Sims + Lazerbeak with Bight Club

This show has been rescheduled due to weather for Fri, July 22, 7:00 pm.

Restless and passionate but with an
unflinching realism at his core, Sims has seen enough of life to know
there are no easy answers. His second full-length release, Bad Time Zoo,
out February 15th on Doomtree Records, reflects this rapper's ongoing quest for
solid understanding in a society on the brink of dystopia. For Sims, it's been
a long road.

Andrew Sims grew up in the
working-class Minneapolis suburb of Hopkins, Minnesota. He found solace in rap and R&B
music, nurturing a love for mainstream hits as well as then-underground artists
such as the Wu-Tang Clan. He soon found a gift for rhyme and
begin channeling his aggression into feisty, kinetic wordplay.

His rap habit quickly grew from
playground cyphers to recorded projects. In high school, he met a local
producer and rapper named P.O.S. who would sell him beats for $30 a pop and let
him record at his house for free. Eventually, their home-recording experiment
blossomed into a full-on musical enterprise that would pull in other aspiring
artists and help put Minneapolis hip-hop on the map.

Enter Doomtree. Hailing from
the same untamed Minneapolis indie music scene that spawned both punk legends
the Replacements and, 20 years later, hip-hop powerhouse Rhymesayers, Doomtree
has become one of the most trusted and influential names in grassroots hip-hop.

Since its birth in 2002, Doomtree
has grown from a CD-R-slinging, fast-food-fueled DIY collective into a tightly
knit, business-savvy operation. In addition to Sims and P.O.S., Doomtree's
roster includes some of the most daring artists working in hip-hop today:
Lazerbeak, Dessa, Mike Mictlan, Paper Tiger, and Cecil Otter.

In a genre that all too often
rewards imitation over innovation, Doomtree's artists strive for originality
without sacrificing mass appeal. As a result, fans of Doomtree have come to
expect uncommon hip-hop delivered in clever, club-rocking doses, and Bad
Time Zoo will not disappoint.

Setting himself as spokesman for a
generation fraught by vapid commercialism, political cynicism, and the
paradoxical power of technology to both connect us and drive us apart, Sims
seeks a path out of the disappointment that plagues modern life. 

But while he casts himself as an
alienated prophet, make no mistake: Sims' message is of empowerment, hope, and
badass beats. The results are epically infectious. Bad Time Zoo is
not so much a hip-hop album as a teeming, beat-driven urban wilderness.

A pop-culture omnivore, Sims cites
influences that range from the sci-fi of Ray Bradbury, to the films of David
Lynch, to the 1940s graphic novels of Will Eisner. But most of all, Sims
listens to the world around him.

"I draw a lot more from human
interaction than I do from music," he says. "I listen and try to understand how
people function."

Like all good writers, Sims has an
ear for what makes us human.

We hope Bight Club will be able to join us for the rescheduled concert date of Fri, July 22. We will confirm this once we have connected with them.

Fresh off a Vita.mn Are You Local? best new band
victory and an attention-grabbing South by Southwest stint, Bight Club is back with their debut LP
"Dreamworld Vs. Minneapolis."

A brash, creative burst of dynamism, Bight Club
distances themselves from both the underground hip-hop status quo and
Midwestern humility. With MC Jeremy Nutzman's ability to shift from spitfire
verses to grooved-out soulful worldplay over beatsmith Tony Rabiola's
electro-orgy tracks, it's clear the twosome is more parts "Stankonia" than
"Lucy Ford."

Sounds like:

Outkast, MGMT, LMFAO