Shabazz Palaces, The Helio Sequence at Terminal West, Atlanta - Jan. 19, 2013

Last night's performances at Terminal West had a strong yin-yang quality to them: fire and ice, or the sun and the moon.  The meeting of the three disparate bands brought to mind the 13th Hexagram of the I Ching, Thung Zăn, or "Union of Men," with its imagery of the starry but dark heavens above and bright fires or the Sun below.

The opening band, Atlanta's DeadCAT (not to be confused with Seattle's palindromic TacocaT), started things off by balancing the two forces, combining the dark and the bright.  The band features a rock solid rhythm section and vocals with the reverb so heavy that not only were the lyrics undecipherable, so was most of the stage banter.  The result was a strange and distorted (but in a good way) set of garage psych-rock.  The bass and drums moved the feet, the vocals opened the mind.

This was actually my third time seeing the next act, Seattle's Shabazz Palaces, but oddly my first time seeing them at night.  I previously saw them in a daytime performance at Bumbershoot 2011, and then again opening just before sunset for My Morning Jacket at McMenamin's Edgefield in lovely Troutdale, Oregon during MFNW 2012.  I've seen the band's Ishmael Butler perform with Thee Satisfaction at Bumbershoot 2012 (coincidentally on the same day is saw TacocaT), and going way back in the time machine, I saw Butler perform as Butterfly with the Digable Planets at Pittsburgh's Rosebud back around 1993 (sorry, no link to that pre-internet performance). Admittedly  the last two were evening performances, but then again, they weren't Sahabazz Palaces performances either.

Anyhow, last night, Shabazzz Palaces played on a nearly dark stage, with just a couple spotlights roving the perimeter of the stage and the audience, as was fitting for their artistic and avant garde take on hip hop.  A duo, the band transcends the usual hip-hop convention of one MC and one DJ, with both Butler and multi-instrumentalist Tendai 'Baba' Maraire handling vocals, electronics, and percussion, although Butler dominates the vocals and Maraire the percussion.  This is a dark, spooky form of hip hop, perfect for late night listening, the spacey, upper trigram of the Thung Zăn hexagram.

For the record, their nearly 45 minute set was the best that I've heard yet from this innovative band.

The bright, lower part of the hexagram was provided by the indie pop of Shabazz Palaces' Sub Pop label - and tour mates, Portland's The Helio Sequence.

The Helio Sequence are touring for the first time in four years behind their first album, Negotiations, in as long a time.  The band consists solely of guitarist/singer Brandon Summers and drummer Benjamin Weikel, who, it's been noted, may quite possibly be the happiest looking drummer on the face of the planet.  Taking the stage with only two guitars, a drum kit, and Weikel's laptop, it's hard to believe the amount of music they're capable of generating.  I have no quarrel with, and in fact rather enjoy, the Black Keys stripped-down rock using the same instrumentation, but The Helio Sequence produces a spacious wall of sound that someone just listening to a recording might mistake for a much fuller band.  I kept watching to see how the magic was done, but couldn't figure out how Summers got so many simultaneous lines out of his guitar.

As befitting their sunnier sound, the Terminal West stage was more fully illuminated for the Helio Sequence set, which provided a luminous counterpoint to the dark Shabazz Palaces set, the yin to the yang, the lower trigram that completed Thung Zăn.

For their encore, The Helio Sequence provided two folk-pop sounding songs, featuring Summers on harmonica.

  

I couldn't help but notice a large turnover in the audience after Shabazz Palaces' set.  At least three-quarters of the people standing around me for Shabazz Palaces left after their set, and the people surrounding me during The Helio Sequence had either been further back in the audience (I had managed to find a spot in the second row from the stage) or had just arrived.  I don't know if it's the difference between hip hop and rock, between the avant garde and the mainstream, or a racial distinction (this is, after all, still Georgia), but it's  nevertheless unfortunate that there are those who's personal feng shui is still not balanced between the light and the dark.

In his commentary on Thung Zăn ("Union of Men"), Deng Ming-Dao notes that in our present era, we isolate ourselves from one another and allow our society to stratify into different classes.  It is hard to remember that a true community, a true Union of Men, should be as easy as growing plants or sailing down a river.  As easy as enjoying music together.  In fact, a community that is hard to assemble or that must be maintained by coercion is not a true community.  

Sun Ra, Explained

I've tried to explain Birmingham, Alabama-born Sun Ra before, most notably here, and his music still crops up in my listening, such as this example, but who better to discuss and describe his legacy than members of the Arkestra itself? Boys and girls, here's an instructive and educational video film on Space and the Music of the Omniverse.  

Points On A Space Age is a 2009 documentary by Ephrahaim Asili. It's a 60-minute doc along the lines of the talking-head-intercut-with-performance-clips style. It works because of the interesting and passionate nature of the images of the band as well as of the audio, as the band attempts to articulate what Ra meant to them, and why they are keeping the flame alive. 

Bassoonist/multireedist James Jacson had studied Zen Buddhism before joining Sun Ra and identified strong similarities between Zen teachings and practices (particularly Zen koans) and Ra's use of non sequiturs and seemingly absurd replies to questions.  Drummer Art Jenkins admitted that Sun Ra's "nonsense" sometimes troubled his thoughts for days until inspiring a sort of paradigm shift, or profound change in outlook. Drummer Andrew Cyrille said Sun Ra's comments were "very interesting stuff … whether you believed it or not. And a lot of times it was humorous, and a lot of times it was ridiculous, and a lot of times it was right on the money."  

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is the son of Sun Ra baritone saxophonist Pat Patrick.

Sun Ra left the earth for his next mission in 1993. The remnants of the band include Marshall Allen, Ra’s greatest disciple and current bandleader and keeper of the flame. Now 86, Allen also serves as recruiter for new members, and potential converts of Sun Ra’s philosophy, once based on space travel and music as a tool for evolution into a new consciousness and tuning into holy vibrations.

All music, without exception, is a direct expression of the buddha dharma.

Young Magic, Purity Ring at Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, January 17, 2013

In case you were one of the few people not there, there was a wonderful show last evening at Atlanta's Variety Playhouse, featuring the bands Young Magic and Purity Ring.

Opener Young Magic is an artsy collective based in Brooklyn, although its members hail from Australia and Indonesia.  Melati Melay sings and plays electric guitar, while Isaac Emmanuel and drummer Michael Italia provide pounding, tribal backbeats, along with many electronic flourishes.

While they performed, a video projector cast intriguing images against a screen in front of Italia's station.  Although they were hard to see from my vantage point, the images included whirling Dervishes, pages from the Koran, and mesmerizing scenes from the band's videos, such as this one for Drawing Down The Moon, which looks like what might happen if Peter Greenaway were chosen to direct a Ron Fricke movie.

Frankly, their combination of dream pop, trip-hop, electro, and tribal influences came as quite a pleasant surprise to me, and I look forward to hearing more from them in the future.

The headliners were Montreal's Purity Ring.  We last saw Purity Ring performing a daytime show in Portland's Doug Fir Lounge during MFNW, and fortunately their show last night was just as memorable as that performance.

Purity Ring were named Pitchfork’s Best New Band of 2011 and the Best New Band at CMJ 2011 before even releasing their first album, last year's Shrines.  The duo of Megan James and Corin Roddick play homemade instruments and reportedly even makes their own clothing to wear during their shows.

The duo is in the avant garde of hip-hop's invigorating advance into pop music.  According to Portland's Willamette Weekly, "You have heard the purple-drunk, stumbling beats of chopped-and-screwed hip-hop. You have heard the catchy hooks and pristine vocals of electro-pop. You have not, however, heard the two together—until you've heard Purity Ring."  They really don't sound like anyone else, and I couldn't imagine a band like this existing before about, say, 2008.

But what really stands out at a Purity Ring show is their stage.  Playing beneath suspended lanterns (I counted 19) that look at various times like Chinese lamps, ant eggs, Tic Tacs, or some sort of pupae, their set also includes a bass drum that lights up when struck, and several smaller lamps around Roddick's keyboards that also light and emit tones when struck.  It's easily the most beautiful stage on any body touring today, and almost becomes a third performer in the band.

Due in large part to the striking visual element of their show, the band has been extensively covered by music blogs and last night's show was sold out.  The young crowd enthusiastically reacted to the band's every move, with several young men at the front of the stage continually reaching out to the band for who knows what.

In addition to playing the songs from Shrines, Purity Ring covered Soulja Boy's Grammy.  They also brought out Young Magic's Isaac Emmanuel to sing his part on their song Grandloves.

Here's the video for their song Lofticries (the first song of theirs that I heard, and still a favorite):

The set ended somewhat abruptly when Megan James announced that their next song will be the last, as that's all they have.  No chance for an encore, no chance to show our love, and as soon as the last song ended, the house lights came on and the crowd wandered out into a cold North Georgia night.