Monday, September 03, 2007

sub oslo, the great tyrant, the wreck room

'twas new year's eve in september this past sat'day night as dub magicians sub oslo reconvened to levitate the wreck room one last time. live sound mixologist john nuckels (who has a busy season coming up with the modern's film series) said that the fellas spent the day rehearsing at competition music and had a nice dinner together before making their way to the west side's beloved rawk dump. drummer quincy holloway, who kicks the traps for dove hunter these days when not selling solar panels, said that they're gonna keep doing it on an irregular and as-we-wanna basis, which is fitting and proper, since bands _don't_ have to break up -- they just don't have to play all the time.

the crowd -- largest one i'd seen at the wreck in several months (during which time i've admittedly been spending less time there than in days gone by) -- was an interesting mix of old heads, most of whom seemed not to have seen each other in awhile, and newbs getting their wreck room ticket punched before the final curtain (popular utterance o' the evening: "who are these guys, anyway? what do they sound like?"). sub oslo's still as hypnotic as ever, their dubwise sound (which featured some krautrock / psych elements that i don't remember from last time around) enhanced by their unique back-projected visuals to create an exploding plastic inevitable-like total environment. maybe it's the absence of voxxx, maybe it's the sensory overload factor, but their crowds have always seemed less interactive to me than, say, ph7's. as my sweetie sez, "it's more of an exhibition than a dialogue." then again, what else would you expect from a buncha ex-denton art guys?



before them, the great tyrant showed how much their sound has evolved over the past few months of frequent gigging and regular rehearsing, growing heavier and harder-edged in the fullness of time. more and more, they sound like a heavy doom outfit like, say, high on fire, minus the gtrs. actually daron beck's vocals perform a lot of the function here that gtrs would in a more conventional unit. around him, the former yeti riddim team of tommy atkins and jon teague navigates tricky time signatures with near-telepathic precision, providing a foundation like tectonic plates shifting.

as for the wreck itself, every time i'm there of late, i can't help thinking, "i'm gonna miss this shit when it's gone."

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