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Current mood:  tired Category: Music
Feb 12th Gallery 5 Show Review - Daniel Crenshaw
It was a night for reverberation. Four bands -- Smoke, Now Sleepyhead, Mazinga Phaser II and A New Dawn Fades gave a vision of how Richmond music could sound with just a measure of creativity. For four hours on a frozen night in February, a complex mixture of organic and electronic tones occupied the walls inside Gallery5.
The concert announcement read 7pm. For once, they actually meant it. By the time I was down into Jackson Ward, it was well past the 7pm start time. In fact the band Smoke had already come and gone like fleeting wisps of... something gray and Fortunately, you can do me a favor and check Smoke out for yourself at www.myspace.com/smokethisband.
As I made it inside Gallery5, Now Sleepyhead was on stage in the middle of a thick, spacious song. The sound of piano chords was embedded below the studs of a moving bass line. In the back of the stage, the drummer peppered a propulsive rhythm with kinetic crashes. Above the rhythm, a guitar with reverb careened in the air before falling into the mix. As the set progressed, the instruments developed a punctuation of rhythms as guitar and drums played off each other. It had a total effect simultaneously jagged and melted, icy and dense.
No one fronted Now Sleepyhead. If anything, it was the piano which provided a visual focus for the set. It sat in the middle of the stage like a giant black Lincoln Towncar. The group's singing was a shared effort. As the set progressed, the group even switched up on instruments.
After Now Sleepyhead, Mazinga Phaser II was up. They are a three-piece out of Texas. You might say they are attempting to make the music of the future for today. Ironically, they've been around for ten years with several albums to boot.
Their setup was unusual for a live band. A telecaster guitar, keyboard, drum set and a bunch of laptops and electronics took over the stage. When the band started it was like a locomotive engine. They sped up slowly, integrating sampled and live elements, building a dense mix of post-punk and techno music. The singing was minimal as the songs were crafted around a tumult of effects and interlocking beats.
Behind the kit, the drummer who donned a Mohawk measured the beat with the rabidity of an electric monkey. Wanz, the group mastermind, played through his Telecaster guitar between fiddling with the mass of electronic gear. On the other side of the stage, the keyboardist filled out her end, providing measures of bass and effects. During one of the songs, the girl jumped to the floor with a microphone and starting screaming at the crowd like a pissed-off punk. When she was done, she climbed back to the stage ironically thanking everyone for the love.The last band that evening was A New Dawn Fades. I can't say when they actually started their set. First there was droning feedback from a guitar. Then percussion instruments began to sound intermittently around the room. A metal sheet rattled in the back like an angry snake. One guy was handed a drumstick and he started beating it against a pillar. After an unsettlingly age of conceptual noise, two individuals convened on the stage.
A guitar and drums was all that was needed. The guitar spoke in an angular tongue. The drums bashed a steady beat. As the act progressed, any artifice unraveled out of the music and it became a cryptic jam session. At times, guitar lines plotted out funky scales that only made sense in reflection. Between songs the drummer harangued the audience. Was he creating a rapport?
A New Dawn Fades played that night like a two-headed monster. It was a hypnotizing experience. As the guitar writhed out shapes in the air, the rhythms created schizoid angles and weird vertices. The band managed to fill the venue more than seemed possible with their two instruments. Noise echoed throughout the room as the set redefined the audience's sense of time.
By the end, one got the unmistakable feeling that A New Dawn Fades' act was designed to make fun of audience expectations. As the drummer and guitarist left the stage and walked away, the feedback continued. Everyone stood waiting for more. After a long pause of confusion, the drummer started guffawing from amidst the crowd. He had to inform the rest of us that the show was over. The night at Gallery5 was about the fractured echo and the decay of tone and noise. The way the guitars distorted, you could hear the rush of static off the ceiling. Keys provided a bold, lush focus. Some of the music droned in ragged frequencies. Some of it made tranquil sounds with big open notes. The few bass lines that existed moved you without going anywhere -- it was in the mind. The bands showcased unorthodox setups as alternated between their experiments. Each group assembled an unconventional and unique flavor of music. All of it was unmistakably alive. 
All Images Courtesy of Michelle Dosson [ www.dossonphotography.com]
6:29 AM
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