AristeiA, Cloud Archive. About Last Night...

I had only heard fragments of AristeiA on myspace before last night. They took the stage and things immediately got very heavy. Lush arpeggios and guitar licks build up over furiously strummed notes, then out of nowhere all three guitarists stomp distortion pedals and everything gets sludgey and riffy. Not wanting to be cliche or anything, but I would definitely be down to watch a city burn to the ground while AristeiA played. I wonder if there any venues that would be into that...


This was the third time I saw Cloud Archive, and they just keep getting exponentially better. The ambient passages are tightly played and well-written, with the same level of intensity as the louder distorted head banging moments. Usually the "visual" tag on myspace is a bad sign, but these guys deserve it.

AristeiA
Cloud Archive

The Terrible were solid as always, but one of the guitarists was out of town so things didn't quite go to the heavy apocalyptic death space. They did have a painter in the band though...

I opened things up with an SAS set, which went very well aside from playing the first song through the busted channel on my ampeg. Recording for the full length will commence soon.

MONDAY NIGHT!

Flier courtesy of Cory/The Blue Lagoon

This coming MONDAY night, 4/13

So epic. I've seen Cloud Archive twice recently and they can take you from ambience to heavience in like 3 seconds flat.

aand then Two Weeks from Right Now....

CPW: Post-Monday Night Noise, Pre-PMOCATAT

Monday Night Noise was a moderate success, given that it was experimental music on a monday after a time change before finals week. Enough excuses, every act was amazing and put on a solid show, and we made a little money at the door for the Pink Canoes. And the booker/sound guy Cory was stoked on the show we put on, so I'll be setting up another avant-garde bar night on an upcoming wednesday (TBA)



I pull a micro-cassette recorder out of my cigar box ukelele in the middle of the set (so I can play a sample on it through my amplifier), so first I tried to stretch out or break all the strings, and ended up ripping the bridge off. Then I accidentally pulled the deck straight through the sound board, rather than deftly through the sound hole. I think it looks better this way..



A trail of destruction and tiny bells



Tonight I'm heading up to San Francisco to take part in the The Pmocatat Ensemble:
"The Pmocatat Ensemble records the sounds of their instruments onto various forms of consumer-ready media. (Pmocatat stands for "prerecorded music on cds and tapes and things".) Then, they improvise using only the recorded media."


The tape improvisation is going down at the Luggage Store Experimental Music Series 8pm, with James Swanagon opening.

Tomorrow Night:

BrownIrish/ManimalHospital/ElectricLeaves, Blue Lagoon, 2/27/09

Brown Irish
Joey's vocals and piano work were both pretty and catchy, sometimes epic, and they fit seamlessly into the rhythms that Matt and Peter were putting out. You could dance, or you could rock out, or you could admire the musicianship. The sound is nostalgic of some general period in popular music between the invention of the Fender Rhodes and 1992. Very polyphonic rock power trio.


Mountain Animal Hospital
These guys were still as tight as ever after a few months off due to an injury involving alcohol and a bicycle. The new songs have a much more defined "Manimal" sound, and they played an epic slow song that I should have been high for. The dudes are pros. I went up front towards the end of their set to stare lustfully at Chris' pedal board; some sort of POG->distortion combination was making lovely sitar tones.


Electric Leaves
Very stripped down pop music with really really fast drumming. I had played samples in a 6 person incarnation of this band a few weeks ago, and hearing the songs performed by a duo was very refreshing after the wall of noise.

Click on any of the images to see more on my Flickr page.

monday night noise.

Two weeks away...