The Orb vs Chelsea Light Moving, Halloween Night, Atlanta

By some people's reckoning, last night, Halloween, was the final evening of Rocktober, and fittingly, there was no shortage of shows to attend, not the least of which was Saratoga Springs' Phantogram at the godforsaken Masquerade.  But that wasn't all - our old friends Big Gigantic were also at The Masquerade, while The Loft had the Rev. Horton Heat and The Basement at Graveyard Tavern had Shlomo and XXYYXX.  For a certain type of music fan, there was Leftover Salmon with Col. Bruce Hampton at Variety Playhouse, while for a whole other type of music fan, there was Sevendust with Asking Alexandria at The Tabernacle.  For the sake of completeness, I'll point out that someone called Stepdad was at Smith's Olde Bar, while Eddie's Attic had someone called The Cumberland Collective.

But even with all of these choices, I didn't go to any of the above, instead taking in two other great shows also occurring on this most epic of all nights.  To begin, downstairs from The Loft and the good Reverend Horton Heat, legendary electronic artists The Orb were playing at Vinyl.

There weren't too many people there when I arrived around 8:00, but there was a great ambient DJ layering some terrific tracks over each other.     

The Orb took over the stage a little before 9:00 and played a solid two-hour set.  At this point, the Orb consists primarily of founder Alex Paterson, assisted by collaborator Thomas Fehlmann.  Toward the center of the set, Fehlmann left the stage for a while and let Paterson cover A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld solo, which he seemed more than capable of covering.  

As one would expect from The Orb, the songs weren't performed as separate entities, but just sort of rose up out of the mix from time to time before dissolving back into the beats, samples, and psychedelia of the rest of the non-stop set. They were more than capable of getting the audience dancing, which by the end of the set, nearly everyone, including your humble narrator, was doing, and then chilling them out a little with some of their trippier passages. 

As the band played, a thoroughly entertaining video display was projected on a large screen set up to the right of the band, showing album logos, dancers, space and sci-fi themed film clips, old silent movies, and various other imagery.  It being Halloween, anywhere from two-thirds to three-fourths of the audience were in costume, although I suspect that an Orb concert might attract its fair share of costumed audience regardless of the date.  By and large, it looked like much like a classic 90s rave, complete with glow sticks. Combined with the trippy ambient music of The Orb, the costumed dancers and the video projections all combined to create an extremely other-worldly atmosphere.  It should also be noted that the audience was extremely well-behaved, polite, and cool, with nearly everyone wearing a blissed-out smile and making room at the front of the stage for dancers instead of trying to crowd the stage as at most shows.   People would tap me on the shoulder and say things like, "Dude, I saw them back in '95 at a festival with Underworld!," or dance with me for a few minutes, or just stand next to one another and share in our mutual appreciation of the evening. 

The Orb's two-hour set wrapped up around 11:00, and although the house lights stayed down for a long time as the audience called for an encore, cheering and clapping and chanting "Orb! Orb! Orb!", they never returned to the stage.  Several of us wondered what the point was of leaving the lights down after the set if they had no intention of performing an encore. 

But I actually really didn't mind all that much, as I had places to be.  Before I had bought my ticket for The Orb, I had purchased tickets to see Thurston Moore and his band Chelsea Light Moving at The Earl, so as soon as The Orb wrapped up their set at around 11:00, I left Vinyl in Midtown and drove over to East Atlanta Village  and The Earl.

Everything worked in my favor.  From Vinyl, I headed first up Peachtree and then back down Spring, jumping on the Connector at 14th (pardon the ATL ITP jargon).  Although East Atlanta Village was pretty busy on Halloween night, I lucked out finding a parking space almost immediately from the one car in an otherwise full parking lot pulling out just as I was pulling in.  I made it into The Earl by 11:15.

When I walked in, Moore was on stage tuning up, but the band had not yet started.  I had enough time to get a beer and find a spot to watch, and then Chelsea Light Moving began playing.

We've seen Chelsea Light Moving here back in March, and Thurston Moore performing under his own name at The Goat Farm following the release of his underrated Demolished Thoughts LP, but it's always a treat to see Moore perform and it Halloween night isn't the time to overindulge with two shows, then when is?  

As you can imagine, the edgy, angst-ridden music of Chelsea Light Moving was quite a contrast from The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds. But change is good, and Moore played a great set, concentrating on songs from their debut album, but featuring a few new numbers as well. They played several of my favorites, including Burroughs (second song of the set), Groovy and Linda, and Empires of Time, but they never did get around to my favorite, Frank O'Hara Hit.

I imagine that with all of the entertainment options available on Halloween night, not limited to all the bands playing around town, there was a lot of competition for the audience, but I was still surprised at the relatively small size of the crowd at The Earl.  It was also interesting to note that very few people in the audience at The Earl were in costume, quite the contrast with the audience at Vinyl for The Orb.  

Chelsea Light Moving wrapped up their set around midnight, and played one short encore song, with bassist Samara Lubelski on violin, before calling it a night.