Sad to say, but last night was my first show of the modern ONO era. Over the past few years, I have have been running into Travis (first) and P. Michael (more recently), more and more, but I had not made it to one of their shows yet. I cannot emphasize the importance of this band and those guys in my early industrial/experimental evolution. Buy me a drink and I will tell you my stories... I probably will, anyhow, or maybe I already have. You know, I forget...
But we are jumping ahead. Neil Jendon started the night out by suddenly switching "on" and blasting a hole through the north wall at Enemy with a totally inspired set of aggro guitar noise, using pedals as weapons and his modular synth to filter sound back into a dark, strange place. That got my heart pumping. Holy christ!
Ono was up next and what a show they put on! Early industrial meets minimal synth meets almost surfed-out coldwave guitars meets true Chicago outsider weirdness. Travis remains the ultimate frontman, not that there was any doubt in that department. Expanded to a four-piece, sans Ric Graham, but with a new guitarist and a new keyboardist, the band has a fuller sound then I recall from the 1980s. And they rocked the room... heads were bobbing, people were smiling. Excellent! I am looking forward to more. Someday, "Ennui" will be mine...
Jeff Host (Cleveland) and Ben Billington set up for a really nice, cosmic dual "progressive" synth workout, playing off of each other very nicely. I am enjoying this "synths in noise" trend quite a lot, especially when it is done well, like these two guys did, and when people know when it is time to stop. Again, kudos to Jeff and Ben for not dragging it on forver... not even close. It is also quite interesting to see Ben trying (and succeeding at) more and more things since stepping out from behind his drum kit.
Finally, a trio of David Russell (recent trade from Cleveland), Andrew Young, and Michael Forbes launched into an explosive free jazz noise set of upright bass (AY), sax (MF), and all of David's tabletop junk store madness. And speaking of frontmen, David also never disappoints. Whether with Jerk, Tanked, or various other human combinations, David makes each perfomance that he is in a comprelling one. While the freaked out jazz stuff might not be my favorite cup of tea, these three still executed an extremely interesting set to watch and to hear.
I was sorry that Scarcity of Tanks was not able to make it... Wasco, come back to Chicago...
Since yesterday evening, I have had the strangest craving to watch "A Clockwork Orange." If I can get my work done quickly, I might just do that. Kuma's also threatens today, same scenario... work... then a mega-rock show with my winter 2008-09 dark guitar obsession, All the Saints, plus Darker My Love and These Arms are Snakes...
Rhetoric of Surfaces is the one to get then, and the opening "Drosscape" – the only track not previously released, it seems – establishes the mood of the album from the get-go. Over an ominous backdrop of sustained low register synth tones, guitar lines teeter on the brink of uncontrollable feedback. It ends suddenly, but distortion and delay is the name of the game once more on "Burying The Carnival" (this is also available on a self-released cassette, along with a companion piece "Exhuming The Carnival", though the sound quality understandably leaves a little to be desired compared to the CD.. not that that's ever been a problem for fans of this kind of sound), with extreme high register metal-derived guitar lines screeching like demented seagulls over a decidedly chilly bassline semitone loop. Dark, doom-laden stuff to be sure, but ravens and elemental human dread notwithstanding, the tolling bell that opens "Visible / Invisible" is convincing – and musical. But the best is yet to come, with "Amps Into Instruments", a carefully structured epic which finally settles on a four-note bass riff (the same four notes as The Cure's "A Forest", actually.. intentional?) and builds impressively to a powerful conclusion.