Wednesday 1.23

Chapel Hill
Six Organs of Admittance
Local 506California musician Ben Chasny is a marked man of New Weird America, a classification for a rangy collection of American musicians coined by British music journalist David Keenan in 2003. Musicians within Keenan’s realm stretch from Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart to Sonic Youth and Sunburned Hand of the Man, from sweet folk to heavy noise. But perhaps the most holistic appealing quality of the scene Keenan and scores of writers who latched onto the term continue to paint is its lack of preciousnessor rather its need to create and its desire to share that work.

Chasny epitomizes this both in and beyond Six Organs. Six Organs has released at least one LP every year since 1998 except in 2001, alongside a litany of small-batch EPs, seven-inch records and splits. In 2005, he debuted August Born, his collaboration with Japanese psych stalwart Hiroyuki Usui and toured with Comets on Fire, the thundering California rock band that uses the guitar work of Chasny and Ethan Miller like flints from the sun. There’s Basalt Fingers, his collaboration with girlfriend and Magik Marker Elisa Ambrogio, andif you search hard enoughyou can find recordings of his pre-Six Organs lift-off, Plague Lounge. Chasny’s also collaborated with Current 93, lending his guitar and intellect to 2006’s masterful Black Ships Ate the Sky, helping build a live band that included members of OM (also Chasny collaborators) and Andrew WK. Thing is, for all his prolificacy, Chasny’s work is generally as strong as it is nonlinear. He’ll move from long-form acoustic excursions to pithy rock songs at moment’s notice, sweeping a sea of other sounds into the fold at will. Not to be missed. Grayson Currin

Tickets for the 9:30 p.m. show are $8-$10. Boyzone opens.

Raleigh
U23D
Wachovia IMAX at Marbles Kids MuseumThe latest fad may well be the bigger-than-huge concert film shown in spectacular 3D. Fans of the bigger-than-huge U2 can follow Bono and his boyz to Argentina for an epic concert on the Vertigo Tour. Catch (the really big) Bono beating drums and strutting between strobe lights for $9.50. Visit www.marbleskidsmuseum.org for info. Kathy Justice