rangda / guerilla toss / shells 09-03-2016
marble bar, detroit
the backstory for this evening was mostly related to the question of whether getting to this bar and back, through a part of detroit i'd yet to enter, could be done safely. in the end, i believe i was overly cautious: the bar is perhaps on the edge of scary-town, but it's also a block from campus. it may take a few trips for my nerves to calm, but i do not believe that i am putting myself in any danger by going to this venue, so long as i do not stray too far in the other direction. that said, i would obviously prefer to go to other bars to see shows...
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the first act consisted of a woman playing guitar. it wasn't very interesting. if it was trying to be atmospheric or ambient, it wasn't; if it was trying to be technical, it wasn't, either (at all). it was actually to the point where a little bit more proficiency could have helped it succeed in being better, as ambient music. bluntly: it was some generic country/roots riffs played through a reverb pedal, masqueraded as some kind of art. i don't mean like morricone. i mean like garth brooks. again: i don't know how this kind of thing gets booked.
i tried to suggest to the guitarist that she needs to add more to what she's doing in order for it to not be boring, but the suggestion was received poorly. so, i moved on.
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guerrilla toss came on considerably earlier than i expected, which allowed me to make the choice of whether to stay for the headliner or not. when i got home, i realized that they had done their "normal set" at third man records, down the street, a little earlier in the day (i didn't know that was taking place; if i did, i would have went). it seems as though they refrained from recycling their set. i had been listening to their most recent record for a few days up to the show, but the choice to not recycle the set meant i didn't know much of the material. they may have actually played some new material - i don't know; i've bumped into them a handful of times over the last couple of years, and i've had a mixed reaction, but i wouldn't exactly consider myself a fan. my decision to go to the show was more experiential: it just struck me as something that would be good live.
in fact, my immediate impression was that they sound a lot better on record than they do live. i've checked out a few live recordings (including footage of the early set...) and the issue is actually persistent and obvious: it's the open room. this is a band that has a very tight, compressed sound. it has a lot of complexity all over the spectrum, but it's rooted in a very busy and very squished bass/drum combo. so, you basically want to see them in a closet. a basement would be ideal! any kind of space with any kind of reverb at all is going to hollow them out, and make them sound blurry. you don't want to give them any space at all.
there's some mixing decisions you can make to balance it out, of course - and they seem to refrain from making them. but, more than anything else, it's the open ceiling. and, that's actually something more general to keep in mind about the bar - it would be good for anything ambient, but bad for any kind of punk.
i'm not knocking the show. don't misunderstand. it's just that the acoustics were very unfriendly. and, they seem to be making that error repeatedly. see them in an enclosed space, if possible. and recommend it, too - if you get the chance.
here's a full set:
they were done a little after 11:00, so i figured i'd get time to at least sample the headliner. but, rangda took a good while longer to set up; i'm guessing that they probably came on around 12:00. i didn't have to catch the bus until 12:23, but i didn't know how long it was going to take to walk back to the stop or how safe it was going to be, so i took the safe choice and left about 11:45....
frankly, i wasn't really impressed by the samples. nor am i at all a fan of ben chasny or richard bishop [i'm a little more familiar with chris corsano]. if it was ten degrees warmer out, or an hour earlier (or an hour later) or i was more comfortable in my surroundings or ... then i would have stayed and sauntered down to a coffee shop and hung out for the night. but, as things were, i was experimenting with the feasibility of getting to this bar and back before the last bus, and setting those parameters was more important.
maybe i missed a great show. but, i suspect that i just missed some aimless jamming by some guitarists that have never previously impressed me very much.