It was a highly visceral performance that, thankfully, wasn’t over-intellectualized. The chaos crescendoed into sustained brutal abstraction that finally settled into gentle, Eno-esque washes. It sounded like it could have been an Isis riff were it not bound for distorted chaos.
#Moneyhouse rezension full
After a quick introduction, Turner began a slow build via guitar and effects pedals that grew deafening, making full - perhaps excessive - use of his arena-ready half-stack. Keyboardist Faith Coloccia set up her enormous Korg synth as the DJ excoriated the room with black metal. House of Low Culture was up next - a wise move as the midnight hour approached.
The band closed with crushing synth stabs, which set the bar high for the musical portion of the night. Volume was their ally as they glided over a saturated plateau of deafening processing for most of their set, until they settled down into a gorgeous Elvin Jones-style drum solo. From there, the members issued a compelling plateau of doom metal atop percussive skittering. Its set was a poignant aural assault of drones coaxing free-jazz drums to crescendo. This transitioned surprisingly well into the drums-and-processing duo Black Spirituals. Please see Sad Vicious any chance you get. As with most good comedy, it completely evaded explanation. It was a hilarious meta performance in which Scott and Stew, ostensibly Best Buy clerks, fumble through the protracted process of setting up their own performance.
Improbably, the evening opened with musical comedy via San Jose’s Sad Vicious.
As the scruffy, friendly young man accepting donations on the artists’ behalf put it, “This isn’t the kind of music that plays in bars.” It’s true - noise doesn’t exactly sell drinks. It’s probably owing to Turner’s reputation that the tiny West Oakland space where the band was set to perform filled quickly on a Wednesday night. An exception is House of Low Culture, the relatively long-standing noise outlet of Isis alum Aaron Turner, abetted by some of Oakland’s finest hunched-over abstractors. Many musicians in the Bay Area have started a noise project at some point (including Thee Oh Sees’ Jon Dwyer), but few have the heart to maintain them. At worst, and in a majority of cases, they can be an uninspired mess, with a well-meaning but clueless introvert hunched over thousands of dollars’ worth of effects processors as a bored, fitful crowd totters about. At their best, they clear the air from the Western musical forms and melodies we’re so accustomed to.
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