This past Thursday I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Lindstrom perform live at "off again, on again" Studio B in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. By now Hey Student! readers know we have a slight bias towards this slinky Norwegian and his absolutely creamy disco beats, with his latest LP Where You Go I Go Tootopping our best of 2008 lists. Lindstrom's performance, much like that album, didn't fail to disappoint and was one of the better live electronic events I have seen.
With Lindstrom set to perform at 1 AM (!!!) that night, I knew sleep was not going to be an option. After having a few drinks at a quaint bar in my hood, me and a couple of my friends jumped into a cab at around midnight to make our trek to the cavernous, though, sadly, poorly located Studio B. Arriving at around 12:20 AM, we were greeted to some highly danceable tuneage from the opening DJ, including a fantastic remix of Cut Copy's "Hearts on Fire", which I am having difficulty locating (can any Hey Student! readers help a brotha out?).
Lindstrom surprising took stage at the advertised start time of 1 AM, opening with the always epic title track off Where You Go I Go Too. At that moment I knew this show was going to rock. Hard. What followed were several Lindstrom burners, including the track that started it all, "I Feel Space", the sprawling, groovetastic "Another Station" and fist-pump inducing "Grand Ideal." For the final track, Lindstrom ended where he began, giving an encore performance of "Where You Go I Go Too," giving closure to a wonderful live performance.
Arriving home at around 3:30 AM and waking up four hours later for work was a painful exercise, though the sacrifice was worth it. Do yourself a favor and see this man live - he will not disappoint.
In effort to escape the public hysteria over the slow train wreck that is the U.S.'s economy, I took some time yesterday to see in concert one of my favorite bands, Calexico, at NYC's Webster Hall. For the uninitiated, Calexico is one of the more interesting and talented musical acts today, and to witness their live shows is something of an event.
The group, founded by John Convertino and Joey Burns, is what I like to think as a musician's band. Incredibly technical though organic, Calexico breeze through multiple music genres to craft consistently beautiful and well-textured music. Though much has been said about the group's unique blend of mariachi, country and spaghetti western film scores, Calexico have recently over the last five years evolved into something greater. Much of the Calexico's recent work, starting with 2003's Feast of Wire, has channeled the group's now complex and expansive musical palette into the traditional song format, creating music that can balance the substance with the expansive style. The group's latest album, Carried to Dust, could be their best, and I've included the opening track, "Victor Jara's Hands", below for download.
Back to the show. Prior to last night's show, I had seen Calexico twice (2004 and 2006), both times of which I had been put in a complete trance. This time was no different. The group opened with "Roka", a Spanish/English vocal faceoff paced to slow, steady horns and percolated piano work. I quickly snapped a picture as I listened and watched:
Much of the setlist was drawn from Feast of Wire and Carried to Dust, though the group also played concert staple "Alone Again Or", a fantastic cover of a Love song of the same name, and the rambuctious "Crystal Frontier", a song that closes out a majority of Calexico's concerts. I've included both below for your downloading pleasure.
In watching and listening, I realized the tightness of Calexico's performance is unmatched. Every musician was in perfect communication with each other, and the best part is that the group has an absolute blast when doing so. In addition, Calexico has become truly international, as nationalities from around the world were represented on stage. What was once a Tuscon, AZ-based side project of the alt-country group Giant Sand has now evolved into a world act, now including members from Berlin, Munich, Madrid and Nashville.
The group is on tour now, so do yourself a favor and see them live, even if you've never listened to their work. A testimony from one of last night's patrons: "that was one of the happiest moments I ever had in New York." Take it from me, you'll likely feel the same.
On September 10, I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Mercury Rev's "Trip Over the Light Fanstastic" at the Stone in NYC.
First off, before entering into a discussion of what the show was, I'd like to point out that the Stone is literally a box, seating no more than 20 people and tucked away at 2nd street and avenue C. The Stone is not-for-profit music space run by avant-garde musician John Zorn, and hosts a variety of atypical music performances.
Mercury Rev is one of my favorite bands, and I've followed them ever since their release of Deserter's Songs, an album I believe is one of the best musical pieces to come out the 1990s. Comparisons to the Flaming Lips are multiple, as the two bands are led by singers with similarily high-pitched wails, though I always thought Mercury Rev was always a little more out-there, if that's possible.
Back to the show. As I entered the Stone at around 9:40 PM, I immediately went directly to the front row, and found myself literally a foot-and-a-half away from the microphone of Rev's lead singer, Jonathan Donahue. A scene before the performance:
Then, at around 10 PM, the band came out in a very "un-rockstar" entrance, crawling over patrons that were sitting on the ground and nearly tripping a couple of times. People around me were asking me if they knew what was going to happen, for which I gave a big ol' shrug. One guy to the left of me thought it was going to be a full-blown concert, but I knew that wasn't the case, given the setting.
Mr. Donahue stepped to his mic, but then he put on this strange headset, which was hooked up to all sorts of machinery, and then sat down in his chair. Alex Chechile, a Brooklyn avante-garde artist that accompanied the Rev, brought along a hand-built electroencephalograph, or EEG, along with a computer program that was used to modify music in real time according to one's own brain activity. Like something out of a movie, Alex had hooked up Jonathan to this machine, and the band began to "play".
"This is the sound of my brain" cooed Jonathan, as loud though rhythmic thumps emanated from the Stone's crackling speakers. In the background, two individuals touched two light beams to create a strange visual that I won't try describing, but maybe this picture does:
As Donahue manipulated brainwaves, Grasshopper, Rev's guitarist, played percolated riffs and noise, which was also sonically manipulated through his computer:
The show was a good 45 minutes, and though it wasn't a typical Mercury Rev performance, it wasn't what I expected, which is refreshing coming from a band that's been on the circuit for two decades. Even after all these years, Rev is still keeping their experimentalism alive, confirming the notion that this is one of the great American bands to have surfaced in the last twenty years.
This is the summer of King Khan and the Shrines for me, as I'll be seeing them three times over the course of a month and a half. At a certain point of this show, I had to put my camera away because I was having too much fun. I don't have anything to say about this concert, hopefully the pictures explain why. I'm gonna shoot more at the next two shows - Pitchfork this weekend, and the free Black Lips/Deerhunter/King Khan concert in August. (in nyc, duh)
The first three tracks from King Khan's album What Is?! follow.
The Winter Garden, Site of Bang on a Can's Annual NYC Music Marathon
In my most recent posts, I have expressed my deep respect and admiration for minimalist music. While I have already articulated my admiration for one of the greatest composers of our time, Steve Reich, there are several promising and forward-thinking artists today purporting minimalism and post-modern music. Enter music collective Bang on a Can and their essential annual marathon of avant-garde composition in New York City.
I originally heard about this great, free music event last year and had the distinct pleasure of seeing Steve Reich’s seminal composition, Music for Eighteen Musicians, performed during a transcendent sunrise. Immediately impacted by the event, I subsequently wrote a review on my personal blog and knew immediately that I would be a repeat attendee of the marathon. Both last year’s and this year’s marathons were held in the Winter Garden shopping center at the World Financial Center, which although ironic, has airtight acoustics that allows sound to reverberate and breathe beautifully.
This year’s 12-hour event, though not as lengthy and packed with as many artists as last year’s 27-hour affair, was equally impressive, beginning last night at 6 PM and culling a wonderful variety of electronic, classical and rock collectives from around the globe under one roof. Accompanied by my friend Hanly, I arrived at the Winter Garden at around 12:15 AM, in time to catch a beautiful Steve Reich piece Daniel Variations being performed by music collective Signal. The piece, written in 2006, uses the best elements of Steve Reich’s unique compositional style, filled with achingly beautiful strings, enchanting marimbas and xylophones and soaring vocalwork.
The next notable event was music collective Alarm Will Sound’s orchestral re-interpretation of the Beatle’s “Revolution #9” sound-collage off the their 1968 White Album. Though the piece didn’t quite sit with me, the performance was solid, with individual members doing a great job of both playing their instruments with precision and providing their own vocal interpretation of the multiple sampled voices in the original work.
Next was So Percussion’s performance of The So Called Laws of Nature, a piece composed by Bang on a Can founding member David Lang. A highlight of the night, the piece was performed at the marble stairwell at the back of the Winter Garden, with So Percussion performing each of the three movements at three different levels of stairwell. A video of the second movement is provided below for your viewing pleasure. As a side note, I have a bit of soft spot for So Percussion, as I engineered their live, on-radio performance of Steve Reich’s Drumming, the precursor of Music for 18 Musicians, at my college radio station, WNUR.
The next two highlights of the night came at 4 AM. First, Baltimore electronic musician and video collagist Dan Deacon presented us Ultimate Reality: Part III. The piece is a beautiful and, to put it bluntly, mind-blowingly trippy, mixing video and electronic/rock freakout, and was easily the craziest event of the night. Much of the music up until Dan Deacon was played at pleasant pace, so to hear the bombast of Deacon’s work was like a shot of caffeine directly to the vein. The video collage itself transformed and manipulated Arnold Schwarzenegger’s finest moments on screen and tie-died them with a wide array of colors. The best justice I can give to this part of the night is a brief clip of the performance below, which is still not enough to describe this absolute aural and visual onslaught.
The last events I saw for the night were Contact’s back-to-back performances of Allison Cameron’s 3rds, 4ths& 5ths and Brian Eno’s Discreet Music. Both pieces were absolutely beautiful and provided a striking dichotomy against Deacon’s performance. Like last year’s Music for 18 Musicians performance, Discreet Music was played against a rising sun, providing a transcendental backdrop to an already beautiful piece of ambient music. A video of the performance is below.
After Discreet Music, Hanly and I exited Winter Garden at around 6 AM in a trance-like state, greeted by a newly risen sun over the Hudson River. Seeing this musical event is an absolute must, and proves to be a truly unique and special experience. More than anything, the marathon creates a defined mood and setting to accompany the already surreal notion that your normal sleeping hours are being substituted by post-modern musical works played in a shopping center filled with all walks of life. Ultimately, the event proved to be as exceptional as last year’s, and is one of the NYC music community’s greatest public offerings. Let’s start planning for 2009.
Last night I had the distinct pleasure of witnessing obscenity personified - GWAR. For those of you unschooled in this extraterrestrial rock piece, a brief background, taken directly from the band's website:
Eons ago, there existed an elite group of chaos warriors who ravaged the galaxy with a boundless hatred of all things alive. They were called the Scumdogs of the Universe, and they grew in might and fury, the greatest weapon in the arsenal of their cosmic Master. But they became too powerful, and too defiant, and for their cosmic crimes were banished to the most insignificant planet in the universe...the seething mudball known as Earth. Millions of years passed, and they slumbered, until the pollution of your world de-thawed these creatures from their ageless coma...and now they stride the Earth, living gods, dedicated to one goal, the destruction of the human race, and the eradication of existence itself! Wait- that’s two goals!
The day started just like any other day, completely oblivious to what I was about to witness. My friend Matt and I took a train from Grand Central NYC to New Haven, CT, where the band were to play the last show of their tour. The opening bands were your derivative heavy metal/thrash rock groups, and it was at this point I began to wonder if all this was worth it. Finally, at around 8:30 PM, GWAR came on stage, and they immediately began their assault. The music was never important, which is mindless thrash metal, but their performance, that was a different story. The only way to put it was that Matt and me were brutally raped by GWAR, visually, sonically and physically.
The following highly offensive events occurred, in no particular order:
1) The Pope dressed in Nazi garb was decapitated and sprayed blood all over the audience.
2) A figure with Hitler on one face and Jesus on the other was decapitated and sprayed blood all over the audience.
3) Don Vitto from "Jackass" shat a blue substance all over the audience (I particularly got a deadeye shot in the face), and was then disemboweled and sprayed blood all over the audience. He then gave birth to Bam Margera, who jizzed over the audience.
4) President Bush was decapitated. He sprayed blood everywhere also.
This was also my first real "moshing" concert. I got kicked in the head a couple times by body surfers that seemed to come out of nowhere, and traded elbows with people who got a bit too rough. Oh, and I had a sincere belief that I was going to die once the barricade between the band and audience broke.
Once the show ended, which was around an hour and 15 minutes later (but seemed like 30 years later), I didn't know what to think. I was drenched in an assortment of green, red and blue liquids, while my face was completely green. My body was bruised and spent, but I realized that what I had witnessed was a unique experience, one that defies definition and can only be given justice if seen. I was offended, for sure, but I knew that if one of the band members had a cuttlefish for a penis, than none of this could be taken seriously. GWAR raped me, for sure, but it was rape with meaning.
Tussle should put on an overpowering live show: a two-drum attack has always been he backbone of the group. Almost inconceivably, then, this San Francisco group put on an ineffectual concert at Elbo Room--that's home turf! Let's take a step back and go over why Tussle, on record at least, have been one of the most exciting bands of the 2000s.
Tussle's sound begins with drum and bass; a full three quarters of this band's humanpower is spent laying down steady grooves that can just as easily claim dub as disco for an influence. Spaced-out keyboard flourishes usually complement this sound, but sometimes spur it on. On the band's most recent release, Telescope Mind, there was a clear dialog between these "halves" of the band. This was true of the album as a whole: the keyboardist/effects guy was given room to experiment on a number of short interludes, which effectively balanced out the most percussive sound the band had produced yet.
This character was allowed to dominate Tussle's show--much to its detriment. He wore a morose look as he futzed around with an entire card table's worth of equipment splayed out before him. Among other assorted gizmos was a Korg KP2 Kaoss Pad and a Monome sequencer. Those are two very serious pieces of equipment, yet for someone with so much he managed to produce so little. Rare was the welcome musical contribution from this man, but his amp was usually turned up so loud that the drummers could barely be heard, even when they were wailing away at their kits! The band hardly played a recognizable song, as each one quickly devolved into keyboard wankery. Much in contrast to their recorded efforts, the two parts of the band seemed to be on very different wavelengths.
When I saw Tussle about a year and a half ago, the same thing happened, i.e. somber keyboard player turned up too loud. That time, the smirking bassist motioned for the sound man turn the dude down. (This request was granted.) Anyway, Tussle's got a new bass player now. Mope on, guys.
Files are provided for trial purposes only. If you like what you hear, buy the album! To request that a file be removed, please email mcvmcvmcv aroba gmail punto com, se entiende?
