5 shows in 3 weeks, fucking ridiculous. pinback, caribou, autechre, prefuse 73, melt banana. i became addicted to the live show this month. i rediscovered the power of volume - how mere loudness can shake my consciousness into experiencing something higher.

or more primal, because it's a sensory experience with the thinnest layer of interpretation possible. the volume is so loud, the music is so engaging, i don't think, i just feel. maybe primal and transcendent are interchangeable though, cutting through the bullshit so you can just exist at that very moment. be here now, and stuff. the live show seems to me the best way to experience sound as revelation. i guess the purpose that religion serves for most people, i use music for - it's very much intensely spiritual. it's not uncommon for me to get chills, or rushes of physical and mental euphoria when listening to music. it literally feels like a warm wave of positive fluid that slowly envelops me. i feel connected to the very basic feelings of humanity, experiencing the universal strands that connect us all. at once both humbling and empowering.

caribou was the best show that represented music as religion. there were great twinkly melodies and chugging basslines that noodled along, then huge orgasmic technicolor explosions of sound that would blast any semblance of thinking consciousness away, leaving me to melt in the vibrations of rainbow frequencies operating at independent speeds. there times i felt as if i had to push against the cascades of noise because i was being so overwhelmed, like a lone tree in the path of a tremendous river.

music as religion, or sound as revelation, was best shown by caribou's show, but the capacity for that was in the other shows too. i hadn't even heard melt banana before, but just the allure of some really fucking loud noise drew me in. overall i think each show was pretty unique, each one emphasizing a different function that music can fulfill.

pinback showed me the awesomeness of a live band. it was very much in a technical way in which i was wow-ed, the precision of the playing and the clarity of his voice. the way they played against each other, it was like watching gears rotate in mechanized machinery. on a side note, the main singer looked nothing like i imagined. stocky and bearded as opposed to skinny and gaunt.

oh yeah, and i rediscovered dancing at this show. i think being physically moved is an integral part of live shows, whether merely nodding your head and tapping your toes or full out limb flailing spazzing out. what does it mean? it means that the power of sound has fucking infiltrated you in such a way that it breaks down social constraints/mental inhibitions that stop you from a very natural physical response. fuck art, let's dance. let's be here now and forget how goofy i might possibly look, what the world thinks of me, i just want to love and appreciate this music and be moved by it.

five shows, lots of dancing. the least though was at autechre. while i enjoyed their show, which seemed to focus on more danceable material than i would have normally expected, i don't think it was up to par as the other shows ive seen. maybe it was lack of familiarity, as i have fallen out of listening to any of their newer stuff. the venue/crowd response might've also had something to do with it. compared to haileys (which i saw the other shows at), trees seems almost subterranean, dark and cave-like. lots of empty space, with the performers way up and distant from the crowd. people wandered around, by their expressionless faces you couldn't tell if people were enjoying the show or not. the music itself actually seemed like ep7ish, heavy thuddish beats with fantastic digital strangulations of sound. i think in the right venue and with the right crowd it wouldve been a more energetic show.

snd who opened for autechre actually put on the better show. i'm just fascinated with their aesthetic. it's a limited palette of glitchy very synthetic crystalline pads and techy minimal breakbeats. it seems they've been working with this for a while - the music they played couldve easily came from 'tender love', which came out in 2002. minimalism really appeals to me though because the end effect it creates is an emphasis on the sounds used and the composition of space. when you listen to minimal music, you become very aware of arrangement. i think what i find fascinating about snd in particular is that they make this funky. you can dance to this stuff! it's like dancing to a stop motion video of lego architecture.


prefuse 73 was utterly fantastic. i recognized about 85% of the stuff he played, which i think really helps with losing yourself in the music. hearing my favorite songs played live, it was bliss. so i guess i learned recognition of songs can be a key (although not necessary) ingredient in a fantastic live show. not having to listen to a song for the first time seems like one less obstacle to have to break through, because when first listening to something there's seems to be alot of mental thought in expectation and anticipating structure changes.

melt banana, who i never heard before, but heard of, was very fun. i guess this was the show that proved to me the importance of the visual aspect. at all the shows i always push myself to near the front, i have to see the performers. i need that visual stimulation. and when the performers are as energetic and charismatic melt banana, it makes the show that much better. they were almost like cartoons, exagerrated poses and almost too ridiculous clothing, with gunfire paced freakouts and thirty second songs.

there were many times at all the shows where i didnt look at the performers, just closed my eyes and danced. but when i did open them, i expected to see visual confirmation that hey, they really ARE playing this music. in reality though they could all be lip synching, or like snd and autechre just sitting behind a laptop, me having no idea if they were doing this shit live or checking their email. it's all an illusion really, the visual aspect of a live performance, because i think what really matters in the end is the huge gi-normous sound. this is why i think raves work so well, barely anyone's looking at the dj, they're just into the music for the music's sake. the visual aspect is an illusion, but i think it's necessary. if i were to truly find out that say, hey, i'm not watching pinback really play, their instruments aren't even plugged in, that would become one more obstacle, one more mental layer to have to peel away, to enjoy the music for music's sake.

another thing i learned overall was that i definitely prefer smaller clubs. it's just plain more intimate. comparing autechres's show at trees to the rest at hailey's, it's amazing to see how much the performance space can influence crowd reaction. the energy is more contained and explosive in a smaller area. hailey's has cemented as my favorite live venue. i've seen many live shows over the years at different venues, and hailey's stands out above them all.