Pilcrow

Atom™, playing the Decibel Opening Party showcase at Re-Bar

My Flickr Pro account expired early in October, right when I was flat broke and couldn't afford to renew it. A free Flickr membership has restrictions on uploading photos, and will only display the 200 most recently uploaded photos, so I didn't bother trying to upload my Decibel Festival photos until I renewed my Pro membership. Well, with all the financial juggling I've been doing to try to catch up on my various late accounts and also cover my regular expenses, I didn't bother renewing my Pro membership until yesterday. So yesterday evening I finally went through my Decibel Festival photos and uploaded the ones I felt were worthwhile.


Ladytron, playing the Sinthetic showcase at the Showbox at the Market

I started out with 150 photos, which is a small amount relatively speaking. But I hadn't bothered to try taking lots of photos this year, for a couple reasons. For one, this year KEXP had a small and moderately well-coordinated group of bloggers and photographers attending the shows, so I expected that between KEXP's own photographers and the official Decibel Festival photo pool, I would have enough good photos to use for the blog posts. For another, although I once again borrowed Gina's fairly decent digital camera, I wasn't actually getting very good results in a lot of venues. Generally the venues were so dark that even putting the camera on the nighttime setting wasn't enough to make up the difference, and I was reluctant to use the flash as I wasn't expecting good results with it and also felt that it was inappropriate for me to do so as an unofficial photographer (and I had a vague idea that at least some venues were restricting the pro photographers from using flash). As a result, after I'd sorted through my photos and discarded the ones that I felt weren't worthwhile, I ended up with a set of just 36 photos, which you can see in my Decibel Festival 2011 set on Flickr. 


Amon Tobin (hidden inside the largest cube in that structure), playing the Red Bull Music Academy Presents showcase at the Paramount Theatre

Fortunately I was able to get some decent photos of Amon Tobin's amazing stage set for his ISAM Live production, as you can see in the previous photo. Unfortunately, static photos can't begin to do justice to just how cool and amazing it was to see the video projected onto the building-block structure that produced a realistic three-dimensional effect without glasses. As far as I'm concerned, this is as close as we can come with traditional two-dimensional video to the ideal of true three-dimensional holographic projection. 





You can still read my KEXP Blog post about the Amon Tobin showcase, as well as my post on the Opening Party. Unfortunately, with all the things I had going on in October, I was never able to make time to get any more posts written about Decibel Festival for the KEXP Blog. However, I will still try to make time soon to do a brief write-up of the rest of Decibel Festival here on my blog. 


Kid Hops, playing the Onset showcase at the Baltic Room

Last night I went to see Ladytron with CSS at The Showbox. I was having doubts about whether I really wanted to go to this show, because I'd just seen Ladytron back in April; it wasn't likely there'd be much new to the show, so I wasn't sure I'd enjoy this one as much as the last. However, I'd already agreed to go with John and Amy Peltonen, who'd unfortunately missed the previous show. My doubts turned out to be foolish, as Ladytron rocked the house and was totally worth seeing again.

Opening act CSS were a sextet, five women and one man, from São Paulo, Brazil - although the only hint of that was a slight accent (which I couldn't identify) when the lead singer spoke between songs. The women included the lead singer, a bassist, and three guitarists - one of whom took over drums for the last few songs, while the other two played keyboards as well. The man mostly played drums, but near the end of their set came out to play guitar and bass on a couple songs. Musically, they had a '70s-punk/rock vibe to them, reminding me of both The Ramones and Joan Jett. They played enthusiastically, and the lead singer worked hard to rally the crowd, though the band did seem to have a fair amount of fans in the audience. The singer even crowd-surfed twice during one song, something I believe I actually have never seen before. For one song they dragged Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service) out on stage to share a bit of vocals, which had me thinking they were a local band; it's only now that I've discovered their Brazilian origins. I didn't find their music particularly interesting, overall, but it wasn't bad by any means. Mostly they just seemed like an odd choice as an opening act for Ladytron: brash, youthful, enthusiastic punk-pop rock, in contrast to Ladytron's calculated, sophisticated, often-dark synth rock.

The notable difference between the previous Ladytron show and this one was the additional stage lighting; whereas the previous show had mainly moody red spotlights, on the Showbox's larger stage they were able to add five light stands, each with four white spotlights and a large strobing lamp with red, blue and clear filters. As with the Goldfrapp show last May, the banks of lights facing into the audience added a real rock spectacle feeling to the show, heightening the excitement of the performance. In another similarity to the Goldfrapp show, as the concert progressed lead singer Helena Marnie let her detachment slide and roused the audience to bounce up and down, pump their fists in the air, and clap hands overhead. The lighting and the crowd-working accentuated the driving beat and danceability of much of the music, in contrast to the often dark and desolate lyrics. But loving Ladytron is all about taking delight in doom and gloom, and the audience was full of love. The set covered much of their latest album, Witching Hour, but older songs were featured too, including "He Took Her To A Movie", "Seventeen", and set closer "Playgirl". The two-song encore brought the house down with the anthemic "The Last One Standing" and current hit "Destroy Everything You Touch". It wasn't long into the set before I had a big grin on my face, and by the end I was bouncing up and down and clapping in the air along with everyone else, very happy that I hadn't passed up this show after all.

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There are quite a few promising shows this month. Besides Ladytron, I could've gone to see Melissa Ferrick last night at the Crocodile; tonight I'm missing out on Bettie Serveert at the Crocodile, Math and Physics Club at the Sunset Tavern, and the Dresden Dolls at the Showbox. Tomorrow I might still go see Yo La Tengo at the Showbox; it'll depend on the mood I'm in, and whether I can get around to making dinner early enough. This Thursday, the 19th, Ghostland Observatory are doing two shows at the Crocodile. Stephin Merritt and Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) are at the Town Hall on Thursday the 26th, and KJ Sawka is at Nectar Lounge on Sunday the 29th. Next month, Kinski are playing at the Crocodile on Friday the 3rd, and Tahiti 80 are also playing there on Sunday the 12th; I'll probably go to the latter show, and maybe to the former as well.