Noise music. It's an acquired taste. Sometimes, it seems, it takes the most esoteric and cerebral of folks to enjoy it - those who can disassociate all their senses of what makes a song a good song because they're artists themselves, they relish in chaos or, perhaps unannoyingly, seek something totally weird. Tuesday night at Kungfu Necktie was a presentation of the whole range; from weirdo noise to totally crowd-pleasing groove-heavy dance jams, an audience was exposed to a night of arty music. A stinky, sweaty, hot August night of avant-guard music and the payoff was worth it.
I haven't acquired that taste. Mincemeat or Tenspeed stood in front of a folding table of knobs and played a rhythmic, electro set of four songs that couldn't be called anything other than noise. One curly-haired gentleman rocked his head so violently, barely slowing his cadence to the slower moments, that I was able to draw a conclusion; he must be REALLY into this shit, or, REALLY into noise. I understand a bit more about noise music because I spoke to a couple who enjoyed the set - he waxed esoteric on the meaning of making sounds be it from a traditional instrument or just pushing a button. I offered a distaste for a set of knob-tweaking, torso-bobbing machine-manipulation and that seemed to come off as narrow-minded. I was reminded of the LCD Soundsystem lyrics from "Losing My Edge." James Murphy sings "I hear you're buying a synthesizer and an apreggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real." Very tongue-in-cheek, he follows with "I hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables."
The point is: modern music is a mind-fuck of sounds, a huge range and our post-modern world provides musicians innumerable ways of creating sounds from other sounds (samples, loops, laptops, synths, beats, etc.). But your creativity with these sounds would be what sets you apart from the two year old banging on baby's first Casio, right? Gang Gang Dance takes it all and molds it into one of the most body-moving, percussion-heavy multi-genre collection of sounds in recent memory. Animal Collective comes to mind - a band who brings grooves out of chaos and employs chanting, carnality and indigenous sounds with samples and synths.
Middle act Hex Message, GGD's tour partner from New York, was an appropriate middle man in this transition from hard noise to infectious dance music. With GGD there is a heavy emphasis on percussion and rhythms but not necessarily from a machine. The lead singer, Liz Bougatsos, put her mallot-style drumsticks down only for a few songs. She sang in front of a collection of bongos, a bass drum, cymbal and high-hat and filled in near-silences with drum and cymbal rolls. Brian Degraw, accepting keys, percussion and synth responsibilities, also held drumsticks in his hand most of the night and achieved some of the band's worldbeat reputation by playing a drum pad like steel drums. Guitarist Josh Diamond tweaked a stack full of black boxes which seemed responsible for the trumpet sounds on one song. But of course the stellar drumming of the full-on drummer drummer, Tim DeWitt, is what pulls the performance together. He is a mad man and his drums filled that little room like they needed to.
There was a moment in nearly every song that you were waiting for, when seemingly disparate elements were brought together by a crash of drums or the introduction of a new rhythm. Each song picked up momentum and by the end, the crowded room was moving and swaying like a hippified festival set. They took it there. Eight to ten minute songs dominated by a tribal-flavored beat were reminiscent of house and trance songs, and yet, strangely, also of jam bands like moe. and, yes, our illustrious Disco Biscuits. A far, far cry from the opening band's set of "noise."
This is a slightly longer version of what appeared on Make Major Moves.
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