Ember Schrag + Bryan Day = Office Park
Lincoln, Nebraska’s Ember Schrag and Bryan Day seem like an odd couple on paper. She’s a bluesy/folky singer-songwriter much of whose 2009 album A Cruel, Cruel Woman seems to me like it would fit comfortably on Iowa Public Radio’s playlists (the song “Iowa” could almost be taken as a blatant bid for just such airplay); he’s an avant-garde composer and improviser who plays a wide array of his own self-invented, piezo’d-up instruments and operates Public Eyesore Records. For an undisclosed period of time now, however, they have been collaborating both romantically and on the house-venue Clawfoot House. I met them when Ember had me come out to Lincoln to play a Songwriter Power Ranger gig and ended up catching a show at Clawfoot afterwards, and had wondered what it would sound like if they were to collaborate musically. Well, now I have some idea. Here’s a rough demo recording of a song called “Sutherland” by their project Office Park, that was posted to Facebook earlier today. Reminds me a bit of the Amen Dunes stuff I just listened to on the WFMU blog the other day. Very nice. Looking forward to hearing more. Lucky Lincolnites can hear more tomorrow night at Clawfoot House at 8pm, when Office Park plays there, along with Rock & Roll Combo + Brad Krieger, Jeff Thompson, and KAMAMA in “Experimental Issue #15.”