One and seven-eighths bands: Oso, Flockerkit, Zs

Last night there was a concert at the Renaissance Society at the U of C, where normally there is only pretentious art (which wasn't lacking: while the bands played, a two short clips of a tortoise, or turtle, or at any rate a hard-shelled reptile of some sort walking determinedly were projected in a loop on five massive screens). By some magic it started on time so when we got there 15-20 minutes late about half of the first band (Oso: some guy whose name is, I gather, Phil Taylor, with a guitar and a looping pedal and some other guy with an upright bass) were maybe half to a quarter done. Nevertheless it was pretty good: the Renaissance Society has absolutely horrible acoustics that worked to their advantage. The bass was kind of reverb-y and muddled and the guitar playing and loops (which were very well done, unobtrusive) was pretty clear, which worked out to be a good combination.

Flockterkit (whose Fred Lonberg-Holm looks a lot like jonmc from Metafilter and whose Ernst Karel used to do a radio show after mine, leading me at the time to think that there were two Ernst Karels: one a guy, probably a grad student, at Chicago and the other a local trumpeter and electronics player. It wasn't until he said hi to me before a show that he was playing in that I actually made the connection. Also, he looks like Will Ferrell) played next and were quite good. The lineup is clarinet/electronics, trumpet/electronics, bass, cello, and drums; the bass & cello and trumpet & clarinet frequently played together (not in unison but in similar phrases). Lots of long held notes. The beginning of the first piece was about ten minutes of drumming with electronic noises in the background (the amp for the electronics was placed far from the performance area) but it gradually got jazzier and more melodic, before ending with more long held notes in dissonant harmonies. V. cool. They were selling CDs but I had already got one from Oso.

Zs had the potential to be cool (two saxes, two guitars, two drummers, playing complex brutal proggy stuff) but whenever the drummers played the reverb completely drowned out everything else, so we left in the middle of the second song.

Comments

[Fontana Labs]

Is Karel still playing in EKG?

[Fontana Labs]

Wait, I think he isn't, because the other guy moved to the west coast. Sorry. I realized this just after hitting "post."

[ben wolfson]

Bruckmann? Yeah, he moved to SF sometime last year, but EKG are scheduled to play two shows in May (one at the RenSoc, actually), so I guess they're still intermittently in existence.