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The first thing I see of The Invisible Rays, who are playing when I enter TT's, is the huge bank of synthesizers that they're triggering samples from, and I'm nervous. This doesn't seem like my kind of thing, necessarily. But as I round the corner, I start to take in the really excellent drummer, the solid and melodic bassist, and the squealing, tragically undermixed guitar player. Plus the projection behind them, an oscilloscope trace of the output from the synth setup, which proves a suprisingly entrancing visual accompaniment to their set. The samples provide a lot of weird snippets of speech, mostly on the topic of synthesizers and sampling when I can make them out—it's all very recursive—and since there are otherwise no vocals, it's kind of nice to have that thrown into the mix. My own focus is on the rhythms, which are complicated and beautiful, with lots of good odd-time stuff that gets me dancing. A very pleasant surprise overall. Also pleasantly surprising is the respectable crowd here for the first band on a Tuesday night.
By the time Major Stars go on, the place is pretty much packed. They are a big, sprawling festival of feedback. LONG, psychedelic, almost jam-band-calibre songs are filtered through a noise-loving sensibility to produce a kind of slow mindfuck. The singer is a bluesy wailer who kind of wanders drunkenly onto the stage to sing for a few bars, then wanders off for several minutes while the band spirals off into parts unknown. Repeat as necessary. It's gorgeous stuff, and incredibly deep, if not exactly inviting or accessible.
Kinski have a vast array of pedals and boxes; the bassist has more pedals than most guitarists I've seen. They do a lot of stuff with timbre, but they also have phrase samplers that they use to layer loops of wispy, ambient material. They have two modes, and seem to delight in giving the audience whiplash by jerking back and forth between them. There's the arty, ethereal stuff that they build with their samplers and oscillators and e-bow and, yes, flute. Then they'll suddenly, and in perfect lockstep, blast into ultra-fast, punky rockers, with screaming guitars and seriously heavy rhythm. Then back to the ambient stuff; my favorite bit of this is when the guy with the flute actually builds up a loop without blowing it, just playing the sounds of tapping on the keys. I find these ambient parts the more interesting and musically advanced, actually, but a full set of it might get be hard to stay awake through; not a problem here. Then, right at the end, one of the guitarists actually SINGS for a song or two. It comes as something of a shock, after a whole set of just virtuoso instrumentals.
