Sound Obsession

Mastodon, Gojira, Kvelertak Date:  May 13, 2014 Venue:  9:30 Club, Washington, DC Last Tuesday was the hottest day of the year so far in DC so it was only appropriate that DC's 9:30 Club host a sold out evening for the most scorching metal tour of the year so far - Mastodon with Gojira and Kvelertak supporting. Mastodon (Brent Hinds and Troy Sanders) Norway's top purveyors of beer soaked black n' roll, Kvelertak, hit the stage first.  This band's sophomore album Meir made my top ten list last year and I was lucky to catch them crush an awesome set at the tiny Rock & Roll Hotel too.  It's a tough proposition for a boisterous six-piece, whose amped-up party rock works best after guzzling a few brews, to capture a crowd that's still trickling in off the sidewalk - but Kvelertak had everyone in a stranglehold in short order. Kvelertak (Marvin Nygaard, Erlend Hjelvik, and Kjetil Gjermundrod) Lead screamer Erlend Hjelvik emerged with a s...

Tycho Date:  April 20, 2014 Venue:  9:30 Club, Washington, DC I rarely attend good shows on Easter Sunday - apart from the choir at the occasional sugar-fueled church service (admittedly, it's been a while).  This past Sunday I checked out Tycho at the 9:30 Club.  It happened to be 4/20 as well - a day famously dedicated to a different kind of ritual sacrament.  Despite that apparent contradiction, Tycho's mix of pastel colored grooves and heady atmospherics seemed entirely appropriate. Tycho ( Joe Davancens,  Rory O'Connor, Zac Brown, and Scott Hansen) Tycho, real name Scott Hansen, is a San Francisco-based indie-electronica musician and graphic artist who previously worked solo but took on a full band for his latest album Awake .  I had just reviewed Awake and was excited to see how Hansen would perform his latest material with new bandmates Zac Brown and Joe Davancens alternating between guitar, bass, and synthesizer, and R...

Kraftwerk Date:  April 4, 2014 Venue:  9:30 Club, Washington, DC I couldn't help but grin like an idiot as Afrika Bambaataa's 1982 electro/hip-hop anthem " Planet Rock " came on the system while I had a burger and beer at the bar adjacent to the 9:30 Club a couple weeks back, just moments before catching Kraftwerk's first live performance in DC in nine years.  Of course, the hook and beat of Bambaataa's classic are built on samples from Kraftwerk's 1977 track "Trans Europe Express" and "Numbers" from 1981, respectively.  Kraftwerk's indelible influence on popular music, especially post-punk and new wave, hip-hop, and electronic dance music, can't be overstated.   Kraftwerk (Ralf Hutter and Henning Schmitz) Kraftwerk formed in Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1970 amidst that nascent "krautrock" scene with two classically trained music students at the helm - Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider.  This was the original o...

St. Vincent Date:  March 1, 2014 Venue:  9:30 Club, Washington, DC Last year St. Vincent, real name Annie Clark, was presented with a Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award in Performing Arts.  The fact that a high brow institution primarily known for housing and showing priceless art and artifacts took a shine to St. Vincent is telling.  There's a sense that St. Vincent is to be observed and admired from behind glass - regarded from afar as a kind of beautiful curiosity.  Her live show last Saturday at the sold out 9:30 Club did little to dispel that impression. St. Vincent isn't the sort of artist I typically follow (unapologetically, aggressively "arty"), but I heard she put on a good show and played a mean guitar.  Frankly, I was really digging her new self-titled album St. Vincent , released last Tuesday, and figured this show would be a great detour from the usual.  It certainly was.  Rocking her new blown-out Einstein hairdo, St...

Phantogram Date:  December 5, 2013 Venue:  930 Club, Washington, DC T he 1990's saw an abundance of electronic acts featuring hip-hop beats and sultry female vocals - Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky, Bjork, Sneaker Pimps, Morcheeba, Olive, Esthero and so forth.  All these groups operated, more or less, within the genre of "trip-hop" - a style that leaned heavily on the boom-bap aesthetics of hip-hop, dub, and jazz but, in most cases, smoothed out the rough edges.  At the time, music critic Simon Reynolds  accurately identified that "trip-hop [was] merely a form of gentrification."  The genre had the intangible hallmarks of "cool" without much of the danger, inevitably becoming the soundtrack for sophisticated coffee shops, cocktail bars, and car advertisements worldwide. Phantogram The last decade has seen trip-hop wane, supplanted by cutesy synth-pop drawing flagrantly from new wave, new romantic, indie rock, and shoe gaze - s...

Disclosure, T. Williams Date:  October 28, 2013 Venue:  930 Club, Washington, DC As a former rave/club kid and DJ, now in his mid-thirties with a respectable office gig, I can say it's a glorious thing when a dance/electronic act starts and finishes before midnight.  For that alone, I salute Disclosure and opening DJ, T. Williams, who played a sold-out show at the 930 Club last night.  For those unaware, Disclosure are a UK house music production duo (specializing in the "garage," "funky," and "deep" varieties), while T. Williams, also from the UK, has DJ'd these styles for a decade plus (notably, for influential UK radio station Rinse FM).  Disclosure "face" the music. T. Williams was already well into his set when we arrived at the venue, enveloping the sweaty crowd in concussive 4/4 house rhythms.  I was immediately taken back to my early days at Buzz (the infamous 1990's rave night held at the...

The Dismemberment Plan Date:  October 19 & October 20, 2013 Venue:  930 Club, Washington, DC Local indie rock heroes The Dismemberment Plan just came out of decade-long retirement, released new album Uncanney Valley, and played a couple shows at the 930 Club this past weekend.  Between 2000 and 2003, during the band's popular and critical peak after releasing their seminal  Emergency and I and around the time they put out Change , I must've seen 'em live at the Black Cat or Fort Reno over a dozen times - even a rad secret show they put on as "Last Train to Marseilles" (from the lyrics to their early tune "If I Don't Write").  This wasn't exactly Phish-levels-of-frequency, but at that time (and really, to this day) The Plan were the single band I saw and relished live the most.   Left to right:  Eric Axelson, Travis Morrison, Joe Easley, Jason Caddell Despite holding the crown as DC's best-loved hometown band at the time (Fugazi...

James Murphy Date:  October 4, 2013 Venue:  930 Club, Washington, DC LCD Soundsystem founder and retiree James Murphy played a late DJ set at the 930 Club last night.  Despite a posted midnight start time, Murphy didn't man the decks 'til close to 1am (DJs, always late amiright?).  Maybe he was waiting for the room to fill up a little, as attendees seemed to trickle in pretty slowly.  Though the crowd seemed a little thin, the uncharacteristically warm and humid October weather did lend an appropriate atmosphere of "summertime dance party" to the event. James Murphy (top left) Perched high above, off-stage on a balcony typically reserved for VIPs and band entourage, Murphy played a set of quirky disco b-sides you swear you know (no, you don't - that track you thought would morph into Madonna's "Holiday" never does) with the occasional Afro-pop or vintage Caribbean jam mixed in - but nothing  too syncopated, lest anybody get overexcited on t...