a rudy sizzle review
the branding of music is at an all time high and it seems like there is nothing that can be deemed new, and/or original. I find myself dry heaving at the thought of modern rock music that is featured as the soundtrack for modern hybrid automobiles, teen-zit creams and fresh-breath enhancers. It’s true, I often throw up in my mouth when I hear the lulling sound of youth culture careening around the corner as I wait patiently for the Simpsons to come back from commercial break.
i also feel equally, slightly queasy when someone tells me about a band that primarily features homemade instruments and is adored by hipster geeks in the underground progressive music scene. Especially when that someone tells me that they are performing at Soundlab on a Sunday night and they are pretty well known in the “avant-garde" scene. Most of what occurs in the realm of “a/g” is generally summarized as the following simple catch phrase coined by a very jaded, but talented soul: JERK ART.
JERK ART can be as hard to swallow as teenybopper, emotional rock. Atonal noise can hurt. For real, especially when it is aimed at you from a small-platform stage at high decibels by a couple of dudes that do not care to offer songs or “compositions” even.
Buffalo duo Tentet/Octet allow little room for objective criticism as they pretty much are aware of the effect that overly distorted cacophonies can have on an audience. They perforate the air with “skronk” music, pitter-patter on drums, guitar and the occasional key line from the beloved Casio SK1. The redeeming quality of Tristan Trump and Kyle Price’s musical collaboration is that it is truly uncompromising. They deliver belches of loud freak-out with very little trouble and seem to be masterful in the craft of excessive drone and noise. T/O seem hell-bent on being too weird to pin down with song structures and genre specifics, but also too safely nestled in the warm chambers of “soft/quiet/weird noise here/occasional tantrum of drum fills then howling through halls of delay” sort of formula. They have performed as an accompaniment for performance art pieces and it worked relatively well in that medium. As far as being a live act to behold on their own, the lack of memorable melodies or dare I say, songs, make Tentet/Octet border line JERK ART.
upon entering the stage for their performance, Neptune struck me as a bit labored and overly gadget oriented, struggling to make the jigsaw puzzle of homemade electronics spill forth some noise for a simple line check. Once the trio from Jamaica Plain, Mass. strapped on their homemade sonic battle axes and spun out the first notes of their first piece were my perceptions smashed to bits.
they launched into primal percussive thumping via mutant makeshift drums and layered a whirling dervish of a rhythmic loop by putting forth low unrelenting currents of sound wave. The songs were channeled from another world, somehow bridging the gap between Kraut and electro-clash with the mixture of hand-assembled electronics and percussion. There was an exorbitant amount of tones pushed through the wall of rickety amps behind the band (mostly modified and re-built) and these sounds managed to encapsulate the entire room with their eerie drones and inescapable melodies.
the band all shared vocal responsibilities and, unlike most “avant-garde” indie bands, they actually understood how to establish melodic phrases, which instantaneously became earworms. Neptune delivered a live onslaught that blew away my expectations by a landslide and left me wanting more. Their spectacle was relatively short lived, perhaps that was my one and only complaint.
mmm. jerk-art.. now is that art by jerks or art for jerks.. or of course it could be art for/by jerks. Hey, it's a hell of a lot better than "i cry myself to sleep when my girlfriend doesn't call-art" or "stale in my jcrew khakis office life-art"
ReplyDeletewe like it!
10/8