saturday night double feature
i should've probably stayed in last night, but took my chances with my health and checked out decasia and afroskull's first gig of the year.
decasia was pretty friggin' spectacular. i caught wind of it from alex ross's glowing review of a prior performance. once a. and i were ushered into the jam-packed angel oresanz, we sat on the shag carpeting (where my feet kept falling asleep) and were enveloped by movie screens all around us. also surrounding us was the excellent new music ensemble from the manhattan school. this was one of the groups i saw at the steve reich sunday at the whitney in october. patti monson, who a. pointed out looks a LOT like kathy bates, conducted from the "altar" of the one-time temple. i really enjoyed the greasiness of the ensemble's sound, no doubt helped by the fact that some of them were tuned 1/8th sharp or flat. at times, it was undoubtedly loud and gross. but i loved it! and time? i kept laughing as i watched maestra monson conduct the same three-beat pattern the entire 70 minutes. the ensemble might as well have played in 19/32, but monson kept that three-beat thing going steady. the crispness of her motions turned out to be a nice contrast to the visual overload occurring around us.
(also noted was the older, long-haired dude sitting near the front who got up halfway through and started mock-conducting with monson. wtf?!)
the film itself was pretty striking. almost all of it was ancient and decaying. gorgeous images of someone being lead on a camel across a desert vista, a turkish man doing a dervish dance, parachutists, what looked like bodies being pulled out of a mine.... tons of images and landscapes that seemed to gain more power as the films' nitrate decomposed. you can apparently buy a recording or dvd at amazon, but really...if this is performing in your neighborhood, definitely worth the experience of seeing it live. it'll be a night of harmonious music beneath the stars.
(N.B.: maybe i've been oblivious to this all along, but the majority of last night's audience was banging hot girls. kudos to the gorgeous blonde who gracefully tolerated me trying to keep my feet awake, and to the croatian girl on line who was asked if a smallpox cloud would wipe us all out [after she explained that she worked at some UN lab with e. coli]. i was completely unaware that such banging hotness would be all over something as out as this. guys, you will score if you try.)
next, a. and i headed to the modern dance clinic hosted by afroskull at the ace of clubs. the show featured the official debut of new bassist b., who brought a delightfully slimy edge to the skull's already nasty sound. i was sad to hear that d. is no longer playing with them, but with b. holding the fort, they're going to be just as nasty of a band. all throughout their set, i was jolted by some of the funky twists b. induced (by the way, very slick to quote "obstacle course" during "IT"). the audience was similarly jolted, including one girl who looked like she was trying to find the morrissey convention: she was grinding hips with a pretty and tall gal quite enthusiastically. i have no clue who she was, but it was pretty funny seeing someone get so...animated to the skull's music (and definitely forever since i'd seen it). after the mandatory joke exchange between a. and i over her new-found freedom from the sisters of mercy, we wondered how much sooner before she threw off her top or mounted her partner, based on her paroxysmal dancing style. none of these occurred. 'twas a nice time to see old friends and get the live-show season off to a groovin' start.
and thankfully, the mystery bug i'm fighting behaved itself in public.
decasia was pretty friggin' spectacular. i caught wind of it from alex ross's glowing review of a prior performance. once a. and i were ushered into the jam-packed angel oresanz, we sat on the shag carpeting (where my feet kept falling asleep) and were enveloped by movie screens all around us. also surrounding us was the excellent new music ensemble from the manhattan school. this was one of the groups i saw at the steve reich sunday at the whitney in october. patti monson, who a. pointed out looks a LOT like kathy bates, conducted from the "altar" of the one-time temple. i really enjoyed the greasiness of the ensemble's sound, no doubt helped by the fact that some of them were tuned 1/8th sharp or flat. at times, it was undoubtedly loud and gross. but i loved it! and time? i kept laughing as i watched maestra monson conduct the same three-beat pattern the entire 70 minutes. the ensemble might as well have played in 19/32, but monson kept that three-beat thing going steady. the crispness of her motions turned out to be a nice contrast to the visual overload occurring around us.
(also noted was the older, long-haired dude sitting near the front who got up halfway through and started mock-conducting with monson. wtf?!)
the film itself was pretty striking. almost all of it was ancient and decaying. gorgeous images of someone being lead on a camel across a desert vista, a turkish man doing a dervish dance, parachutists, what looked like bodies being pulled out of a mine.... tons of images and landscapes that seemed to gain more power as the films' nitrate decomposed. you can apparently buy a recording or dvd at amazon, but really...if this is performing in your neighborhood, definitely worth the experience of seeing it live. it'll be a night of harmonious music beneath the stars.
(N.B.: maybe i've been oblivious to this all along, but the majority of last night's audience was banging hot girls. kudos to the gorgeous blonde who gracefully tolerated me trying to keep my feet awake, and to the croatian girl on line who was asked if a smallpox cloud would wipe us all out [after she explained that she worked at some UN lab with e. coli]. i was completely unaware that such banging hotness would be all over something as out as this. guys, you will score if you try.)
next, a. and i headed to the modern dance clinic hosted by afroskull at the ace of clubs. the show featured the official debut of new bassist b., who brought a delightfully slimy edge to the skull's already nasty sound. i was sad to hear that d. is no longer playing with them, but with b. holding the fort, they're going to be just as nasty of a band. all throughout their set, i was jolted by some of the funky twists b. induced (by the way, very slick to quote "obstacle course" during "IT"). the audience was similarly jolted, including one girl who looked like she was trying to find the morrissey convention: she was grinding hips with a pretty and tall gal quite enthusiastically. i have no clue who she was, but it was pretty funny seeing someone get so...animated to the skull's music (and definitely forever since i'd seen it). after the mandatory joke exchange between a. and i over her new-found freedom from the sisters of mercy, we wondered how much sooner before she threw off her top or mounted her partner, based on her paroxysmal dancing style. none of these occurred. 'twas a nice time to see old friends and get the live-show season off to a groovin' start.
and thankfully, the mystery bug i'm fighting behaved itself in public.
posted by the wild koba at 14:56
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