One Ring Zero / Barbez

Show Description

Using odd-ball instruments including claviola, toy piano, theremin, and glockenspiel, One Ring Zero creates a musical landscape that is part cartoon, part Klezmer, and part circus. This performance will feature songs from their most recent album "As Smart As We Are"--with lyrics written for the band by Paul Auster, Rick Moody, Margaret Atwood, Denis Johnson, Jonathan Lethem, AM Homes, Neil Gaiman, Dave Eggers and many more. [One Ring Zero's} quirky ethnopop could have been played in the background of a Balkan-embassy party in the 1930s. The songs on the band's [book/cd] As Smart As We Are--which features lyrics by literary figures such as Paul Auster, Rick Moody and Margaret Atwood--touch on They Might Be Giants whimsy, Residents-style unease, Tom Waits clank and Marianne Faithfull melancholy." - Time Out New York www.oneringzero.com


Gorgeous old world and Slavic-tinged song collides with Alfred Schnittke and the Residents in this unique post-cabaret punk chamber septet. "Barbez includes a brilliant theremin player who smokes cigarettes and a full-throated Russian singer who comes across like Joan of Arc with a sense of humor. They cover everything from Bertolt Brecht to Black Sabbath, but the real attraction is their melodically haunting originals. With a folk-music sound located somewhere between turn-of-century Eastern Europe and modern America."–The New Yorker http://www.barbez.com