Twittering like a bird on a wire

Last year, when four diverse Little Five Points-based artists and musicians were trying to settle on a band name, they looked to art history for inspiration. They all liked the compositions of Swiss painter and theorist Paul Klee, so they decided on Twittering Machine. The name, shared by a 1992 Klee painting that depicts mechanized birds on a wire crankshaft, seemed to aptly illustrate their sound.

"I like to think about what the birds might sound like when you crank the handle and make them chirp," says Daniel Brown, the group's cellist. "It must sound like a little music box." The band opens its delicate and melodic sounds for all to hear this week, when it unveils a debut recording, Live at WREK. The official release party/show is part of the Star Bar's experimental, and decidedly arty, residency of acts curated by downtown artspace Eyedrum.

Brown and guitarist Evan Levy played freeform improv material for five years in the Dribbling Hermits. "But I was also working on some little tunes with Beth [Moon, the group's vocalist/accordionist], and she had some great, quiet melodies," says Brown. "We thought, 'Let's play a tune that's less than 30 minutes long, with a good melody — something that people can sing along to.'" Thus, the Twittering Machine's song-based objective was born.

Says Brown, "Moon paints pictures in her lyrics, Levy's into the experimental noise stuff and Satchel Mallon, our drummer, is a reformed heavy-metalist. I enjoy the occasional showtune. So our opinions differ sharply." Put together (with the help of Gold Sparkle Band trumpeter Roger Ruzow), the Twitterers' harmonious democracy has produced a precious collection of watercolor-washed, pre-war era Paris afternoon tunes.

"I hope we can still be experimental enough to introduce a blender or weed-eater on stage in the near future," Levy says. "Of course, they would have be used in a song format."

The Twittering Machine plays the Star Bar Aug. 8.??