Jeff and Jane at Williams Inn April 21
Space is the Place
By: Charles Giuliano - Mar 20, 2012
As we wrote in January covering a Mass MoCA performance by Jeff and Jane.
"I first met Jane some four decades ago when we were hippie guests at the Sheffield home of the seminal photographer and matrix for a generation of artists, Benno Friedman. He and his wife Stephanie were on hand last night. Before the set he told Jane, with an apology, that it was the first time he had heard her perform live.
"Of the senior citizens gathered to cheer on their plucky peers I have, hands down, seen Jane and Jeff perform more times than anyone in the room. Initially as The Rentals who, with Pseudo Carol on drums, famously opened for The Clash at the Harvard Square Theatre during their first American tour."
Following their sold out performance at Mass MoCA in January, Jeff and Jane Hudson invite you dance the night away at the Williams Inn Ballroom, on Saturday, April 21 (doors open at 8:00). After Jeff and Jane perform, Space Bar (Karl Mullen and Jeff Hudson) will offer smokin’ techno dance tunes followed by DJ Electro Jeff’s ‘80’s New Wave.
Since the 1980’s Jeff and Jane Hudson have been experimenting with electropop and synthesized sounds that straddle musical genres and result in “tight, artful sonic arrangements (Berkshire On Stage). The husband and wife duo celebrate the 30th anniversary re-release of their album FLESH (Dark Entries Records with Captured Tracks, 2011)
Called “the synth wave couple of the U.S.” Jeff and Jane Hudson jump across styles and sounds. Their album Flesh featured industrial echoes and absorbing vocals but also had electro pop energy combining traditional sounds of post-punk alongside the gleaming new ideas of factory music. Jane’s sultry vocals mix beautifully with cold mechanical sounds. Othermusic.com said, “Jeff and Jane Hudson in their early sounds take cues from traditional sounds, with elements of rock and folk coming through. Yet, soon it is the synthesizer and drum machine that are at the core of their sound. Melding analog drum machines, dreary synth lines, detached vocal delivery from both Jeff and Jane, a killer DIY ethos, and tight, artful sonic arrangements, the duo successfully blurred the line between pure synth pop and more guitar-driven post-punk, while retaining a playfulness seldom seen in the realm of arty, dark synth music.”
Originally from Boston, video teachers at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts
Boston and former members of the late-'70s art punk group the Rentals, visual artists Jeff and Jane Hudson moved to NYC at the beginning of the '80s, opened for Suicide, the Clash, PIL and Duran Duran among others.
Karl Mullen, recorded with Carsickness, Ploughman’s Lunch and his own, Karl Mullen Band. Currently he is performing in The Wandering Rocks as well as in Space Bar. Mullen is renown as an ‘outsider artist’, showing his distinctive paintings in venues in Chicago, New York and North Carolina as well as at HUDSONS in North Adams, MA.
Berkshire Fine Arts Review
http://officialjeffandjane.com