The Children is the new music project from actor/performing artist Michael Wiener, downtown theater veteran and recently, festival film circuit regular, and composer/producer Jim Coleman, former Cop Shoot Cop mainstay, most recently scoring music for cable television and film, and releasing work under the monikers of PHYLR and here.
Live, the duo will be joined by percussive-multi-instrumental specialist Phil Puleo, also of Cop, as well as Swans, and an emergent cast of others. Barkmarket bassist John N. holds down the low frequencies, and John Andersen helps spin the acoustic-textural environ.
The working process begins deep within the recesses of the studio, where sound wizard Coleman and singer Wiener instigate an intricate dialogue between Coleman's keyboards and found sounds and Wieners spontaneous lyrical melodicism. Fragments from these improvisational sessions are formed into rough drafts of songs, which are then painstakingly refined. At some point during this evolution, the duo is joined in the studio by Puleo, John N. and the rest, and the pieces become more organic, more live, more rock and roll. "Gothic Blues Ambient" might be an appropriate tag.
Hovering over his keyboard and computer, Coleman will anchor the upstage realm, providing both skeletal structure and spontaneity. Puleo will drive the songs with textured polyrhythmics. John N. will provide bombastic, soulful groove. The effect will be darkly, majestically orchestral, carried by Colemans wand.
Live, Coleman and his dirge-estra will provide a stark, shadowy, somehow transcendental backdrop to singer Wiener, the projects vessel, its channeler, disillusioned minstrel, wandering balladeer, heir to the mythological legacy of the Silver Surfer and the Man Who Fell to Earth, stricken by the plight of the world, determined to declaim, to soothe, the inhumane, the wrongful, the callous, the miserly. Kinetic, theatrical, he will bring these haunted songs to ghostly life.
The visual elements for The Childrens live shows also have an open door for video collaborators. For the debut performances, Filmmaker Joel Fendelman has created a montage for the intro. Coleman himself has created the visual tapestry for the main body of the performance.
