muninnhuginn | Deafened, Departed Early... (Reply)

So I dragged myself out--somewhat, and unaccountably, unenthusiastic--to The Hibachi Dealers' et al's gig last night.

I don't think, apart from when the dealers have played for the work summer "do", I've ever been to a gig where I've known quite so much of the audience. Good thing or bad thing, I dunno. I thought I was going to be late, but there were hitches getting Science Never Sleeps set up, so I hadn't missed anything. Which is all to the good, as I'd been looking forward to hearing how they sounded, which was lovely, especially the final two tracks of the set. The balance between the sampled sounds and guitar providing a solid, multi-layered platform, and the violin, a rich sound (the execution was exceptionally fine) with the edge both to pierce the underlying sounds and float on top, worked brilliantly. The vocals had a harder job--something that was more apparent when a piece used both live and sampled vocals, the latter coming through the mix with greater clarity. A good listening experience: I'm not sure whether it makes more more inclined to pick up the flute or mess around with silly sounds on the WX7/VL70m tho'.

1 Mile High, who played the last dealers gig I got to, returned with an additional member, freeing the vocalist up to sing, and adding a truly cool lead guitarist. It was a good set, marred only by the rather same-y sound of the tracks. I think I commented on this the last time I saw them. It's a question of variety of arrangement, of speed (heck it's why concertos have movements at different tempi), of time signature, of tone. Whilst there was one interesting change of time signature, and it was all good stuff performed way more than competently, more variety's still needed.

So onto The Hibachi Dealers. They've gained a keyboard player, lost a vocalist and gained a new one. They were going to sound different. They were. The already strong bass section was given extra oomph with R's contribution. I think, however, that using keyboards in all the tracks contributed to the , again, sameness of the individual songs. I can see that with only a hour in which to perform injecting variety is difficult, but as a second loud, rock band of the evening, it becomes a necessity. So, the keyboards are a useful, but over-used, addition. Vocals were less successful. I'd really liked the previous vocalist's voice, so I was going to be hard to convince; since we were going from male vocalist to female vocalist, I was going to be hard to win over (I don't find that many female vocalists work in rock: something about timbre, projection, whatever). This change didn't work for me: it was more shouting rather than singing (and I worry about V's vocal cords). I actually felt that everything needed transposing up a little to allow her to sing. Because her vocals weren't sufficiently different in tone to the bass section, and were mixed far too quiet, I really couldn't hear her properly either.

The shouty vocals also somehow reflected in the overall presentation: if the vocalist is going to be the band's spokesperson too, they've got to pitch their approach right. Admittedly we were an awkward audience: the place was more than half full, but we were at the back--no screaming hordes of fans clawing at the band members from just below the stage (I think many of us are just too middle-aged--and clutching our beers--for that kind of behaviour and anyway 1 Mile High's vocalist wasn't wearing his black velvet trousers, so some of us weren't interested at all ;-). But V came over as bolshy and hard and it didn't endear. 1 Mile High came over much better; Science Never Sleeps' low key approach was more appealing.

So, the noise levels being a tad too high overall, I gave up partway through the dealers and went home.

Nothing quite compared, however, with the day's earlier musical experience when I went to the school's leavers' day performance and the departing year six' School Daze, complete with a rock number about head lice and the environmentally-conscious song about overuse of splay-on deodorants by eleven-years olds.

Bizarre conversation of the evening with T whilst he was pacing up the computer-y bits 'n' bobs. My suggestion that the computer mouse presumably lived a properly rock 'n' roll lifestyle prompted a good set of suggestions from T.