Oddroc Sounds

New York (Part 4280)

 photo: ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead

 

Tuxedomoon @ (le) Poisson Rouge

Eventually, we'll get to see all of those combos whose recorded works we've caressed and secreted for so long. After sometimes multi-decade periods, many of these revered outfits are treading the boards once again, either following lengthy bouts of seclusion or favouring tour schedules that take them to the wrong cities at the subjectively wrong time. So here's Tuxedomoon (pictured), at last, appearing more as oldsters than might be imagined, until the realisation solidifies that this hyper-mood-painting clan have been active for just over thirty years. Although originating from San Francisco, they all moved to Holland, then Belgium in the early 1980s, at the height of their cultish popularity. Now, everything's gone even stranger, as this present decade has found them scattered across Mexico, Greece and the USA, with only trumpeter Luc Van Lieshut remaining in Brussels. The band's other three members are longer-serving, with Blaine L. Reininger (violin, guitar, laptop), Steven Brown (reeds'n'keys) and Peter Principle (bass) being the creators of the classic Half Mute and Desire albums. This scattering has led to cross-ocean file-transmission, which might be one reason why their songs are so swirlingly layered, so rich with thickened textures. Tuexedomoon's dispersed nature is no surprise given that their music never sounded remotely American in the first place.

In recent times, many solo projects have surfaced, and the band have refined their image as movie soundtrackers, without necessarily being involved in an actual filmic project. This is the way their music sounds anyway, infused with the exotic melancholia of Euro-isolation, even if this might not, in reality, exist in the corporeal domain. Particularly since the smoking ban. When there's a vocal, it's often in a different language to the last, spread in-between instrumental stretches that are pulsing with Principle's clotted basslines, webbed with spectral clarinet or saxophone phrases, and crowned by speckles of muted trumpet. Sometimes, Tuxedomoon can't escape Bowie In Berlin, but mostly they're proud displayers of a diverse collection of influences that end up combining to create their own distinctive sound. They still possess a 1980s vocabulary, but that doesn't have to be such a retro stance nowadays, particularly when re-invented via laptoppery. When Brown's blowing evocative reed-spirals and Reininger's singing out his gypsy violin flourishes, an increased jazz direction is revealed, but Principle keeps his pugilist basslines pumping with a deliberately insistent primitivism that re-states their punkish roots. Brown sits at the piano, and the theatrically diseased cabaret delivery of his intoned vocals is very far removed from anything remotely jazzed. Then, when Reininger picks up the guitar, the sound switches again, to a riff-shard twitch-rock progression. The band's bonus member is film-maker Bruce Geduldig, much of whose work involves real-time stagings of his workbench manipulations, magnified into surreality as he deploys various masks, cut-ups and miniature modelling techniques.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead @ Santos Party House

Another night of nostalgia in a new shack. Deep in Chinatown lies the Santos Party House, which made its debut on the NYC club scene in June 2008. The first noticeable environmental feature is that ear-crumpling speakers line every inch of its upper walls, although maybe such generosity is too much, as both the DJ and band sounds are certainly not bearing pristine clearness in their bass and treble divisions. What I'm saying is that there was a good deal of muffled thunder here. Maybe this is a mixing issue. Or a senior's fucked-up ears issue. On the visual front, it's certainly enlightening to watch their old school projectionist feeding celluloid loops into his flickering machines, beaming improvised collages of sin onto the unrolled stage screen. The nostalgia part is a hyper-rare gig by ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, in their original 1990s duo formation (the Austin combo eventually evolved into a five-piece), and mostly playing their early songs. The mood of the evening is definitely on the informal side, and the boys look like they're having fun, this sense of play successfully transferred to the medium-sized crowd. It's a Monday, and the band's on 'round midnight. Jason Reece and Conrad Keely get breathless dashing between drums and guitar, then they throw in the piano stool to confuse matters further. Back in 1994, they were like The White Stripes, before The White Stripes. Oddly, these two first met up in Hawaii. Somehow, they no longer sound as unusual as they seemed to be a decade past, but the spirit is strong, and the rockin' is moderately unhinged, though quite traditional-sounding. The playing's tight, and the japing mood is right, though the material squats with uncertainty in the scrubland between simple commerciality and angular extremity.

ESG @ Santos Party House

Not strictly hip hop, more funk-punk, but how else should ESG's output be bracketed, especially as their oeuvre has been heavily sampled in that very universe? This veteran Bronxian combo slice and dice elements of funk, punk, electro and rap into their own unrivalled sound, having their initial high back in the 1980s, and periodically reviving until threatening their 'last ever' gig in 2007. Retirement is apparently resistible, as the girls (well, it's a predominantly female combo) are back out in clubland again, on a shoulder-to-shoulder Saturday nite. The various Scroggins sisters are in the majority, girlish even in middle age, as they intone with deadpan coolness above a mesh of slashed guitar and aroused bass, with drums and percussion stepping out hypnotically. They don't quite succeed in capturing that particular lurking future-funk sound of yore in its totality, but this will be good enough, thank them kindly.

Camper Van Beethoven @ The Bowery Ballroom

It's twenty-five years since Camper Van Beethoven formed in Santa Cruz, California, and so they're out on tour to celebrate, with the almost-original line-up. Many of those years have been spent apart, as various members found other creative outlets, most notably David Lowery and his Cracker combo. The Bowery Ballroom is a quaint old hall, with a prime vantage-point balcony. The Campers are playing for two nights, and it's feeling pretty full. A large portion of the band's unusualness springs from Jonathan Segal, who mainly plays violin, but also keeps up the quirkiness with his slide guitar and retro keyboard sounds. His compadres form a meshing guitar orchestra, generating chiming and clanging riffs to underpin Lowery's nasal vocal-bendings. None of the players opts for showmanship: the interest is maintained through songs alone, hooking and romping with continual brightness. The highlights predictably include key oldies Take The Skinheads Bowling and The Pink Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive.