There are roughly 20 members in The Meets, but mostly there is one key player named Brandon Locher. Based out of Johnstown, PA, Locher's clearly a rare breed with the wiring to be a leader of men. In addition to being maestro to The Meets, he is co-founder of art collective My Idea of Fun, which is made up of visual artists, filmmakers, musicians, and writers in Johnstown.
Orchestrated on 80 percent field recordings of friends in drum circles and friends in symphonies, the It Happens Outside LP is like biking through the Bowery during CMJ or East Austin at SxSW, as a mess of sounds from cubby hole venues whirr into the exterior noise of rush hour traffic. On “Today Grew Dark” Locher twists the warming up notes of a wind ensemble into ambient clutter and when it settles we're in a subway station next to a plastic pale drum circle, digging in our pockets for loose change. If I knew more of third stream, I might equate Locher's instrumental compositions as such, but It Happens Outside supersedes the synthesis into possibly a fourth stream in which improvisation is manipulated into the fundamentally sound to serve the art of sampling.
The Meets' It Happens Outside is out October 1 on My Idea of Fun.
