Man, kids these days are all nerds. For serious. You wouldn’t believe some of the hilarious banter I overheard before last night’s Temporary Residence 10th Birthday Party finale concert. Two kids were arguing over who was more in love with Mono’s chick bassist, and whose picture with her turned out better. Dudes (obviously still virgins) would whisper, “there’s Munaf!” every single time he popped his head into a room…I wonder if other indie labels propagate such rampant fanboys.
Oh, right–the show. Tarentel opened the evening with a ceaseless improvizational set. It was good to see Jefre and Jim again, we got to speak for a few minutes and catch up just before they took the stage. Tony (I think) started with a delayed violin drone, and then Danny and Jefre jumped in on guitars. Jim’s drumming sounded like a heavier version of Jaki Liebzeit. The projections were mostly out-of-focus images of nature or color patterns. Some trickery included a microcasette recorder -> microphone -> effects unit, multiple delay pedals and sundry other forms of signal manipulation. After ten intense minutes, they brought the volume down to a whisper. The first strains of natural guitar notes became audible, and they slowly worked their way up to a buzzing, droning crescendo over the course of the next twenty minutes. Sporadic drumming propelled waves of noise to their end. I don’t think a lot of people liked it, but I did!
with flash 1
with flash 2
with flash 3
with flash 4
Next up was Fridge. I have two Fridge albums, Ceefax and Eph–which I enjoy–but I can’t say I enjoyed their set much. It was interesting to learn that this was their first performance in almost five years, and they’re planning on releasing a new album in the near future, but the originality of their sound and quality of musicianship was lost on me. While I was busy making jokes about Adem Ilhan looking like Moby, Ian described their set as, “What Mogwai would sound like if they didn’t have any distortion pedals, and had just learned to play guitar.” One song was pretty much an instrumental version of the Smashing Pumpkins song “Starla.” The last song was their best, an E-chord for ten minutes with a steady, kraut-y rhythm.
Mono was Mono. I’ve seen them enough times now that it’s no longer that special or unique. Same reason I didn’t care about catching Explosions in the Sky this weekend, I suppose. “Yearning” was by far the band’s best performance of the evening. It sounds like they’ve slowed it down a bit, and re-worked it into more of a doom-sounding assault. Ian pretty much mis-diagnosed each successive song (he’s got a real talent for that–at the Shellac show he thought at least five different songs were “The Rambler Song”). Some Internet nerd says the setlist was:
The Flames Beyond the Cold Mountain
The Kidnapper Bell
Are You There?
A Heart Has Asked For the Pleasure
Yearning
Moonlight
Halcyon
After the show I drove home. If you can imagine that.
