JoeyMolinaro (at) gmail (dot) com
About Joey Molinaro
***if you’re looking for lessons or pro violin/ DJ work in the Pittsburgh area:
Yes, I’m the same person. No, I don’t use this page to showcase that kind of work. Send me an e-mail and we can get squared away***
Joey Molinaro is an ever-evolving creative musician whose work is rooted in his storied career as a touring solo violinist performing dark original songs with blinding speed, dazzling complexity, and visceral riffage.
His tours are marked with DIY grit and gusto, mostly touring by motorcycle, public transportation, or vintage automobile. This has led to a proclivity for performative storytelling, including concept albums, podcasts, and rock-and-roll fiction novels.
After starting his creative output in Bloomington, Indiana (where he studied violin at the Jacobs School of Music) and working as a public school orchestra director for several years, he briefly resided in Brooklyn before spending twenty-four months touring the US non-stop. Gradually he spent more and more time in his hometown of Pittsburgh and now lives there full time but still tours extensively.
Throughout his solo career he has had side projects of all kinds but is currently excited to perform signature DJ sets as 1980 Special Twin, which mixes his original motorcycle sample and violin-based metal-informed industrial techno tracks with deep uptempo goth-industrial cuts and selections from many adjacent genres.
Press
Logging nearly a thousand performances in five years of “twisting and warping minds in different cities” (Decibel Magazine) Pittsburgh-based experimental black metal/ solo grind violinist Joey Molinaro’s “stomping and ferocious playing is inescapable” (Foxy Digitalis).
Acoustic or electric, Molinaro “executes the spirit and function of hardcore punk and Appalachian folk” (Foxy Digitalis) with “vocals [that] haunt, like a preternatural voice from beyond the pale” (Razorcake) and torrential boot-stomping.
The music is otherworldly but exciting and accessible as there is nothing between performer and audience but a fiddle, a voice, and a wooden floor.
Selected festivals
Sux by Suxwest (TX), Idapalooza (TN), Blood Rust (NC), La Ferme Electrique (Tournen-en-Brie), Tapette Fest (Rennes), MÍSTNÍ FESŤÁK (Plzen), Koloni (Gothenburg), Skull Fest (Pittsburgh), 4th River Fest (Pittsburgh), Voice of the Valley (WV), Fringe Festival (San Diego), X-Fest (MA), New Music Bake Sale (Brooklyn), Totally Awesome Fest (Michigan), Vomit Fest (Sherbrooke), Violent Apes Fest (Aveyron), Bruitisme (Nancy), Multiversal (Berlin/ Amsterdam), Off the Radar (Hamburg), Action Research (Gainesville), Festival pour les 10 Ans de la DAR (Marseilles), Hell Night (Pennsic)
selected venues:
OCCII (Amsterdam), Cross Club (Prague), Roulette (Brooklyn), Saint Vitus (Brooklyn), Auxiliary (Richmond), Mammal Gallery (ATL), Che Cafe (San Diego), 7th Circle (Denver), Black Lodge (Seattle), Gay Gardens (Boston), Starry Plough (Berkelee), Death by Audio (Brooklyn), Siberia (New Orleans), New Cross Inn (London), The Windmill (Brixton), Køpi (Berlin), Casa del Popolo (Montreal), Trumbullplex (Detroit), Track House (Olympia), The Lovecraft (Portland), Life Changing Ministries (Oakland)
Interview with Kevin Stewart of Decibel Magazine
“Had the opportunity to see Joey Molinaro perform his interpretation of The Inalienable Dreamless on Violin last night. If you can catch him in action, it’s really worth it. It’s not covers, but his take and spin on the record. He really takes you to ground zero and fucking kills it. After more than 10 years, it’s awesome to see the record take a whole new life.”
Jon Chang, Discordance Axis/ Gridlink
“I can’t imagine anyone not liking this.”
-Valerie Kuhene, The Deli Magazine
“You can see in your mind’s eye crashing violet shards splashing into an incandescent stormy churning sea, and you are itchy again wondering just how this music could hold such a power…
-Zach Roth, Decoy Music
“…you flat-out have to hear this one to believe it. As much as I tried to capture it in writing, the sheer joy and terror and captivity and claustrophobia of “The Indealienable Dreamless” completely transcends my descriptions. That Molinaro contrasts that piece with “We” shows that executing the violence, creativity, and rhythmic disparity of the hardcore aesthetic through purely acoustic instrumentation sometimes trumps the actual thing.”
-Nicholas Zettel, Foxy Digitalis
“If you’re looking for inventive, brave, intelligent new music, this is pretty much the stuff.”
-Scott Shoger, Nuvo
“This is the violin as you’ve never heard it before: disorienting, nefarious discord paired with thrashy guitar riffs. If that doesn’t pique your interest, this is only a fraction of the Molinaro experience.”
-Kristen K, Razorcake
“There is a certain earthy quality to this that I find most endearing like a diamond in the rough.”
-Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery, NYC
“The delicacy is just more upfront. Molinaro’s violin also appears on “Autumn” and closing track “Look to Winward”, where in the latter it floats on the end of the song and gives a sense of closure not just to the album, but Gridlink’s career as a whole. Gridlink were a band that had no interest in sculpting false idols to kneel before. Putting it simply, they played only how they could play, and no one could match. Longhena fulfills the promise of Discordance Axis’ discography and Gridlink’s own first two records by pushing the potential of their own limits and what grindcore can be.”
Andy O’Connor, Pitchfork
“Top Audiovisual Encounter of 2011″