Duuuude . . . .

Update (9/3/14):  The video's already down, so here's someone's not-bad iPhone video of the first couple of songs from DakhaBrakha's impressive set, and judging from the angle, he must have been standing right next to, or at least very near, me.  Follow the YouTube link for the entire mind-blowing set (recommended).  The closest analogy I can think of to describe their music is this is what it would probably sound like if Dirty Projectors decided to reimagine King Crimson's Larks Tongues in Aspic as a near-eastern folk opera.

Update II (9/3/14): Writing about Poland's OFF Festival and Sub-Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman's interests in Poland, Emily Nokes writes in The Stranger, "the act that blew me away was a band I'd never heard of. And definitely didn't know how to pronounce. And almost didn't even see."

"It was the final day of OFF, and I was in a cab with Megan Jasper, Sub Pop's vice president, and Tony Kiewel . . . when Kiewel received a text message from Poneman that simply said 'omfg.' Apparently that's not the kind of text message anyone is used to receiving from him, and we all laughed thinking it was a really weird thing to send with no follow-up. We headed to the food tent where . . . I kept hearing drums and screaming from the experimental tent and finally decided to see what the fuss was. OMFG indeed. 

They were called DakhaBrakha, and it was three women and one man seated on the stage. The women were wearing what looked to be ornate white wedding dresses and giant furry cone hats. The man was dressed in traditional Turkish formal wear. The women sang haunting folk songs, their voices twisting in harmonies that almost didn't sound human. As the music amped up, two of the women beat drums with a percussive force usually reserved for the heavy-metal genre. Someone played a stringed instrument that sounded like icebergs moving. The crowd was both wound up and mesmerized, packed in and screaming and yelling. 

'DakhaBrakha were so thrilling, so spellbinding, and so utterly moving, it was an event unto itself,' Poneman said later. There was OFF, and then there was DakhaBrakha. They were enchanting and unlike anything that I've ever seen before. He called it 'the performance of the festival' and bemoaned that DakhaBrakha was 'not on the Sub Pop roster... yet.'

DakhaBrakha played Bumbershoot last weekend, too. Even though they were scheduled on the hottest day of the festival, they played with the same mesmerizing energy (and woolly cone hats!) as before." 

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Well, if you have 12 hours to spare and nothing else to do, you can watch this entire video, apparently the raw feed for the video screen at the Fisher Green Stage at Bumbershoot yesterday (Monday), including the long, uneventful passages between sets.

But if you do have a life, here are the Cliff notes: Morocco's Hoba Hoba Spirit start at the 2:23:02 mark; Ukraine's DahkaBrakha begin at the 3:51:08 mark; the Mexican Institute of Sound kick off at the 5:42:30 mark; and Columbia's Bomba Estereo at the 7:25:12 mark.  After that are Neon Trees and Aer, but you're on your own for that.  

I'm posting this whole thing because I strongly recommend the DahkaBrakha segment - words cannot describe, so I'll let them speak for themselves.

I'd like to say that I'm not narcissistic enough to watch through the whole thing for shots of myself in the audience, but I did spot the back of my head beneath a black ball cap at a few points in the DahkaBrakha set, and you can see me dancing like an idiot to the Mexican Institute of Sound in a few places.

I'm not sure how long this video will stay active.  The Fisher Green feed from Saturday has been muted because of a copyright claim, and the feed from Sunday, which included Kishi Bashi's and Pickwick's sets, has been blocked altogether.  So my advice is if you're even mildly curious, watch now before this one disappears, too.

Bumbershoot, Day Three

The last day of my last Bumbershoot, and I have to admit it: this was my most enjoyable Bumbershoot yet.  Here's a late-night recap of the bands we saw today:

GOLD & YOUTH

Gold & Youth came on early, taking the stage at 12:30 and only being allotted a 30-minute set, but kicked off the day nicely with their moody anthems.  Highlights included, naturally, their closer Time To Kill.

LA LUZ

La Luz took the stage at the same early hour as Gold & Youth, but were allotted a more luxuriant 45 minutes to play, so I was able to catch the last few songs of their set after Gold & Youth were finished.

HOBA HOBA SPIRIT

Going through the schedule, I did not plan on seeing any band named "Hoba Hoba Spirit" or have any interest in hearing any band named "Hoba Hoba Spirit," but as I had some free time after La Luz, I wandered over to the Fisher Green Stage and to my surprise found myself enjoying the funky set of Moroccan punk ("Moroccan roll" as the band put it) by Casablanca's Hoba Hoba Spirit.  Even though one of the singers wore a Clash Sandanista t-shirt, sadly, they still had to sing a song called I Am Not a Terrorist to dispel any Western suspicions about them.  Later in the day, Jonathan Richman would say that the most promising thing he saw during a recent tour of the Middle East, the only promising thing in fact, were joint Israeli and Palistinian punk-rock bands. After they got the audience up and dancing, no small achievement in Seattle, Hoba Hoba Spirit even got them singing along in Arabic, an even greater achievement in these polarized times.

CAMPFIRE OK THE WEATHER

I saw Campfire OK in 2011 at my first Bumbershoot, so I noticed that they had a new and different lineup when they took the stage today.  However, I was still surprised when their front man, Mychal Cohen, announced that this was their very last set as "Campfire OK," and from now on they will be called "The Weather."  Anyway, still a fun set from an up and coming band.

DAKHA BRAKHA

This was the real surprise of the day.  Just like with Hoba Hoba Spirit earlier in the day, I did not plan on hearing any band named "Dakha Brakha" today as I was going through the schedule.  But as it turned out, this three-women and one-man band played native music from "the free Ukraine," and featured otherworldly harmonies, interesting rhythms, and exotic-sounding instruments, reminding us how far east the Ukraine really is.  It's not rock, but fans of bands like Dirty Projectors and Bjork should find them interesting.  I was mesmerized.  

ROSE WINDOWS

Psychedelic blues rock from a band that sounded like they could have opened for Janis Joplin or Grace Slick at the Fillmore West back in the 1960s.  Some people might mistake that remark for a criticism, but I mean it as the highest compliment.

MEXICAN INSTITUTE OF SOUND

Funky electronic hip-hop-influenced dance music straight from the heart of Mexico City.  The infectious beats had your humble narrator up and dancing, despite his sore feet from two-and-a-half days of Bumbershoot.

JULIANNA BARWICK

Wisely, the organizers set Julianna Barwick up in an indoor venue, so her quiet, ambient soundscapes wouldn't have to compete with the backbeats and noise from the other stages.  Still, it was quite a transition from the dance-oriented sound of the Mexican Institute to Barwick, but the sheer artistry and brilliance of her playing rewarded the effort, and the audience hung in there in total silence through her spell-binding set.

BOMBA ESTEREO

Back to the dance.  It was only 100 yards but it felt like a whole different universe coming from Julianna Barwick's ambient set to the latin-infused hip-hop dance music of Columbia's Bomba Estereo, but in this case, it was the desination and not the journey that mattered.  A great set and a whole lot of fun.

NADA SURF



Finely crafted indie-pop by 20-year veterans of the scene.  

JONATHAN RICHMAN

Not unlike with Julianna Barwick earlier, I wondered how Jonathan Richman's music would fare in a festival setting.  As it turns out, his improvisational and spontaneous approach is the perfect tool for keeping a large audience's attention, and he had the crowd in the palm of his hand through his hour-long set, which seemed to fly by far too quickly.

REAL ESTATE

Real Estate are one of my favorite bands, and a perfect nightcap to end my last Bumbershoot.  At one point, bassist Alex Bleeker asked the audience if anyone had been lucky enough to catch Jonathan Richman earlier and asked what he had played, and when someone offered Egyptian Reggae, guitarist Martin Courtney spontaneously launched into a note-by-note, perfect cover of the song's main riff.  Just from that episode alone, you can tell how much these guys love their rock, and wouldn't it be so much fun to just hang out with these guys, talking music and going through their record collections?  In any event, they played a wonderful set of their layered, jangley music, and it was all so lovely that at times I even forgot where I was, or that the festival was ending, or how much my feet hurt from standing on them for three days. 

So that's it.  Best Bumbershoot ever.  At least for me.

And now it's over.