| « Headlights On High | I Will » |
Review Wed Feb 20 2008
Review: Dalek, Russian Circles @ Subterranean
Boom. Bap.
boombap.
Abstract music, from the perspective of someone whose tastes tend more towards mainstream, can really never be understood without a shrug. Even those heavy into the experimental and abstract can exhibit more enthusiasm for the music than the music actually moves you to.
Last night at SubT, three very abstract acts took the stage, and played close to three hours of what I can really only term as atmospherics. This is beyond the fringe, where simple basslines go nowhere without accompaniment by a variable note that sounds as if it was produced by an violinist with an four foot bow. The bass of drumbeats sometimes lost the battle for prevailing rhythm to guitars and laptops.
Young Widows opened, and they came out hard and loud. Dalek followed, and the hip-hop head in me heard mostly what I expected from their albums; abstract lyrics, high-end to complete heavy bass. I was amazed, though, that my head was nodding at a pretty fast clip. At their core, these were the same basslines that formed the foundation of songs I know and knew, just their backing was different. Screeches, static, and high pitched noises from the bowels of a MacBook Pro made it so.
Russian Circles, devoid of lyricists, continued the atmospherics, but, without the need to stay in a constant beat to accommodate words, they were free to perform longform instrumentals that were adventurous and ethereal.
Unfortunately, ethereal soundscapes and atmospheric melodic structure does not make for a good live show. The opening act fit the usual live show MO, but Dalek's crunching style and Russian Circles' melodic wanderings are, quite frankly, better for headphone-based consumption. Good music? Sure. Good music to listen to live? Uh,, not really.
Sure, it's heavy. Sure, it's not danceable. But the chanced these artists take in making their music is pretty refreshing. There's something to be said for living on the fringe. It's better said while isolated in your own headphone world, though.
