The indie rock glasses were out in force for this show...
First off, let me say that the criticism of Oval's live show is somewhat
unwarranted. His music is meant to slowly roast the brain, not to fry it.
Even though it isn't background music, it takes a certain kind of extended,
concentrated listening for it to sink in the repetition and underlying
structure builds up gradually, so there's no immediate gratification. That's
exactly what happened with his live set the degree of interest each song
held was directly tied to how interesting the sounds Popp chose for each one
were. Some were really cool a noisey burst of static formed the core of
one, the bells from the 1st track on Dok made up another. However, even the
best tracks fell into the Oval formula they were abrasive enough to force
you to pay attention on some level, but not varied enough to give any sort of
rush. And i think that's fine Popp was able to make some people really
uncomfortable, some people really bored, and force others to concentrate and
try to understand what he was trying to accomplish. I think his set would
have been much more effective if it had gone on for a few more hours (not that
anyone would have liked it more, but a lot more time was needed for his music
to really sink in). Anyway, the last track was really a good one he started
out with some human voices, and kept on layering on the effects, until after a
few minutes they were only a small part of the song's fabric. For the first
time in the entire set Popp drove home his point to almost everybody in the
audience, even those who had tried to resist earlier.
I liked Tortoise's set too, but I didn't love it nearly as much as everybody
else seems to. The rhythm section was great, and everybody seemed to get
energy from the drummer. However, when they tried to quiet things down or
drop out the percussion and improvise, i think the music lost any sense of
direction. the guys in Tortoise are great musicians, I just don't think
they're good improvisers. Also, and this is just a personal beef, i can't
stand the damn vibes. All of their melody seemed to come from the vibes, or
from guitars being played to sound like vibes everything was clean, not
noisy at all (the only rough edge came from the drummer), and the melodies
were just too simple. The bell tones of the vibes are nice as accouterment,
but they don't do a thing for me as lead instruments. I left early because i
was tired, and becuase i felt like 50 minutes of Tortoise had shown me
everything they had to offer (at the NYC show, how did it go after they played
the song from their first album?)
Sam