Wednesday November 7, 2007
Enemy
Chicago, IL
Demons
Vertonen
Jason Soliday and Mark Solotroff
Wow, was this my last Chicago show for the year? Last night had a fun, if somewhat more "cerebral" feel to it... (as in "head music") Thanks to everyone who came out to support. It was a pretty decent midweek crowd on a cold and damp night.
Unfortunately, Alivia arrived with a debilitating headache, so Demons played their set sans video. While I certainly missed the opportunity to see Alivia do her great visuals, Nate and Steve performed such a dense, composed set of synthesizer music, that my mind was kept busy with its own internal cinema.
Last night's Vertonen set was also synth based, and I always enjoy when Blake brings out that big Russian beast. I particularly enjoyed the occasional bursts of static from what I think was a shortwave radio, which added punctuation to the flowing synth work. The crisp, sharp ending really snapped me back into the moment.
Jason and I started off the night, and we had been discussing doing something fairly different from our previous shows. We wanted to focus more on bass and droning, as opposed to the sharper high-end feedback attack, etc. I was cool with that, especially after my recent run of over-the-top piercing solo shows. I cut out all of the high frequencies on my microphones and while Jason built a foundation of organ and accents of record player scratchiness, I began chanting through a more low-end microphone set up. I will let Blake's review finish things off:
"Soliday and Solotroff delivered probably the best set i’ve heard them do; a lot of skritchy, crackling, and dense higher-end turntable run out groove sounds from Jason and low bass breathing hum from Mark (pierced with intermittent feedback that was well placed but didn’t crowd / overwhelm the mix) was the driving force for their set. I liked that their sound palette was much more restrained; it allowed more “nuance” and less “overwhelming bombardment,” and to that end I think they came across as more focused than other sets I’ve heard. "
