March 11th, 2008: Black Dice / Cercueil / Kria Brekkan

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My first idea was to go see Q Bert, but I just felt I’m not cool enough to go to the batofar. Turned out fine, so that’s OK.

The first set started later than expected and with a few technical issues as well. Kria Brekkan has a very high pitched voice and uses samples, a bunch of loops, sometimes a guitar and altogether too much delays. These echoes got old pretty quick for me. She toned that down somewhat later on, which was a good thing as far as I’m concerned. My favorite moment was when she used effects to make her voice even more unreal. Another favorite was a plain voice rendition of a tune I knew before, but I just can’t say what it was and why it was so familiar. There were tiresome moments, especially at the beginning, but it went up from there.

Cercueil were the relative locals, obviously invited by the venue as opposed to the headlining band. Warning signs and alarms were going off as that downed on me, but it was better than usual. The singer has a nice voice, in a complete contrast to the opening band, and the banjo was definitely a nice touch, even though it was replaced by a guitar or bass later on. With a lot of feedback and beats, the latter being unfortunately mixed way too loud, but that’s why I no longer go much to that venue. The synth sound was great at first, sounding like old timey proto-synthesizers. Later on it lost that edge and I had lost most interest by the time they did a peculiar cover of a James Brown tune. I usually like those appropriations and applaud the effort, but I just didn’t like it, my bad.

By then I was thinking the show had been decent but I was thinking I had blown it again, but Black Dice fixed that in a hurry. They never stopped and that set was an eye-opener. There were a lot of familiar sounds from my usual forays into noise, but often with prominent rhythmic patterns, or even — gasp — an actual beat. A great combination, and they displayed a great mastery of letting a rhythm settle it only to introduce another one, interfering for a while before replacing the first one or just fading as well. Toward the end of the set one section reminded my of Battles’ Atlas, probably not for any sensible reason but that was a kind of distorted echo that made my day. The whole set was great, a lot of great find, many different sounds and, again, the rhythmic element was a very welcome change from my usual fare. I didn’t really know anything about that band, but now I’m real glad I went there.