That cat has one thing on its mind

​After the Great Cupcake Flood of 2008 and the Cake Ball Frenzy of 2010, the baked goods wave seems to have slightly receded in Texas.There's only so many times you can hear "red velvet cake" before you want to stab someone with a spork. However, among the many niche food industries that have come back in vogue recently, ice cream still hasn't reached its full tidal potential. Where are the "new" Ben & Jerrys, hmm?

Local musician Aaron Barker sort of fits the description: Glasses, tattoos, had a corporate job and got laid off. Watched a three-hour documentary about the history of ice cream and had a revelation during a 100-degree Texas summer.

"There was this 20-minute bit in the documentary about ice cream college," Barker explains as we sit at Cafe Brazil in Deep Ellum. "And I thought, 'Let's do it. Let's go to ice cream college.'"

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​With a title like Improvised Silence, Fort Worth's Hentai Improvising Orchestra is essentially bringing a blank canvas to The Cellar this Sunday, the first in a series of last Sunday of the month shows at the Fort Worth club, which will also feature Darrin Kobetich on sitar and Giri Akkaraju on percussion. What to expect? Well...

"I don't know what to expect on any of the Improvised Silence nights," HIO's Terry Horn sums up. "It all depends on how each of the performers feels that night. Hopefully, people will leave having experienced something both out of their comfort zone and something interesting. [Sunday] will have a more Eastern feel with the addition of sitar and Indian hand percussion but each event will be different."

Indeed, the next four months feature artists who are all just one degree off from each other, and Horn says the nature of the event will stay fluid enough to accommodate any situation. "If we can't find musicians who want to sit in, then it will just be an evening of HIO. We're also trying to find filmmakers, poets and dancers of like mind that would be willing to participate. I've hosted these before but this time it's going to be a bit different. We hope these events/performances are similar to what the Nihilist Spasm Band has been doing for decades up in Canada."

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​Check out this week's issue for a feature on The Black Dotz, but multitasker that he is, Dallas DJ/producer/musician Wanz Dover has another project to talk about as well. Blixaboy is Dover's long-running techno/electronic moniker, and he celebrates the release of a new EP, Intro to Futro, on Saturday at Bryan Street Tavern. Convextion, Betdat and Keith P join him live for a pretty spectacular bill, and he says the show will have three parts.

"One section will be a DJ/live set using my laptop to perform a bunch of my new material. Another section will be an all-hardware affair with my buddy Cygnus. We will both be using a ton of hardware and kicking it old school with no computers. I am also doing one very long song with my friend Jerett Fulton on live drums.That tune is kind of my own tribute to the German band Neu."

I had a few more questions for Dover about what exactly dubstep means these days, and why it was necessary to create his own genre.

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​Back in December, we reviewed Jacques Renault's hyped set at Rio Room. And then, House of Plates, a Dallas blog that gracefully mixes music with food, documented Renault eating at Lockhart Smokehouse. Yes, barriers were broken.

As food and music continue to culturally intersect, and as restaurants become more and more "punk rock" (Andy Rooneyesque tangent: Is it a requirement for Top Chef contests to all have tattoos now?), House of Plates is certainly sitting squarely on the buzz.

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The family Gonzalez

​Dallas jazz trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez and New Orleans drummer Alvin Fielder met in New Orleans close to 30 years ago, and have been collaborating ever since. It's a relationship that's lasted longer than most marriages, and listening to Gonzalez's latest Yells At Eels collaboration with Fielder, Resurrection and Life (review in next week's issue), that sense of history unfurls in the most magical way.

Balance is important to Gonzalez, which is why Yells At Eels, which features his sons Aaron and Stefan, could easily be viewed next to their grindcore duo, Akkolyte. There's no genre division, just a spiritual hand that guides them through whatever music they happen to make, be it thrash or free jazz. I asked Dennis a little about his history with Fielder, and well, he held forth.

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