Bardo Pond, Kinski, Subarachnoid Space at Bottom of the Hill.
18-July-2003

There is something macho about the humanity that I currently perceive. All three bands that I saw last night are incredible musicians with a beautiful view of the textures of collaboration and collectivism. No better than with a band can we see the holistic phenomenon -- the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. When the drum kit fell apart for Subarachnoid Space, the music became nascent of an entirely different band. While many people scoffed, I thought the dynamic change was spectacular.

Kinski is a band that particularly aims to be dynamic. While I prefer the subtle crescendo and evolution of dynamic music from the Godspeed camp than the Mogwai camp (to which Kinski belongs), there is a wonderful eclipse in the shift from subtle to energetic, if used correctly. My one complaint about the "be gentle with the warm turtle" album is that the lows are too low. I call this the "Terminal Pharmacy" phenomenon, named after Jim O'rourke's experimental album on Tzadik, where the intricate music is so low in the mix that you have to turn the volume up ridiculously high to hear it; unfortunately O'rourke sporadically inserts blasts of above-normal sound so that, with your volume turned up, if you don't break your speakers you will at least have a heart attack or ruin your ears. While the case of Kinski is not quite as dramatic or fatalistic, the bind is there. Even in concert, the unsettling slashes from krautrock subdued textual rhythm to POW-POW-POW chugga-garage sprays of sonic ammunition are painful enough to stab. I wish they would split and become two bands, or release separate albums and go through phases. Kinski appears to be getting louder, although the first track they opened up with was incredibly beautiful, topographic, and spacy, with the right balance and build of hard drums. The flute was wonderful too, and I'd wished the fellow would play it more often. The mix on the sound levels was appropriate enough to hear the flute but not enough to say "this is flute rock"... it was effects-laden, played like their tweaked electric guitars. After the show I spoke with some band members and was surprised at how amiable they were, for playing such art-rock. I like that about a musician; none of this Andy Warhol, pretentious indie art-snob crap that we sometimes get from our musicians. The same went for Clint Takeda from Bardo Pond; incredibly friendly and willing to talk candidly about the music; little ego. I felt as if the music was not something the individual artists made but something the listeners have a part in to because of this communication.

Subarachnoid Space was much better than I expected. In fact, I thought they were Kinski until the end. The snobbery of "needing a bass drum" and thus not continuing until it was fixed was a little beyond me, though. If they had continued the jam all spacy and improvised (which they are clearly masterful at), they would have made the evening highly unique. The drummer got all emotional and red-in-the-face. I thought he hit the drums too hard anyway. This is the machismo I'm talking of. Do we really need such cockheads playing percussion? We will never get over the term "post-rock" so long as people play drums like that. Nevertheless, the music was so much more impressive than the album I have with is just a reiteration of the evil jams that hippy bands have had since the 70s, in the King Crimson vein. This music was a little more divine. I felt there wasn't as much a chasm between the loud and soft, as with Kinski. I welcome the fact that their music is fleshing out to a higher plateaux, still under the sun but cognizant of its own landscape. I think in a few years they will be doing something incredible, if they keep at it. I would have loved to add little micro-clickings above all the washes of spacy distortion and fuzz and trebled riffery.

Bardo Pond. Wow. They started off on a weak foot, reiterating the "watching it happen" track from Dilate. Once Isobel brought out the flute I was sold. I really loathe their straight blues-rock approach, rather harsh and unimaginative if you consider the construction of the tunes (Isobel's vocals excluded). What is fantastic about them is that they hold this air the entire time without ever dropping it. I don't think anyone can play spacy versions of bad songs so well without ever conceding that the songs are inherently bad. They're only bad because I'm overly analytical. I was a bid distraught that the crowd settled into the grooviness headspace of the fuzzscapes so easily but were unable to respond (physically at least) to the space forays of the other two bands. (I thought the other two bands did spacy interludes much more colorfully, but the damn rock drums and garagey chugga-trainwrecks ruin it all for me. Give me Charalambides, not Comets of Fire!) Nevertheless, there is something hidden and gracious about the music of Bardo Pond, and I'm not even referring to Isobel's body language or intonations. She is a whole separate part of the music and this is evident during the instrumental parts when she is doing nothing audible, and of course in Bardo Pond's marvelous side projects (give me Hash Jar Tempo and I'll give you an apple pie). The band achieves this effortless slow-churning whirlpool of desert sands. There is no better music to exemplify that the sun can burn you too. Isobel looked so pained, and I think it's an expression of how difficult life can be, how we all don't really know that the graciousness of beauty is just a silver lining to the excremental ordinary life.

I sure hope all those indie-rockers perceive the tightrope of beauty, rather than just the macho expression of liking sludge-rock because it's a more-listenable form of aggro-metal. Somehow, I think a lot of listeners (and musicians) think of alternate rock forms as favorable because of the challenge of enduring the hammering gunshots of the rock format (pow! pow! pow!). I notice this draw for wanting to appear extroverted with musical taste, for wanting people to think one is rebellious because they enjoy the dirt of life with the dilute glitter mixed in, rather than seeking to harvest the treasure and distill it all. As I approved before of Kinski's offstage friendliness, the ego and non-show-offness of these musicians gave more value to the music I heard last night because it certified that this was a take-it-or-leave-it expression of the passion that has built up inside them. (There! There's my disclaimer for the subjectivity of art criticism! I'm an opinionated fool, and you should be too!) Unfortunately some people do not realize that there are so many more options out there for good music (I was stumped when I first heard Eyvind Kang recently, for instance) that we shouldn't settle for things that only move us halfway.

Final statement: I thoroughly enjoyed myself last evening, but I was in no way captivated like I've been watching Rachel's, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Sonic Youth's "anagrama", Ida, or listening to Six Organs of Admittance, Jackie-o Motherfucker, or Bardo Pond's "Sangh Seriatim"-- harmony of the spheres compilation -- do they ever play this live?)