Ah, The Smell. Where it’s so stuffy it’s hard to breathe, and even if you could, you might not want to savor that breath of air. Fawn and I met her friend Ashley, her bandmate Marla and the guys from Binges at a pizza place around the corner for a few minutes before they ducked out to set up for their set. One of them, Chris, stuck around to talk while he waited for a pizza. A nice guy from Chicago, he was. But then again, who from Chicago isn’t nice? (Answer: Billy Corgan, John Cusack, etc.).
Tent City were sprawled across the floor in the main room, various instruments and small amplifiers facing every which way. Their sound relies heavily on controlled feedback, so amplifier / microphone placement is of the utmost importance. They started slowly, noodling their way through a few minutes of improvised noise before building to a crescendo. Harnessed static, a recorder, a saxophone, and ominous drum beats assembled a wall of noise out of thin air. Once they reached critical mass, the various tones spiraled down into near silence. It was quite excellent. At the end of the set, they dumped a bucket of bells on the ground, rolled them out into the audience, and encouraged people to throw them at strategically placed metal bowls, thus including everyone in attendance in the performance. Cute!
Lauren and Nick arrived about this time, and Fawn departed. The three of us enjoyed the rest of the bands, darting outside between sets to catch fresh air and pleas from tweaking pandhandlers passing through the alley.
Binges consists of two members, a drummer (Chris) and multi-instrumentalist (Anthony) who ran bass, guitar, sax, and a contact microphone through a series of effects pedals. They set up in the front room, right near the entrance to the club, in a tightly-packed corner. It was like subdued Paul Flaherty meets Lightning Bolt. That’s a terrible description, but it’s the most accurate one I can think of at the moment. Athony did a great job of controlling his loops and keeping a heavy groove. Here’s a track from their website, which we be available on a forthcoming cd-r. Untitled
Foot Village were an unexpected surprise. Never heard of them, didn’t know they were playing, and I was totally blown away. Four drummers pounding the shit out of their sets and screaming at the top of their lungs. What’s not to love? They set up on the floor of the main space, four kits facing each other, with a fake tree towering over them. They seemed like your typical hard-partying, noise-loving hip-kids. And they had everyone in the room either screaming along with them or banging their heads. Intense as fuck! Here’s a track from a live recording in Denver from 2004, as made available by their website. Click Here.
Raccoo-oo-oon were phenomenal. Ian got me their new album this week and I’ve listened to it several times since then. Live, they are obscenely loud and in your face. They had a little PA speaker set up behind their drummer (who had his back to the side wall, near the front of the stage) that was pointed diagonally into the crowd. They keyboard effects and vocals were sent through this little PA, and my ears still have a slight ring from the few songs I spent standing next to it. I eventually moved and sat for the final few songs. They were exactly what I expected: chirping, screaming, in-your-face, with a dual-drum attack on several songs. Stunning! Here’s a track from their website. Call Out Your Friends.
That’s all. Party tonight.
