(no subject)
striving for more cultural enrichment beyond boozing around and watching movies at home, i do sometimes get out and attend some of the shows that come through. most of the electronic stuff these days passes by hundreds of miles away; i even briefly toyed with the idea of seeing obituary/napalm death when they were in town.
i recently have seen wolf eyes, and it was fun, especially the beginning - darkness and ringing silence, then pulsating blinding light in your face, so one is forced to close the eyes and just take the sound with the whole body - slowly building wailing mess of gongs, guitars, screeching/burping devices, sheets of metal, contact mics, sax. these unkempt, grimy, crusty men from the bowels of detroit, surrounded by their makeshift devices (unfortunately, no tape loops, as far as i can tell) - it was great authentic fun, a proto-industrial lo-fi noise freakout, complete with head-banging, sleevless t-shirts and mighty hand-waving.
i did not like the rhythmic parts as much, heavily based on "traditional" metal; i wish they did more with the sound manipulation and its density.
fe-mail opened for them - two girls (they appeared to be tatu-clones in tight pants, dress shirts and ties) twiddling the knobs and screaming occasionally into the mic, turning it into sampling material. a very sad "momma, i too make noise and i make a statement along the way" performance. pretty tedious, as they went through their motions (although there were a few nice moments - a quieter ambient break, with the tension of expected noise as well as the more drone-based moments using french horn). there is only so much you can do with "pure" noise, and most of it has been done decades ago. if the only thing you got going for you is your gender, then perhaps you should try your luck elsewhere.
i also attended a xiu xiu show, which was pretty pitiful as well. starting from their "oh golly, we are so darn hip" promowares ("oh, this is a t-shirt with the tattoos from russian female prisoners, oh and we are named after that cool asian movie like those other goshspeed canadian dudes, and here is a photo of a candy wrapper on a road during our tour") down to their set, which was painfully trying and trying to be eclectic and scream-your-guts-out-but-oh-so-carefully emotional. there were a few shorter tracks with a simple melody and drive that were fun, but the rest was hitting all the wrong notes. i kept wondering why it rang so false - obviously, lo-fi has its place and there are plenty of great lo-fi acts; over the top emotion could be great; there is nothing wrong with silly instruments and broken pop song structure. somehow xiu xiu just manages to put them all together in a manner that does not have any of the perceived earnestness of low-fi, any disarming openness of emotion, any drive of a sincere performance.
but of course none of this can lessen the pain that comes from realization that i am missing all the shows in seattle/chicago these weeks.
i recently have seen wolf eyes, and it was fun, especially the beginning - darkness and ringing silence, then pulsating blinding light in your face, so one is forced to close the eyes and just take the sound with the whole body - slowly building wailing mess of gongs, guitars, screeching/burping devices, sheets of metal, contact mics, sax. these unkempt, grimy, crusty men from the bowels of detroit, surrounded by their makeshift devices (unfortunately, no tape loops, as far as i can tell) - it was great authentic fun, a proto-industrial lo-fi noise freakout, complete with head-banging, sleevless t-shirts and mighty hand-waving.
i did not like the rhythmic parts as much, heavily based on "traditional" metal; i wish they did more with the sound manipulation and its density.
fe-mail opened for them - two girls (they appeared to be tatu-clones in tight pants, dress shirts and ties) twiddling the knobs and screaming occasionally into the mic, turning it into sampling material. a very sad "momma, i too make noise and i make a statement along the way" performance. pretty tedious, as they went through their motions (although there were a few nice moments - a quieter ambient break, with the tension of expected noise as well as the more drone-based moments using french horn). there is only so much you can do with "pure" noise, and most of it has been done decades ago. if the only thing you got going for you is your gender, then perhaps you should try your luck elsewhere.
i also attended a xiu xiu show, which was pretty pitiful as well. starting from their "oh golly, we are so darn hip" promowares ("oh, this is a t-shirt with the tattoos from russian female prisoners, oh and we are named after that cool asian movie like those other goshspeed canadian dudes, and here is a photo of a candy wrapper on a road during our tour") down to their set, which was painfully trying and trying to be eclectic and scream-your-guts-out-but-oh-so-carefully emotional. there were a few shorter tracks with a simple melody and drive that were fun, but the rest was hitting all the wrong notes. i kept wondering why it rang so false - obviously, lo-fi has its place and there are plenty of great lo-fi acts; over the top emotion could be great; there is nothing wrong with silly instruments and broken pop song structure. somehow xiu xiu just manages to put them all together in a manner that does not have any of the perceived earnestness of low-fi, any disarming openness of emotion, any drive of a sincere performance.
but of course none of this can lessen the pain that comes from realization that i am missing all the shows in seattle/chicago these weeks.