release of their 1995 EP Closer to Doom established themselves as founding fathers of the "psychedelic doom movement" that paved the way for the Los Angeles stoner-rock scene. The group, whose sound is an astounding amalgam of the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath, recently released a new album, the aptly titled Cheat the Gallows, their first for Linda Perry's Custard Records.

Closing out the evening’s entertainment at 11pm at the Viper Room will be Tigarah, who was attending Tokyo's prestigious Keio University when some Brazilian classmates introduced her to the steamy sounds of Brazilian Baile Funk music (an offshoot of the Miami Bass sound). She rapidly became enraptured with the music, eventually journeying to Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro in order to fully immerse herself in the culture. It was while in Rio that she met the mysterious Mr. D, a Swiss/German DJ/producer who splits his time between Brazil and Los Angeles. In 2003 they decided to form a duo performing under Tigarah's name and three years later were signed to Universal Music.