While some of us here at OUTdependent sat through the pounding, chaotic existential mind-fuck cacophony that is Black Dice, I made my way upstate to the house of Mr. Sebastian Blanck, once the fourth member of the Black Dice. I tagged along with my friend, the talented young percussionist Kiril Sandor Orenstein Bauch, to a rehearsal with Mr. Blanck for a festival he has been asked to play at, up in Wassaic, New York. Everything about Sebastian Blanck, from his
disheveled Wafro to his fingers that have dragged paint across the white-washed walls of his massive one-room studio how a man content in his station. Once a member of one of the loudest thrash-post-punk-noise-rock-oh fuck it they were just really loud. Stop trying to put baby in a corner with your genre-bending, Black Dice! Anyway, the last thing Sebastian Blanck is now is loud or genre-bending. Blanck’s pop-folk-rock stands firmly in the footsteps of 60’s and 70’s giants like Neil Young or The Band. Not in any sort of pretentious way, or with an overwrought sense of irony. Blanck’s music approaches its influences with grace and humility, and is comfortable and worn in just like the Blanck home in the peaceful recesses of New York State.
In the days since Blanck departed Black Dice (mid 1990’s), he’s made quite a name for himself as a painter: his practice studio’s primary function is that of a painting studio: his own work is filed in massive canvas-holder-things that dwarf everything else in the room. Vivid monoprints of people parachuting onto lawns in their Sunday best hang on the walls. Sebastian explains that’s the work of his wife Isca, who paints as well. They have a one year old son together. All this domesticity plays a part in Mr. Blanck’s tunes, which have an affection for past places and events which only the healing salve of time can cultivate. There’s romance and retrospection in songs like “I Blame It On Baltimore,” and simple, unpretentious melancholy on “At Arms Length.” Sound delicious? It is.
That same inner peace that floats through the songs is reflected in Sebastian’s attitude towards Black Dice. “We were just a bunch of kids making noise and breaking stuff. I realized that the music kind of wasn’t my thing, but we remain really close friends, we’ve known each other since college.” When asked about whether he fancied the new, electronic material Black Dice is putting out these days, Sebastian sort of shrugs. “To be honest I haven’t heard all of it. I’m excited that they’re still excited about what they’re doing.”
The practice I attended was in prep for a festival up in Wassaic, aptly named the Wassaic Project, which showcases mostly artwork, but has some great musical acts as well. You can learn more about the project at this exact location.
The man paints to boot: the picture to the right is a painting of Sebastian and his wife Isca on a small stroll. Enough plugs for now, but I really like this guy, so you should too.
Black Dice, Sebastian Blanck, Wassaic Project
Gang Gang Dance / Black Dice / BATTLES, Central Park Summerstage
Part III-
They came on stage in business causal -button up shirts, dress jeans and dress shoes- amongst a crowd of band shirts, ripping skinny jeans and Keds. The infamous yellow drum-set sat at the front of the stage, with the cymbal set a few feet above the rest of the set, carefully mic-ed. It was refreshing to know that while I waited a year to see them, not much had changed.
The preciseness of the drummer and the energy he exuded was almost frightening at times. I watched carefully as his shirt became exponentially sweatier, and only a few minutes into their set, sweat had eaten every dry spot on his button up. The drummer's preciseness is particularly interesting when juxtaposed with the sound technicians' sloppiness. While Battles played, they all but begged for someone to come out and fix the broken connections and wires, and despite the disappointment on their faces and the very audible glitches, no one came until it was virtually too late. "Race:in" actually screeched to a halt, and the band scrambled to reconfigure their rigs. So, uh, what's the point of a soundcheck, again?
Live, Battles’ music lacks compexity, and the mathematical precision that defined their album, Mirrored, despite the drummer's intensity. Precision is needed, however, for music with such brief, heavily layered phrases that are passed around, broken down, and then built back up all in a matter of seconds. Part of the fun of seeing Battles live is being able to discover who actually plays what part, and to witness how they communicate and interact onstage. You can visibly see phrases being passed between the musicians, see them get broken down, and then built back up. But this is no easy feat; most of the band play multiple instruments at a time, and loop phrases so often and heavily it's difficult to remember what was originally played. Tyondai, (“singer”, keyboardist and guitarist) does a sort of interpretive dance as he plays, kind of emulating a recently greased and programmed robot (and I mean that in the best way possible, seriously); he embodies the simultaneous fragmentation and collective synergy of Battles' music.
While Tyondai was dancing, the drummer was sweating and the rest of the band was playing until their brains exploded into millions of pieces like shards of glass (the mirror reference is obligatory), the crowd stood motionless, much to the chagrin of the anti-hipsters. “It’s Battles, fucking dance!” Their pleas were eventually answered in the middle of "Atlas". “Atlas” began in a much higher key that made it impossible to recognize at first, but a few minutes into the song, not even at a significant change in the music, the crowd went absolutely ape-shit. It was as if someone bumped into some magical 'crazy switch'. I couldn’t breathe and police dragged at least one guy out of the crowd. Both the po-po and the crowd-goer disappeared instantaneously.
Three minutes later, as if nothing had even happened, Battles let the crowd down gently. That's precisely what Battles does best live- they aren't afraid to really end a song: rests, patience, space and all. The crowd listened to every ending note and then continued as perfunctorily as before. Not only did the crowd stand silently, but semi-dormant, not dancing or even moving for the entire rest of the show. Somewhere between sickeningly tame and sickening energetic, I was hoping the crowd would find a happy medium. They never did, but I enjoyed the show anyway. Where else do people sing along to songs with no words or take the time to decipher the most undecipherable of lyrics?
On the topic of undecipherable lyrics... I was hoping to hear “Ddiamondd” for an encore. I even memorized all of the words- yes, Tyondai IS speaking English, here is proof. A couple others in the crowd shared my hopes, and screamed for them to play it. Tyondai just looked into the crowd- "I wish I knew how to play that song." I would have found his response more clever had they played the song anyway. Instead, Battles played “Bad Trails”- an odd choice for an encore. While most bands leave their hits for the very end, Battles chose to leave one of their least recognizable, least popular songs (according to my unsubstantiated assessment of Battles' fanbase) for the encore. I'll take this as proof that they have incredible confidence in the oddness of their music. Not to mention, of course, that they should have just listened to me and 'learned' how to play "Ddiamondd".
GANG GANG DANCE / Black Dice / Battles, Central Park Summerstage
Part II-
There’s something about aging rock stars that warms the cockles of my little ole’ heart. Not aging rockstars like Mic Jagger, who should be dead, or at least offstage by now. But rockstars who are just beginning their careers or aren't as well known. Those who break through the pervasive 20-something monotony. Inherent in their age is a resilience to ephemeral fads and a genuine devotion to their craft. No one on stage, looked a day under 40, and no one in the front of the slowly gathering crowd seemed to mind. However, only a few brave souls made sure the last part of the band's name wasn't added in vain.
Gang Gang Dance, a Brooklyn group comprised of a drummer prone to spontaneous dancing, a man who controls pedals and electronics, and a charasmatic singer, sounds like the soundtrack to an Arabian mystery in a house club in the jungle. Somewhere between the amazonic leaves and techno keyboard is a guitarist...I guess. He was in the corner of the stage and didn’t seem produce much sound, despite constant strumming motions.
The lead singer looked a bit like Bjork, with gapped teeth and semi dreaded hair accented with a large burgundy ribbon. She whined with a childlike voice that boomed sometimes, and stayed quiet and pleading at others. At one point, the amps started rocking and swaying; the indie rock equivalent to an opera singer breaking glass. It was as if some ancient primal spirit possessed them and caused them to move. The balance between the vocals and the other instruments was sometimes off. I would have wanted to better distinguish between when the singer was reciting lyrics (and her voice should be a bit above the mix) and when her vocals were atmospheric (and should be set further back in the mix). The dynamics of her voice seemed haphazard.
At it’s worst, Gang Gang Dance sounds reason-y and amateurish. Often times the transitions between songs were more intriguing than the songs they actually morphed into. But as soon as I would think, “this is kind of cheezy” I would hear something surprising and interesting. And as soon as I would realize, “this is actually kind of nice” the motif would already by finished, or continue seeming cheesy.
At it’s best, Gang Gang Dance is repetitive but wandering and extremely danceable. As I’ve said before, opening acts can often reveal a lot about the headlining act. Gang Gang Dance’s music certainly alluded to Battle's math-rock repeition and Black Dice’s new-primitivism. (This term will come up again, and I’ll be forced to finally define it). The layering of percussion alluded to both math-rock precision and new-primitivism; at times every member of the band was banging on something or had some kind of percussive element to their playing. Sometimes the banging was so vigorous, that their instrument began falling apart. Gang Gang Dance is fun and playful without compromising the music to make it sound cheap or like simple presequenced music; Gang Gang Dance certainly tows that line pretty closely. Fortunately, they stayed on the right side of it.
Gang Gang Dance / BLACK DICE / Battles, Central Park Summerstage
Black Dice -
Saturdays With Thom in Jersey
A band like Radiohead has little prove, financially, artistically, or otherwise, and yet Saturday night at Liberty State Park saw them firing on all cylinders, working as hard as any up-and-comer to deliver. Two hours and fifteen minutes after coming on almost exactly on time, having completed a two-encore set that swept comprehensively and satisfyingly through some of their older material, there wasn't a sad face in the crowd. And then, as you begin to look around the crowd, you realize that the baseball-cap-toting ironic-tshirt-lacking mid 30's crowd that has permeated right through the thick crust of hipsters is not just a sad contingent of Aunts and Uncles who want to hang out with the cool kids. This is the meat, the very soul of the now-aging Generation X, the people who pulled us out of the vapid 80's with a little bit of edge and a whole lot of vigorous headbanging and worn jeans. And now they've come back to their Mecca, and that Mecca is your Mecca, and that Mecca is Radiohead. Amen.
"This first song is for Kings of Lee-Own. If we were that good looking, we'd be famous," said Thom before the band opened up with Reckoner. All of In Rainbows made it into the set, and after a longer-than-usual period of working over the same material (five years in between Hail to the Thief and this new one), the material seems to keep evolving to the point where the band is more comfortable with the songs now than ever, studio, Lollapalooza, anywhere.
