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Lo-fi avant-garde Svengali Ariel Pink appears in support of the Mini Pops Festival, which features the mind-blowing sounds of bands from Pink's own label Human Ear Music.

Catch him in San Francisco on March 7th at the Lipo Lounge and then on March 8th at Kimo's Bar as part of Holy Shit  with Matt Fishbeck.

Pink has been recording his music on tape since 1996 but it wasn't until after he passed a CD-R to the New York-based band Animal Collective hat his commercial musical career took off.

The Ariel Pink band was assembled following Ariel Pink's return from a Australia in October 2006. Unusual for an Ariel tour was that the tour organizers, Mistletone Records, auditioned, hired and trained a band of local musicians to back Ariel's performances. The Australian tour band rehearsed a repertoire of his songs exhaustive enough to be able to perform whatever was needed.

The Australian move was inspired by the success of Ariel's early 2006 US tour, in which he requested the help of local musicians nationwide to form ad hoc backing bands at each stop along the way. Every night, he performed with a different array of strangers who, in widely varying ways, rendered a fair number of his songs as he performed live.

Naturally, the Ariel Pink band has formed, from local musicians, a more perfect union to hone renditions of his massive oeuvre and place greater emphasis on songcraft than sonic manipulations.

Since then the band has performed locally, on tour in support of Of Montreal, at the 2007 SXSW conference, and a double-bill tour with Gang Gang dance in June, 2007.

Mini Pops Festival line-up: