News
VINCA MINOR WEBSITE
4/24/13
My friend, Kurt's, band Deadstring Brothers just released a new album on Bloodshot Records. If you get a chance, please check it out. He's a really great musician and has put together a really good album.
www.bloodshotrecords.com/artist/deadstring-brothers
4/2/13
Sorry it's been a while since my last post. I finished the horror film, The Anniversary, that I've been working on. I'm really excited to see the final version of that when it is done.
Besides that, I've been working on some solo piano (Rhodes) pieces, which may get released as an ep (or possibly a full-length) and trying to keep the depression at bay.
Hopefully, there will be more live shows on the horizon as well.
2/6/13
We're really excited to let you know that we will be sharing a bill with two of our favorite local bands, Isis and The Ghost and Blackpool Astronomy, at The Rendezvous on Friday February 15th at 10 pm. Please see the Shows page for more details.
2/4/13
I have a tentative set list for my acoustic show on Thursday February 7th. As of right now the set is:
Burn
You Fade
Is There Nothing Left?
Raindrop
Beautiful
Everything
Can We Sleep Tonight
1/24/13
Our good friends, The Redwood Plan have a new album coming out and are having a CD Release show at Nuemo's in Seattle to celebrate on February 15th. The album's really great and their live show is fantastic, so I highly recommend both. You can get more information here:
http://neumos.com/event/the-redwood-plan-2-15/
1/14/13
Happy new year and sorry for the delay in posts. I've been kind of under the weather. I'm still working on the score for The Anniversary, though I've seen a new cut and it looks great. I'm really happy to be a part of this.
I'll also be performing at Cafe Racer on Thursday 2/7/13 somewhere between 9 and 11 as part of the monthly Operadisiac show there. I may be playing acoustic guitar for this one with some old and new songs. If you have any requests please let me know.
Take care everyone.
12/23/12
I've posted my fourth and fifth songs, The Little Drummer Boy and We Three Kings, to Soundcloud. You can check them out here:
http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/little-drummer-boy
http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/we-three-kings
These are probably the last two for 2012. Thanks for listening and thanks so much to Milo Tobin for his great covers.
Happy Holidays!
12/9/12
I posted my third song, Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer, to soundcloud. You can check it out here: https://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer
12/6/12
I posted my second song, Silent Night, this morning to soundcloud. You can check it out here: http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/silent-night
12/5/12
At a friend's urging, I am recording several traditional holiday songs this year. I'll be posting them on Soundcloud and may put up for sale on Bandcamp when I'm finished. Milo Tobin has agreed to make covers for all of the songs. The first one is up now: http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/jingle-bells
12/3/12
We have received a very wonderful from Joe Wawrzyniak from Jersey Beat:
VINCA MINOR – Capital of Sorrow (www.secondshimmy.com) Beautifully sparse, haunting, and melodic, this album creates a powerfully sorrowful and melancholy mood that grabs the listener right from the first brooding note. The richly layered sonic textures are vividly filled out by ambient synth lines, stately pianos, a tremendous sense of intoxicating cinematic sweep, and Matt Menovcik’s exquisitely forlorn vocals. The feeling of overwhelming sadness fortunately never degenerates into saccharine mush; instead it’s given a certain wrenching poignancy and dignity by Menovcik’s gorgeously lush and stark arrangements, thoughtful songwriting, and consummate musicianship. The gradual tempos and subdued beats further add to the hypnotic pull of the music. Lovely and moving stuff.
11/25/12
Happy Holidays everyone. I have posted the short film Capital of Sorrow to Video page. I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to contact me using the Contact page to let me know what you think. As always, thank you.
In Seattle on Songwriting Day. Once a month, the songwriting group I belong to sets aside a day to just write however many songs we can. We then get together in the evening and play each other what we've come up with. Today is that day this month. I plan on posting the listenable material I come up with to my Soundcloud account if you are interested in taking a listen to some new works in progress. My Soundcloud page is here:https://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik
11/6/12
The new album, Capital of Sorrow, is officially available now at most online retailers. We are about to head out to the release show and are very excited for the evening ahead.
Thank you.
11/4/12
I've added two new tracks to my soundcloud account. They are demos of pieces I will be playing at the Vinca Minor CD release show 11/6/12 at the Rendezvous.
http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/at-night
http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/someonetobelieve
Enjoy! We hope to see you Tuesday. And, of course, please vote. Thank you.
8/5/12
We've begun production on the CDs and are pleased to share with you the new album artwork, which you can find on the Photos page.
7/26/12
We're in the process of finishing up the artwork for the new album. Kramer just sent the masters and they sound fantastic as always. We're also starting to submit the film for film festivals (mostly experimental). There's a lot of work going on right now.
7/18/12
We are extremely please to announce that the new Vinca Minor album, Capital of Sorrow, will be released 11/6/12 on Second Shimmy. We are very proud to be working with Second Shimmy again and being part of such a wonderful roster of artists.
7/10/12
I believe the short film is done and the album is almost mastered...
6/29/12
Because my ideas surpass my budget, I may be starting a fan funding campaign shortly to help fund the release of the album. If you have any opinions on this either way, please contact me from the contact page. I'd love to know what people think about this method of funding music. As always, thanks for being out there and supportive. Music is what I really love to do and I hope that I will be able to share my new album with you soon.
6/13/12
We are reaching the final mixing stages for the new album and still editing the accompanying short film. We hope to have more news for you soon.
In the meantime, we highly recommend checking out the new album by Julia Holter, Ekstasis, and Jherek Bischoff's fantastic new release, Composed.
5/15/12
We are honored to be opening for the Deadstring Brothers (Bloodshot Records) at the Sunset Tavern on Wednesday May 23rd at 9pm. The last band I was in when I lived in Detroit was with Kurt from the Deadstring Brothers. He's one of the best musicians and people I have ever worked with.
5/4/12
Last week ended with the bittersweet end of post production on the short film I scored, C.B., which will be playing at SIFF. The first showing is Memorial Day, May 28, 2012 at the Uptown in Queen Anne at 4pm. This short was such a joy to work on and turned out really great. It's always nice when a project is complete, but sad when you enjoyed working with everyone and really had fun with the creative process.
There may be a new show in the very near future, so please check back soon for more information.
I hope to have more news on the new album soon as well.
Thank you.
4/18/12
Our show on 4/22/12 received a nice plug in the current issue of The Stranger by esteemed Dave Segal:
Yards, Post Paint, Vinca Minor (Comet) The side project of Southerly's Krist Krueger, Yards essays expansive, elegant post-rock in the vein of genre standard-bearers such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Rachel's. He achieves a panoramic, orchestral grandeur that avoids the sometimes sentimental bombast of some others in this realm, like Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Rós. Vinca Minor (the artistic vehicle for Seattle-via-Detroit musician Matt Menovcik, ex-Saeta and Ms. Led) specializes in an eerie breed of minimalist loner-folk rock somewhere between early Red House Painters and Jandek. DAVE SEGAL
We hope to see you there.
4/11/12
I just wanted to let you know that I have revamped my www.mattmenovcik.com site with great help from my friend, Bob Smolenski. It's more for my film composing and various projects I'm involved in. Please check it out if you get a chance.
Thanks.
4/9/12
As promised, information on the April 22nd show has been added to the shows page. Hope to see you there.
4/4/12
I believe we have a show in Seattle, WA at the Comet Tavern on April 22nd. More information to come soon.
3/29/12
In case you haven't heard, Sigur Ros has a new album coming out, Valtari, on May 29th in the US and have put up a teaser for it here: http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/ .
Also, we're now thinking of a late Summer/early Fall release for the new Vinca Mnor album. More details soon.
3/22/12
Thanks so much to everyone who came out to the show on Monday. We really appreciate you being there and hope you enjoyed the evening as much as we did.
I'll be working on a film score for the next 2-3 weeks, so I may be a little lax in my updates for a little bit. I'll give more info on the score soon.
Thanks again.
3/12/12
Just coming off of a very eclectic music weekend. Saw Lana Del Ray do an in-store performance at Easy Street Records Saturday afternoon then went to a Balkan Music Festival at The Russian Center for the rest of the day and then enjoyed a great performance of Baroque Choir Music by The Seattle Bach Choir yesterday.
It looks like we will be performing to the Silent film The Seashell and the Clergyman (you can read more about that one here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seashell_and_the_Clergyman) at our 3/19/12 performance.
3/9/12
For our Seattle fans, Vinca Minor will be performing Monday 3/19/12 at the Rendezvous with our good friends, ISIS and the GHOST, and Blackpool Astronomy. See the shows page for more details.
2/27/12
I just wanted to let those of you in the Seattle are know that there is a Black Monday show at the Sunset this evening:
SBM presents Mortal Clay and Blicky Plus Mixed Messages & DJ Coldheart Monday, February 27 at 9:00pm at The Sunset. They always have great shows so I'm looking forward to this.
2/22/12
I'm very excited that the Dirty Three are releasing a new album 2/28/12. You can stream it here in the meantime:
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/19/146535905/first-listen-dirty-three-toward-the-low-sun
Also, I scored two shorts recently that were shown at the Pacific Place theater this past weekend - a fantastic short called Zinka by the wonderful Collin Neal - chilling, sad and brave in about 11 minutes. I also scored the short 3 for co-director Marco Scaringi, which turned out better than I could ever have hoped for. It was a great honor working on both of these films.
I also played a minor show last night on Capital Hill. It was just me and my acoustic guitar. I did play one of the new songs - Can We Sleep Tonight. I played with Scott Adams, Josh Lanza, and a fantastic jazz trio (though I think they are usually a quartet) whose name escapes me.
2/12/12
I've added a new video of my cover of Echo & The Bunnymen's Seven Seas to the video page. I hope you enjoy it.
1/17/12
Just wanted to let you know that I have posted two songs from my Hey Beautiful project at www.heybeautifulmusic.com. I hope you enjoy them. Also, editing is about half way done for the film.
1/11/12
Happy 2012! We finished shooting the film and have a rough edit done. I'm hoping to have it done by early Spring 2012. I also recorded 6 songs with Mackenzie Buchanan. We are calling our project Hey Beautiful. To check it out, please go to www.heybeautifulmusic.com. I am hoping to announce some new shows and more information on the album very soon. Thanks.
12/9/11
We are almost finished with shooting for the movie. Things are coming out very well and we are very excited to complete this and share it with you. I am also working on a new collaboration with Mackenzie Buchanan. We're working on finishing several songs before she moves back to Connecticut later this month.
11/25/11
I recently completed the music for a dance piece. The choreographer and dancer is Ines Andrade and Milo Tobin did the filming for the video. Please check out the video page to view what we came up with. I hope you enjoy it.
11/22/11
We had a marathon shooting session for the film this past Saturday. A very special thank you to Mackenzie Buchanan and Milo Tobin for all of their help with this. Editing and a little more shooting lie ahead. More information as things happen.
I'm reading the Haruki Murakami book ,1Q84, right now and really enjoying that and listening to a lot of Tuneyards.
Take care.
10/26/11
We are working on a new release date for the new album, Capital of Sorrow. We are hoping it will be sooner rather than later. We are also working on a film to accompany the release. We've already begun shooting, but the concept involved will take a bit longer than your normal film as you will soon see. Thank you for your patience. There are a couple of new songs on the Sounds page for you.
My friend, Kurt's, band Deadstring Brothers just released a new album on Bloodshot Records. If you get a chance, please check it out. He's a really great musician and has put together a really good album.
www.bloodshotrecords.com/artist/deadstring-brothers
4/2/13
Sorry it's been a while since my last post. I finished the horror film, The Anniversary, that I've been working on. I'm really excited to see the final version of that when it is done.
Besides that, I've been working on some solo piano (Rhodes) pieces, which may get released as an ep (or possibly a full-length) and trying to keep the depression at bay.
Hopefully, there will be more live shows on the horizon as well.
2/6/13
We're really excited to let you know that we will be sharing a bill with two of our favorite local bands, Isis and The Ghost and Blackpool Astronomy, at The Rendezvous on Friday February 15th at 10 pm. Please see the Shows page for more details.
2/4/13
I have a tentative set list for my acoustic show on Thursday February 7th. As of right now the set is:
Burn
You Fade
Is There Nothing Left?
Raindrop
Beautiful
Everything
Can We Sleep Tonight
1/24/13
Our good friends, The Redwood Plan have a new album coming out and are having a CD Release show at Nuemo's in Seattle to celebrate on February 15th. The album's really great and their live show is fantastic, so I highly recommend both. You can get more information here:
http://neumos.com/event/the-redwood-plan-2-15/
1/14/13
Happy new year and sorry for the delay in posts. I've been kind of under the weather. I'm still working on the score for The Anniversary, though I've seen a new cut and it looks great. I'm really happy to be a part of this.
I'll also be performing at Cafe Racer on Thursday 2/7/13 somewhere between 9 and 11 as part of the monthly Operadisiac show there. I may be playing acoustic guitar for this one with some old and new songs. If you have any requests please let me know.
Take care everyone.
12/23/12
I've posted my fourth and fifth songs, The Little Drummer Boy and We Three Kings, to Soundcloud. You can check them out here:
http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/little-drummer-boy
http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/we-three-kings
These are probably the last two for 2012. Thanks for listening and thanks so much to Milo Tobin for his great covers.
Happy Holidays!
12/9/12
I posted my third song, Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer, to soundcloud. You can check it out here: https://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer
12/6/12
I posted my second song, Silent Night, this morning to soundcloud. You can check it out here: http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/silent-night
12/5/12
At a friend's urging, I am recording several traditional holiday songs this year. I'll be posting them on Soundcloud and may put up for sale on Bandcamp when I'm finished. Milo Tobin has agreed to make covers for all of the songs. The first one is up now: http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/jingle-bells
12/3/12
We have received a very wonderful from Joe Wawrzyniak from Jersey Beat:
VINCA MINOR – Capital of Sorrow (www.secondshimmy.com) Beautifully sparse, haunting, and melodic, this album creates a powerfully sorrowful and melancholy mood that grabs the listener right from the first brooding note. The richly layered sonic textures are vividly filled out by ambient synth lines, stately pianos, a tremendous sense of intoxicating cinematic sweep, and Matt Menovcik’s exquisitely forlorn vocals. The feeling of overwhelming sadness fortunately never degenerates into saccharine mush; instead it’s given a certain wrenching poignancy and dignity by Menovcik’s gorgeously lush and stark arrangements, thoughtful songwriting, and consummate musicianship. The gradual tempos and subdued beats further add to the hypnotic pull of the music. Lovely and moving stuff.
11/25/12
Happy Holidays everyone. I have posted the short film Capital of Sorrow to Video page. I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to contact me using the Contact page to let me know what you think. As always, thank you.
In Seattle on Songwriting Day. Once a month, the songwriting group I belong to sets aside a day to just write however many songs we can. We then get together in the evening and play each other what we've come up with. Today is that day this month. I plan on posting the listenable material I come up with to my Soundcloud account if you are interested in taking a listen to some new works in progress. My Soundcloud page is here:https://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik
11/6/12
The new album, Capital of Sorrow, is officially available now at most online retailers. We are about to head out to the release show and are very excited for the evening ahead.
Thank you.
11/4/12
I've added two new tracks to my soundcloud account. They are demos of pieces I will be playing at the Vinca Minor CD release show 11/6/12 at the Rendezvous.
http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/at-night
http://soundcloud.com/mattmenovcik/someonetobelieve
Enjoy! We hope to see you Tuesday. And, of course, please vote. Thank you.
8/5/12
We've begun production on the CDs and are pleased to share with you the new album artwork, which you can find on the Photos page.
7/26/12
We're in the process of finishing up the artwork for the new album. Kramer just sent the masters and they sound fantastic as always. We're also starting to submit the film for film festivals (mostly experimental). There's a lot of work going on right now.
7/18/12
We are extremely please to announce that the new Vinca Minor album, Capital of Sorrow, will be released 11/6/12 on Second Shimmy. We are very proud to be working with Second Shimmy again and being part of such a wonderful roster of artists.
7/10/12
I believe the short film is done and the album is almost mastered...
6/29/12
Because my ideas surpass my budget, I may be starting a fan funding campaign shortly to help fund the release of the album. If you have any opinions on this either way, please contact me from the contact page. I'd love to know what people think about this method of funding music. As always, thanks for being out there and supportive. Music is what I really love to do and I hope that I will be able to share my new album with you soon.
6/13/12
We are reaching the final mixing stages for the new album and still editing the accompanying short film. We hope to have more news for you soon.
In the meantime, we highly recommend checking out the new album by Julia Holter, Ekstasis, and Jherek Bischoff's fantastic new release, Composed.
5/15/12
We are honored to be opening for the Deadstring Brothers (Bloodshot Records) at the Sunset Tavern on Wednesday May 23rd at 9pm. The last band I was in when I lived in Detroit was with Kurt from the Deadstring Brothers. He's one of the best musicians and people I have ever worked with.
5/4/12
Last week ended with the bittersweet end of post production on the short film I scored, C.B., which will be playing at SIFF. The first showing is Memorial Day, May 28, 2012 at the Uptown in Queen Anne at 4pm. This short was such a joy to work on and turned out really great. It's always nice when a project is complete, but sad when you enjoyed working with everyone and really had fun with the creative process.
There may be a new show in the very near future, so please check back soon for more information.
I hope to have more news on the new album soon as well.
Thank you.
4/18/12
Our show on 4/22/12 received a nice plug in the current issue of The Stranger by esteemed Dave Segal:
Yards, Post Paint, Vinca Minor (Comet) The side project of Southerly's Krist Krueger, Yards essays expansive, elegant post-rock in the vein of genre standard-bearers such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Rachel's. He achieves a panoramic, orchestral grandeur that avoids the sometimes sentimental bombast of some others in this realm, like Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Rós. Vinca Minor (the artistic vehicle for Seattle-via-Detroit musician Matt Menovcik, ex-Saeta and Ms. Led) specializes in an eerie breed of minimalist loner-folk rock somewhere between early Red House Painters and Jandek. DAVE SEGAL
We hope to see you there.
4/11/12
I just wanted to let you know that I have revamped my www.mattmenovcik.com site with great help from my friend, Bob Smolenski. It's more for my film composing and various projects I'm involved in. Please check it out if you get a chance.
Thanks.
4/9/12
As promised, information on the April 22nd show has been added to the shows page. Hope to see you there.
4/4/12
I believe we have a show in Seattle, WA at the Comet Tavern on April 22nd. More information to come soon.
3/29/12
In case you haven't heard, Sigur Ros has a new album coming out, Valtari, on May 29th in the US and have put up a teaser for it here: http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/ .
Also, we're now thinking of a late Summer/early Fall release for the new Vinca Mnor album. More details soon.
3/22/12
Thanks so much to everyone who came out to the show on Monday. We really appreciate you being there and hope you enjoyed the evening as much as we did.
I'll be working on a film score for the next 2-3 weeks, so I may be a little lax in my updates for a little bit. I'll give more info on the score soon.
Thanks again.
3/12/12
Just coming off of a very eclectic music weekend. Saw Lana Del Ray do an in-store performance at Easy Street Records Saturday afternoon then went to a Balkan Music Festival at The Russian Center for the rest of the day and then enjoyed a great performance of Baroque Choir Music by The Seattle Bach Choir yesterday.
It looks like we will be performing to the Silent film The Seashell and the Clergyman (you can read more about that one here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seashell_and_the_Clergyman) at our 3/19/12 performance.
3/9/12
For our Seattle fans, Vinca Minor will be performing Monday 3/19/12 at the Rendezvous with our good friends, ISIS and the GHOST, and Blackpool Astronomy. See the shows page for more details.
2/27/12
I just wanted to let those of you in the Seattle are know that there is a Black Monday show at the Sunset this evening:
SBM presents Mortal Clay and Blicky Plus Mixed Messages & DJ Coldheart Monday, February 27 at 9:00pm at The Sunset. They always have great shows so I'm looking forward to this.
2/22/12
I'm very excited that the Dirty Three are releasing a new album 2/28/12. You can stream it here in the meantime:
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/19/146535905/first-listen-dirty-three-toward-the-low-sun
Also, I scored two shorts recently that were shown at the Pacific Place theater this past weekend - a fantastic short called Zinka by the wonderful Collin Neal - chilling, sad and brave in about 11 minutes. I also scored the short 3 for co-director Marco Scaringi, which turned out better than I could ever have hoped for. It was a great honor working on both of these films.
I also played a minor show last night on Capital Hill. It was just me and my acoustic guitar. I did play one of the new songs - Can We Sleep Tonight. I played with Scott Adams, Josh Lanza, and a fantastic jazz trio (though I think they are usually a quartet) whose name escapes me.
2/12/12
I've added a new video of my cover of Echo & The Bunnymen's Seven Seas to the video page. I hope you enjoy it.
1/17/12
Just wanted to let you know that I have posted two songs from my Hey Beautiful project at www.heybeautifulmusic.com. I hope you enjoy them. Also, editing is about half way done for the film.
1/11/12
Happy 2012! We finished shooting the film and have a rough edit done. I'm hoping to have it done by early Spring 2012. I also recorded 6 songs with Mackenzie Buchanan. We are calling our project Hey Beautiful. To check it out, please go to www.heybeautifulmusic.com. I am hoping to announce some new shows and more information on the album very soon. Thanks.
12/9/11
We are almost finished with shooting for the movie. Things are coming out very well and we are very excited to complete this and share it with you. I am also working on a new collaboration with Mackenzie Buchanan. We're working on finishing several songs before she moves back to Connecticut later this month.
11/25/11
I recently completed the music for a dance piece. The choreographer and dancer is Ines Andrade and Milo Tobin did the filming for the video. Please check out the video page to view what we came up with. I hope you enjoy it.
11/22/11
We had a marathon shooting session for the film this past Saturday. A very special thank you to Mackenzie Buchanan and Milo Tobin for all of their help with this. Editing and a little more shooting lie ahead. More information as things happen.
I'm reading the Haruki Murakami book ,1Q84, right now and really enjoying that and listening to a lot of Tuneyards.
Take care.
10/26/11
We are working on a new release date for the new album, Capital of Sorrow. We are hoping it will be sooner rather than later. We are also working on a film to accompany the release. We've already begun shooting, but the concept involved will take a bit longer than your normal film as you will soon see. Thank you for your patience. There are a couple of new songs on the Sounds page for you.
