Monday, June 15, 2009

Predator Vision, Oneohtrix Point Never, Sudden Oak, Swanox, Gemstoned, Fluffy Lumbers at The Butcher Shoppe

Predator Vision

Oneohtrix Point Never

Sudden Oak

Swanox

Gemstoned

Fluffy Lumbers

More photos on Flickr.



The Butcher Shoppe is a DIY venue geared towards a very specific audience. Namely, those who already know about it. But if you've never been, there's still hope for you. Saturday night was my first venture to the strange place and my fears of pretentious people and feeling like an unwanted party crasher were unjustified. It was exactly like all of the parties I used to go to when my wife was at Montserrat, except I didn't know anyone here. So if you're not a fan of art school house parties, then maybe you should wait until whatever band you wanted to see plays another show.

As is probably the youzh with The Butcher Shoppe, a couple of bands were added at the last minute. The first band didn't start playing until 11 (Note: don't plan on taking the train home) and at that point everyone headed down to the smoke filled basement/cave where the magic happens. Their name was Fluffy Lumbers and they were part of the ultra reverb laden echoey as shit super catchy garage pop scene like Wavves and the them. Even after their hour long setup time, they still had major technical problems and only played for 15 minutes to a mostly indifferent crowd. I liked 'em, but just kinda wish they didn't show up at the last minute to play and take forever setting up.

Next up were a duo that I believe might be called New Yoga but when someone yelled out "What's your name!?" they replied "Gemstoned. Either Gemstoned or blahblahblah." I can't remember what the other name he said was so I'm going with Gemstoned. There was no band that played that called themselves New Yoga (even though they were billed) so I'm doing the process of elimination thing. Anyway, they were pretty great. The drummer had a beat/sampler pad through which he did some live processing of the guitar. Very weird. And he would fuck with the guitarist all the time, changing shit up and randomly turning him off and stuff. What a joker!

Swanox played next. One guy with 3 pedals and a old keyboard that musta been a tag sale find or something because it had old stickers of unicorns. The first piece he played was some fucking evil Satan in the graveyard shit. Totally awesome. The next piece was a bit lighter but no less rad. Great great stuff. And I'm pretty sure he runs the Caligulan label that put out Usputuspud's Disco tape that I love so much it makes my nips hard just talking about it.

Then Sudden Oak came on and they were working the sax/guitar sound. Totally psychaotic noise with roots in scarily experimental jazz. The sax player just dropped the mic right into the bell. No need for a mic stand (which was actually a mic taped onto a broomstick that was stuck onto a mic stand base). Totally crazy awesome.

Oneohtrix Point Never set up his stuff and fucking dazzled everyone with his unmatched synth skills. The first and last piece he played sounded like some fucked up version of the dungeon music in old school Zelda games. So, obviously, I fucking loved it. The middle piece was some totally nasty glitched out nut buster that could've been long lost radio transmissions between the ancient Mayans and their alien friends.

2 am rolls around and Predator Vision are just starting it up. Apparently they brought along Julian Lynch to play with them. Yeah, the same Julian Lynch who did that wonderful Born 2 Run CD I reviewed a while back. So weird meeting him there. Small world. Anyway, live PV is not like PV on tape. Nope. This was a fucking monstrosity of killer face melting jams. In short, I came home looking like this. See them live. They will make you happy.

2 comments:

TRAVIS ENGLAND said...

hey justin, glad you made it for that show, great pictures. july 8th we're having a show starting sharp at 8, its dianetics, wet hair, happy jawbone, dead luke, and another band I think, hope you can make it
-travis

TRAVIS ENGLAND said...

oh, and fuzzy numbers is fluffy lumbers, but fuzzy numbers would also be a good name for it