Quick Review: Oneida + B/B/S

We already wrote reviews for both of these great bands (see here, here and here), so I'm not going to beat around the bush. This was a great show.

Admittedly, the fact that a Magnolia Electric Co. song was playing when I entered Comet Club on the same day I learned about Jason Molina's death, was dragging me down a bit. 

B/B/S started playing pretty soon after I arrived and their heavy and haunting drone noise wasn't exactly uplifting either. Nonetheless they played a good show. It sounded different than the last one I saw when they supported Evangelista, but it did in a good way. The live drumming really keeps their music and performance interesting and suspenseful and it's fascinating how everything they do on stage merges together into a consistent flow of ambient music. I keep listening to their record quite often in the last time, if you want to check it out you can stream it entirely on their label's homepage here.

Next on were Oneida, a band that I find as great as they are hard to describe. Their output is very manifold and reaches from experimental drone noise records to some others that sound more like a no-wave noise band. They did an amazing job on getting everybody in a happy dancing mood and they apparently also had lots of fun doing so. They were very joking and funny and handled the fact, that playing a show on a snowy Monday might suck for some bands, quite nicely by just pretending it was Friday night. Also they claimed to be Oneida, performing a live documentary on a band called Oneida. So when they got everybody sufficiently confused, they played an amazing live set. Musically it varied from some songs that were very guitar oriented and almost "rock" to others that sounded like a psychedelic noise version of Suicide. They mixed Krautrock elements and sounds with post-punk and noise rock parts and somehow managed to make this all a very danceable mix. Their songs tend to be quite long and repetitive and have an indisputable meditative quality that managed to catch everybody's attention and made me forget my bad mood and the snowy weather outside altogether.

I'm really glad to have watched them again, Oneida are an amazing band that just keeps surprising me in a very positive way the more I listen to them.

Review: B/B/S

I don't know why, but January is very slow concert-wise. There was only one gig I was really looking forward to see. B/B/S at Monarch last Wednesday. B/B/S is a kind of a new trio of Berlin based expats, consisting of Canadian Aidan Baker, Italian Andrea Belfi and Norwegian Erik Skodvin. If you recognise these names you will probably know what to expect, if you don't know them I'll shortly tell you who they are. Well, all three are well known in the field of experimental music. Aidan Baker plays his drony guitar in Nadja and solo and you might have read about him a couple of times on our little blog. Andrea Belfi is mostly an experimental drummer, but also an electro-acoustic musican and composer who, for instance, played with David Grubbs or Stefano Pilia. The last one is Erik Skodvin, who plays from time to time under his moniker Svarte Greiner and is also part of Deaf Center. Both musical projects are subsumable under the term dark ambient. So, they are not the new neo-folk ensemble, instead they formed the most exciting trio in experimental and improvised music I know.

Everything started around a year ago when these 3 guys played together for the first time as a supporting act for A-Sun Amissa at West Germany. It was such cool performance that they decided to continue their work. Some shows were played and an album recorded. Last Wednesday's performance was originally planned as a record release party, but unfortunately Brick Mask wasn't ready on time.

Nevertheless, they played, in fact, two long sets. The first one started with a bowing ritual. A dark and droning tone appeared and Monarch's packed audience freezed. As Baker and Skodvin are rooted in doomy and dark music, distorted guitars are nothing uncommon. It was mostly drummer Belfi who set the tone. In the beginning more abradant and then more and more jazzy. The whole first set felt like the score to an unknown road movie by Wim Wenders and David Lynch. Scary, dusty, brutal and also tenacious.

The second set started louder and way more rock-like. Shorter than the first one but still intoxicating. For me, who is not a musician, I find it very interesting how they set the mood for their compositions. As Erik told me before, they did not have the time to rehearse, so everything was mostly improvised and it's unbelievable how good it sounded. All three gave each other enough space to develope an extraordinary unique style. In the end, Monarch's chatty bar crowd was getting louder and louder and it felt like it was part of the sound experience.

Too bad their debut record was not available this evening; I guess they could have sold a few of them. But I think everyone in the audience went home very satisfied, with or without Brick Mask. I did.

Quick Review: Evangelista and B/B/S

This already was a while ago. I didn't have the chance to write something before but still want to mention it because it was a memorable show.

Berghain Kantine wasn't nearly as filled as I imagined when Aidan Baker, whom we already wrote about numerous times, started the evening with his newest three piece band project B/B/S. With this two guitars and a drummer line up, they played the sort of music you'd expect to hear from him. Epic postrock songs that slowly built up, got noisier and louder and then slowly faded out. He surely knows what he's doing and if you're into postrock or postmetal in any way, you'll like what he does. The live drummer added some interesting  "real band" experience to the whole thing and definitely freshened it up a little..

Next up were Evangelista. Now I already saw Carla Bozulich perform twice this year (plus once last year opening for Thurston Moore). One time collaborating with Okkyung Lee on cello and Morten J. Olsen on drums/percussions at Ausland and the other time together with Jhno and Aidan Baker at bei Roy. Both times were totally different experiences but also totally great in their ways, so I was sort of sure this won't disappoint me either.

Playing with her full band again sounded and felt totally different than the concerts I saw before and it was pretty awesome! Carla was singing, shouting, preaching, joking and the show was musically very intense. For a couple of songs they borrowed the drummer from B/B/S which made the whole thing even better, I wished he could have played the whole set with them. But nonetheless the four piece band played a truly great set of dark and mesmerizing music, somewhere between postrock, folk elements and experimental ambient sounds. I left happy and hope they'll be back sometime soon.