Williamsburg & Iktus

         The elephant claw bell? What a discovery! A beautiful sound within a dreamy electronic soundscape at Baby’s All Right in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. This was a night full of not only discoveries: my first time to this bar just south of the Williamsburg bridge, but it was also a night full of reminders: I can still enjoy Williamsburg. It’s been years since I’ve spent time in Williamsburg, but with friends I managed to find a vegetarian-friendly Italian cafe called Wild on Bedford Ave. Wild is the opposite of that evenings concert with its boasting of garden access, promotion of a natural, organic menu and lots of dried herbs and flowers hanging on the walls. It was a quaint getaway in a city full of sound and people.
         The concert on the other hand was very urban and technology-based. The kind of concert where performers seem very comfortable absorbed in their equipment and the audience seems satisfied to stand and listen austerely, perhaps with the occasional head bopping. Tristan Perich gave us a world that can only be created with electricity and gadgets. Sitting in the middle of the room with the audience gathered round, he played a noise set that was rhythmically simple, but with a variety of textures. These densities thinned and thickened as the sound became its own physical presence in the room. You could feel the sound around you; this I liked about it. You could not ignore this added presence as it joined you and those around you in one moment, not through lyrics or catchy rhythms but through its physicality.
         To compliment these harsh sounds, Iktus followed Perich’s noise set with a percussion and electronic piece. This was played on stage, which was lit by hundreds of small multi-colored decorations on the back wall.

With the rainbow lit in these circular decorations, there could be no better back drop for this dreamy, melodic electronic piece with catchy rhythmic grooves played by the percussion quartet. The ear catching moment in all this, as you may have guessed, was the elephant claw! If the percussionist could somehow turn and play one of the lit, circular decorations behind him on the wall, this is what it would sound like, as if one color pulsed among this polka dot rainbow or one color radiated just a little bit brighter than the others for just a short while. It was ear catching and wonderful.

-Sally, Spring 2014

Between the Buried and Me

         I've been to over 50 concerts and there are very few bands that each time I see them, they leave me speechless each time. On February 21st at the Paramount Theater in Huntington, I went to see one of those bands for the 6th time, the headliner Between the Buried and Me, and they didn't disappoint me or any musician in the audience. As a band that is progressive, extremely complex and technical, all musicians including myself go to witness the profound musicianship this band delivers each time. They had other bands open the show that suited their style of music and everyone in the audience respected the musicianship and talent that comes from all of these hardworking bands. With such talent warming up the audience, Between the Buried and Me had quite a warm welcome to the stage.
         This was the first time I’d been to the Paramount; it was a nicely sized venue and a very sophisticated venue for a Progressive Metal-core band, from men in suits opening doors to the bathroom attendants, which I’d never experienced at a concert like this before, but it was a great plus. The size of the venue encouraged bigger mosh pits and louder crowd participation. The audience would watch in awe, singing and screaming every line or mosh their hearts out; all being fans of either the aggressive nature of the music or talent of the musicians. When there was no band playing, the members of the audience would converse and bond over other progressive, technical bands, talk about their own bands or influence people to go out and listen to other bands they had never heard of. If anybody wasn't a fan before but were brought by a friend because they like “heavier” music, I guarantee that they fell in love with the complexity and musicianship the band displayed.
         Between the Buried and Me's performance was astonishing with their musical prowess. They played each song flawlessly as they appeared on the albums, leaving no room for improvisation and with little emphasis on the backdrop lighting to make the focus the real show of talent they displayed. They didn’t have a stage show or a unique way they dressed; they were all dressed casually. Besides a few key moments when the members would interact with the crowd, they were focused on keeping time and the constant changes in time signatures over the course of songs that would go on for about 16 minutes. With the ability to play so fast in such a complex manner over a long period of time makes them one of my favorite bands and makes Blake Richardson one of my favorite drummers. Each member throughout the night had their time to shine with guitar solos, bass solos, drum solos, and keyboard solos from the singer, when he wasn't displaying his vocal ranges from melodic singing to aggressive screaming.

         Their songs have a wide range of weird topics like their song, “Sun of Nothing,” which is about a spaceman, who ends up traveling into the sun in an attempt to commit suicide, but when he realized that suicide wasn't the answer, it was too late to turn back and had accepted his fate. The lyrics “I just see faces/faces staring blank as they go on with the routine/this routine/nothing new/it’s time to go through with this” display his wish to escape society and to commit suicide, while other lyrics “floating to the sun/farther away/I can't believe that's what it has come to/I never really had it all that bad” show his regret in his decision. The lines of the song that are the most sympathetic have the melodic singing and guitar tones, while the aggression being released is displayed through screaming and the guitarist's complex rhythmic parts. Obscene stories like that attract people to the worlds these musicians created within their minds as opposed to just focusing on their musical talent.

         Between the Buried and Me has done what everyone expects of them, which is to display why they are on the stage in the first place. Their performances are always memorable ones and inspire every musician in the audience to practice and attempt to achieve their level of talent. Between the Buried and Me has left me speechless for the 6th time and there definitely will be a 7th time for them to do it again. Witnessing them show off such skill will never get old. With complexity in their songs, frequent time changes, displays of calm emotion to aggressive screaming, and extreme musical prowess, they are a force to reckon with in the Progressive Metal world. I encourage any inspiring musicians to check them out or at least experience them in concert to see what the human body can do.

-Keith Just, Spring 2014