![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaOf which I have no photos, because although I did remember to bring my camera, I didn't remember to charge the battery pack. _o_ However I dragged Sencha there, and she took a few. So eventually, perhaps.
Cabaret Music Hall, it turns out, is inside the Humour Museum; I reckon it's where they put stand-up comics on display. It's like the Metropolis in miniature, and probably doesn't hold more people than the Sala Rossa. The place was lit like a bordello and humid as a bathhouse, but pleasant enough if you have someone to talk to (impossible to while the wait away reading, although I saw several people making a gallant attempt) and don't mind the heat.
Ulrich Schnauss came on at ten past nine, sat at stage right and played keyboards attached to his laptop. I'd heard jokes about people playing laptops on stage but this was the first time I actually saw it happen XD - I mean all the groups at the Lali Puna gig had PowerBooks but they also had guitars and vocalists and so forth. It actually felt more like a "contemporary" piano recital than anything else, such was the man's body language - he bore a faint resemblance to Beethoven or some other such disheveled middle-aged classical maestro, one kept picturing him in a frock coat or at least a concert tux - and such was the music too. Except instead of everything sounding like piano, the keyboard made IDM noises! I vote we call the "contemporary classical" genre "acoustic IDM" instead. ...My sister would kill me.
It was starry and lush and beautiful. I'll have to suck it up and order the album online somewhere.
M83 was loud as all get out. I don't think I had a decent sense of this band from the couple of tracks I'd heard of them before the gig, so FYI this is how I would approximate the experience of seeing them live at the CMH:
M83 - Moonchild
M83 - Don't Save Us From The Flames
M83 - Don't Save Us From The Flames (Superpitcher Remix): 17MB but I like it.
...Bombastic, ain't it? XD And yes, they came onstage and started playing in pitch darkness amid billows of dry ice, but for the glow of a stick of incense jammed into the guitar amp mike stand. Thanks to which I have to resist the urge to call them "goth", because I automatically associate that perfumed-sauna feel with goth clubs [1] - and well, the wildly expansive non-ironic dorky romanticism of it. You kind of grok why they're signed to Mute, even if they sound nothing like Depeche (and hey, four guys dressed in variations on black-shirt-black-slacks). Those thundering tom fills! The synths too would have the cheesiest sound ever, if they weren't kept on the "screaming blast of white noise that fills the air like light" setting all through. Draw a triangle with vertices at Sigur Ros, My Bloody Valentine and the entire gothic metal genre (I hope that is a genre), and M83 would be at the centre. That might make them sound like a worthier band than they actually are, I don't know. Oddly enough Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts tied the Notwist's Neon Golden for highest Pitchfork rating of an album I personally purchased, but I haven't really listened to that one yet. The set was mostly songs from Before The Dawn Heals Us. I grabbed the setlist this time (was in position, jammed right up between the stage and the giant amp errm that might be why I was vibrating come to think of it XD), but much good it does as I don't think anyone's curious this time around.
It was wacky fun to see the guitarist lay his instrument flat and play it with a pick and a screwdriver jammed between the strings in the neck ("doing doing doiiinnnnnnggg"). He looked like a mad scientist performing surgery.
Something I learnt from listening to MBV [2] that served me during both halves of the show: the noise is like unto a hurricane, and like a hurricane it has a centre. One's never sure of hearing it; the melody resembles the product of tinnitus. But pay the least bit attention and one hurtles toward it regardless, almost irrespective of one's volition, as if drawn by an angel through the storm.
[1] It's a good thing, though: you can count on goths to pay attention to aesthetic detail. I mean in a club as soon as it stops smelling like incense it starts smelling like people, and ugh.
[2] Have I ever mentioned I keep mixing Loveless up with the Kouga Yun series? I also stopped using "MoB" to refer to Mirage of Blaze because I was reading sites on which that referred to Mission of Burma.
Cabaret Music Hall, it turns out, is inside the Humour Museum; I reckon it's where they put stand-up comics on display. It's like the Metropolis in miniature, and probably doesn't hold more people than the Sala Rossa. The place was lit like a bordello and humid as a bathhouse, but pleasant enough if you have someone to talk to (impossible to while the wait away reading, although I saw several people making a gallant attempt) and don't mind the heat.
Ulrich Schnauss came on at ten past nine, sat at stage right and played keyboards attached to his laptop. I'd heard jokes about people playing laptops on stage but this was the first time I actually saw it happen XD - I mean all the groups at the Lali Puna gig had PowerBooks but they also had guitars and vocalists and so forth. It actually felt more like a "contemporary" piano recital than anything else, such was the man's body language - he bore a faint resemblance to Beethoven or some other such disheveled middle-aged classical maestro, one kept picturing him in a frock coat or at least a concert tux - and such was the music too. Except instead of everything sounding like piano, the keyboard made IDM noises! I vote we call the "contemporary classical" genre "acoustic IDM" instead. ...My sister would kill me.
It was starry and lush and beautiful. I'll have to suck it up and order the album online somewhere.
M83 was loud as all get out. I don't think I had a decent sense of this band from the couple of tracks I'd heard of them before the gig, so FYI this is how I would approximate the experience of seeing them live at the CMH:
- Monopolise a sauna room (or take a long hot shower so that the bathroom is completely steamed up).
- Light a stick of incense.
- Turn off the lights.
- Play the following tracks (the first two off their most recent album) really loudly. No, louder than that. If the cheesy yet monumental tom fills at "...and the whole universe will glow!" do not make you physically vibrate, it's not loud enough.
M83 - Moonchild
M83 - Don't Save Us From The Flames
M83 - Don't Save Us From The Flames (Superpitcher Remix): 17MB but I like it.
...Bombastic, ain't it? XD And yes, they came onstage and started playing in pitch darkness amid billows of dry ice, but for the glow of a stick of incense jammed into the guitar amp mike stand. Thanks to which I have to resist the urge to call them "goth", because I automatically associate that perfumed-sauna feel with goth clubs [1] - and well, the wildly expansive non-ironic dorky romanticism of it. You kind of grok why they're signed to Mute, even if they sound nothing like Depeche (and hey, four guys dressed in variations on black-shirt-black-slacks). Those thundering tom fills! The synths too would have the cheesiest sound ever, if they weren't kept on the "screaming blast of white noise that fills the air like light" setting all through. Draw a triangle with vertices at Sigur Ros, My Bloody Valentine and the entire gothic metal genre (I hope that is a genre), and M83 would be at the centre. That might make them sound like a worthier band than they actually are, I don't know. Oddly enough Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts tied the Notwist's Neon Golden for highest Pitchfork rating of an album I personally purchased, but I haven't really listened to that one yet. The set was mostly songs from Before The Dawn Heals Us. I grabbed the setlist this time (was in position, jammed right up between the stage and the giant amp errm that might be why I was vibrating come to think of it XD), but much good it does as I don't think anyone's curious this time around.
It was wacky fun to see the guitarist lay his instrument flat and play it with a pick and a screwdriver jammed between the strings in the neck ("doing doing doiiinnnnnnggg"). He looked like a mad scientist performing surgery.
Something I learnt from listening to MBV [2] that served me during both halves of the show: the noise is like unto a hurricane, and like a hurricane it has a centre. One's never sure of hearing it; the melody resembles the product of tinnitus. But pay the least bit attention and one hurtles toward it regardless, almost irrespective of one's volition, as if drawn by an angel through the storm.
[1] It's a good thing, though: you can count on goths to pay attention to aesthetic detail. I mean in a club as soon as it stops smelling like incense it starts smelling like people, and ugh.
[2] Have I ever mentioned I keep mixing Loveless up with the Kouga Yun series? I also stopped using "MoB" to refer to Mirage of Blaze because I was reading sites on which that referred to Mission of Burma.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-04-20 12:24 am (UTC)taimingu, taimingu!
Date: 2005-04-20 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-20 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-20 04:04 pm (UTC)