Sunday, July 18, 2004
Growing vs. Excepter
I wrote this to a friend last night, and as we didn't resolve the issues that I wrote about, I thought I'd post this:
Excepter/Growing/etc. at Tonic 7/17
It was, in fact, perfect that these two were playingright against each other, in that they were polar opposites.We can discuss together why I hated Acceptor so much, so I'll limit my comments to Growing, and their relationship to Acceptor.Consider Growing's set as dance. The first thing that led me to think of the set in this way was a)how attractive both of those guys were and b) that the lights were all the way up. The program of the set was the same as it had been on at least some of their other dates (the show went almost exactly like BW said it had in one of the IHM threads), so in that they had a fixed form, their movements were all related to the realization of a whole. It's like watching someone execute a score. Their movements were all so simple, clear, and repetitive and structured to the (rather) rigid form they had prescribed beforehand. The bass player standing up, repeating those bends and rocking very minutely in front of the amp, the guitarists' chords, his movement in front of the amp, the knob twiddling. But, instead of seeming robotic, they seemed so natural and loose, probably because they were so intimately connected with the glistening, washyrumbling, which was, to me at least, very appealing, but contrasted against to the very simple movements of the two. The movement is the same sort of pleasure you get from watching a craftsman work, movement is all connected to an object at hand, but in the naturalness of the connection between the two things, you can enjoy their movement in it's own right. It was a perfect contrast between visual and aural, small movements leading to big ones, but with none of the incredulity that comes upon witnessing the laptop musician. Against the wasteful excessiveness of Excepter (Jeff Ryan is obviously quite naturally statuesque, but he covers it upon in that ridiculous garb, and that hideous undulating), the two young men in Growing show a beautiful, genuine economy, even in dress. Look at the tatoo on the bassist's left arm: so simple, a black band, so unostentatious that it seems almost functional and non-decorative. Perfect and abstract. I'd like to think they they are real salt of the earth fellows, not raw, but not cultivated either.
Excepter/Growing/etc. at Tonic 7/17
It was, in fact, perfect that these two were playingright against each other, in that they were polar opposites.We can discuss together why I hated Acceptor so much, so I'll limit my comments to Growing, and their relationship to Acceptor.Consider Growing's set as dance. The first thing that led me to think of the set in this way was a)how attractive both of those guys were and b) that the lights were all the way up. The program of the set was the same as it had been on at least some of their other dates (the show went almost exactly like BW said it had in one of the IHM threads), so in that they had a fixed form, their movements were all related to the realization of a whole. It's like watching someone execute a score. Their movements were all so simple, clear, and repetitive and structured to the (rather) rigid form they had prescribed beforehand. The bass player standing up, repeating those bends and rocking very minutely in front of the amp, the guitarists' chords, his movement in front of the amp, the knob twiddling. But, instead of seeming robotic, they seemed so natural and loose, probably because they were so intimately connected with the glistening, washyrumbling, which was, to me at least, very appealing, but contrasted against to the very simple movements of the two. The movement is the same sort of pleasure you get from watching a craftsman work, movement is all connected to an object at hand, but in the naturalness of the connection between the two things, you can enjoy their movement in it's own right. It was a perfect contrast between visual and aural, small movements leading to big ones, but with none of the incredulity that comes upon witnessing the laptop musician. Against the wasteful excessiveness of Excepter (Jeff Ryan is obviously quite naturally statuesque, but he covers it upon in that ridiculous garb, and that hideous undulating), the two young men in Growing show a beautiful, genuine economy, even in dress. Look at the tatoo on the bassist's left arm: so simple, a black band, so unostentatious that it seems almost functional and non-decorative. Perfect and abstract. I'd like to think they they are real salt of the earth fellows, not raw, but not cultivated either.
