Strategies of Beauty Profile: Samantha Moss and Emil Rapstine (by Defensive Listening)

Saturday's Strategies of Beauty performance featuring the duet of Samantha Moss of Jetscreamer and Emil Rapstine of The Angelus will be their second performance together, and like the first, it will likely result in some combination of haunting atmospheric music and spoken word performance. In their first performance, Emil played a bastardized wind organ to accompany Samantha's recital of passages from"Dakota: A Spiritual Geography," a non-fiction tome written by Kathleen Norris that includes a topical mix of weather reports, spirituality, and monasticism in the American Midwest. Sounds like Spin Magazine wasn't kidding about this being one of the "101 Wildest Parties" of the summer! But don't let the reading scare you, Mr. or Ms. Less Adventurous, because Emil Rapstine's accompaniment will be a sonic fit to the heavy subject matter, and will probably resemble his moody work in The Angelus. Unfortunately, Rapstine's wind organ died an untimely death, so he'll be forced to improvise other ways to embellish Sam's speaking. The two might also treat the crowd to duet vocals, but no promises. One thing I was promised by Samantha: this will sound nothing like Jetscreamer.