Every Saturday, I’m here in Little Tokyo and I do sound and rifle through literally hundreds of emails for a small venue and bar. Tonight, I was delighted to see some familiar faces, and I was just as delighted to see these same faces bring in new friends. I’ve been looking forward to this bill for a long time, because it’s one of those nights where the bands totally make it worth coming to work. Good people, for one, but they also bring amazing musicianship with them.
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On the bill:
INTERFAC3
Sprawl
Solar Wimp
Dutchess of Tek (website? anyone?)
INTERFAC3
Honestly, it’s hard to pin down what he’s going to sound like since every set tends to be different – we’ve seen Andre set up an entire desktop on stage and play drums to it, we’ve seen him plug drum machines into amps and play guitar to it, and tonight, we’ve got some mind-bendingly glitchy goodness backed up with a good ole’ drum kit.
As a fan of electronics, the noises that the electronic portion of tonight’s set are doing a pretty damn good job of straddling the line between minimal electronica and straight up noise. I’ve seen INTERFAC3 focus mainly on melodies before and that stuff was great, but tonight it seems they’re about texture – and I’ve got no complaints. Additionally, that isn’t to say that the melodies aren’t there, because they are. They’re just running through filters and plug-ins (like all good signals should).
I spoke briefly with the electronics guy who apparently has been hitting our bar periodically since the days when our neighbor across the street was just a parking lot. So it’s cool to discover that he’s also a musician. He’s using Ableton Live and it’s evident that he does know what he’s doing. Interesting approach to run it through a bass amp, though – it gives it an interesting soft clip in the presence range, which is actually not what I expect out of electronics.
As for the INTERFAC3 drums, Jon says that it reminds him of Damon Che of Don Caballero, which is a valid association, but in contrast to Don Caballero, drums for INTERFAC3 are staying in the same time signature. This is kind of like assuming that the drums are just fucking around until you realize that he’s got some parts like tempo changes and timing for polyrhythms timed and memorized.
Oh wait. It was just noted by the band that the set is completely improvised. Holy crap. Well, that makes this more impressive, then.
Sprawl
Coming out all the way from Costa Mesa, Sprawl is totally helping to dispel that cheesy wussy image that OC punks had established in the late 90′s. Awesome. The drummer’s got a really good double kick pedal technique, also.
They sound like Test Icicles, Polysics, Devo and Oingo Boingo, so if you have any inclination towards upbeat rock smacking you upside the head and then running frantically away, then I’d recommend Sprawl. And moreover, the upbeat-ness of it is NOT afraid of being atonal. Which gives you a little more fun that verges on silly. And if it takes too much out of you to dance to it, then you’ll be glad to know most of their songs clock in at 2m30s. Or less. Plenty of time to sip more of your drink. And Sprawl is so incredibly catchy. I really hope they have a CD.
So… “Sprawl” as a band name, huh? This must be a reference to what happens after you try to run too quickly and fall on your face. Which would probably make a good music video for this band.
Solar Wimp
Goddam. Just… wow.
Some of the tightest musicians on our stage, so it’s always a pleasure to have them down – and I’m not talking about “tight” as in just cool, I’m referring to musicians in a band who can hit every single down beat, off beat, polyrhythm, upbeat, time signature change, and grace note down to perfection.
There’s some Frank Zappa going on in this set (well… as Zappa as a 3 piece can get), Mr. Bungle, and probably some John Zorn. This band is prog, but it’s not your uncle’s Dream Theater – Solar Wimp is less about being a set of virtuosos and more about being as crazy as they can get without sounding like separate units. The entire band moves forward as one unified … thing. What thing that is really never stays the same, so there’s no matching analogy I can put to them. What’s more, Jeremy’s voice impressively jumps notes of more than a 3rd more than 40% of the time, and barely sings the same note twice in a row–even when he’s growling at you. I’d probably hurt myself if I tried that.
The Dutchess of Tek
Fucking heavy sound here. Another chance to use “goddam” as a complete sentence. They remind me of another local band that I haven’t seen here in some time called Obsolete Heart – but bigger acts that I could liken to them escape me at the moment. It’s heavy, but it’s not Sunn 0))) kinda heavy because it’s faster, though you do feel the bass in the same place in your intestines. Perhaps your bowels. Yeah. They’ll move your bowels for you.
But that isn’t to say they’re shitty.
…
Um, anyway, it’s a challenge to have a two piece fill up a lot of space, but fortunately for us, there are vocals and really busy drums to go along with a gi-normous bass.
For some reason, I can’t find their website, and that’s too bad because I’d really like to link to this behemoth known as Dutchess of Tek. Maybe sometime soon.
Oh wait, I found it: http://myspace.com/duchessoftek
As it turns out, I’ve been spelling their name wrong for this whole blog post. This is the problem with realtime blogging.
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Ok, well the night, and a good one at that, is over. And now, it’s time to cleanup.
