You'll forgive me for not posting a video playlist on Thursday, since I took a rare night out to see a live music show. Cygnets were back in town, one of the best Canadian new wave revivalists right now, and I had to see them.
The show took place at Zack's which, over the last few years, has been putting on a great deal of great, cutting edge shows. This was another one of those shows.
The show was supposed to start at 8 PM, but it actually started just after 9 PM, leaving everyone to do shorter sets. The excuse was technical difficulties, though every band save the first sounded fine.
Future Temple is a semi-local musician who wears many hats. Tonight he was wearing a noodly, industrial, experimental kind of a music hat. He spent most of the time sitting down, fiddling with knobs on a mixing board and sampler in an attempt to make something listenable. The only instruments he actually played were a guitar, which he played for about a minute to drop some audio into a sampler, and a trumpet, which he played for about 20 seconds. I think the idea was a electro-primitive style of industrial, but it failed pretty badly with no stage presence to speak of. I know the guy behind this project, and he's always been more "grand ideas" than "proper follow through". This was much like an art piece, but without the art.
Weird Candle were much more interesting. A two piece from Vancouver, they had a set up of guitarist and vocalist, with some live electronics with a drum machine. They reminded me a lot of Cabaret Voltaire, very early industrial styles, extremely high energy and confrontational. The lead singer sang into his mic like he was in a hardcore band, right up to his mouth and in a clenched fist, with shouted, angry, staccato lyrics. He lept up on the window sills, shouted at outside passers by and waded into the crowd like Iggy Pop. They only did about 5 songs, but you got the full blast of what they were all about. I got their album, Alter Ego, but it's only on tape, so it's going to take me a while to get to listen to it. Only tape deck I have right now is in the car, and it's just dropped below zero here...
Edmonton's Cygnets are part of the current awesome electro/retro scene there. Bands like them, MoonMuseum and Shout Out Out Out Out are making some of the best electro-rock in the country right now. They were touring on support of their latest album, Alone/Together, their second for US label Negative Gain Records. They were much more lively than the previous time I saw them, two years ago. They played at the Dirty Jersey in a barely publicized show, with only about 10 people total in the crowd. They were playing as a duo here (they're normally a trio), but there was no way to tell just from their sound. Using the same set up as Weird Candle, they pounded out lots of dark, moody new wave. They played a lot of material from their newest album, which is their best yet, dark, sensual brooding synth pop.
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