[This post originally appeared on Team Tinnitus]
So let’s just get all that messy conflict of interest stuff out of the way now: I am mostly a publicist by trade and one of the places I work for is Berbati’s. So that’s that.
That that said (2 thats = artsy), I am really excited about this new improv/psych/weird music monthly curated by Josh Blanchard of Point Line Plane. Each night is lovingly arranged by Josh to include ornate visual projections of the brain-fried variety, DJs, and out-there musicians of the kind you’d normally only see at Dunes. Used to be you could see this kind of thing at the Blackbird, but that’s gone now, and underground art-fart music in a rock venue has become something of a rare bird (PUN!).
Chantelle Hylton, who booked the Blackbird, was largely responsible for that venue’s eclectic programming and she books the B.Pan now. She’s been trying to work within what she thought was, and to some degree is, a more mainstream rock club format, but is starting to realize she has more freedom than she originally realized. Berbati’s is run by some pretty open-minded Greeks, provided people come out and people DRINK, which hipsters do. So things like the Church of Psychedelia are permitted, and to some degree encouraged. This is exciting, and I hope to see more of it going on. We’re actually working on another somewhat similar series right now, but I’m this close to advertorial mode, so I’ll shut up about that.
One of the nice things about this show and the last one is how visually compelling the whole thing(s) is. This time there were three projections with two dedicated dudes manning the visuals. These were mostly melting digital shapes, forest imagery, blurred-out women walking in blinding white expanses – you know, trippy shit. Everything I saw was really beautiful and looked like it took a good amount of time to put together.
The first band was the Exploratory Organ Ensemble, a one-off improv project featuring members of Strategy (ok, THE member of Strategy), Yuma Nora, Space Hawk, and I’m sure many other Dunes-y bands. Performers were encouraged to bring along an organ of some kind, and a couple opted for accordions. They all gathered together in one big improvisatory mass, playing droney variations on one major-sounding chord. This reads like a mess but was actually really soothing and lovely. Think of the first track off Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children stretched out for twenty minutes or so.
The next band was White Rainbow, which is the solo project of Adam Forkner (VVRRZZNN, WORLD, many other little projects I’m sure). His performance took place within a giant white tent/cave, which took up the entire stage. The cave had some of the aforementioned trippy visuals projected on to it. We couldn’t see what he was doing in there (deft manipulation of rockist performance expectations or just plain pretentious? you be the judge) but we could hear it through four speakers situated around the room, two of which had been brought in just for this performance (hence “full spectrum”). The music was long harmonic drones (couldn’t tell what instrument was making them) which were occasionally distorted, then high planes electric guitar riffage (think Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack). This got kind of boring after a while so we left.
OK, so the whole thing was a little pretentious, but I’ll take that over predictable anyday. The Church of Psychedelia is rad; long live the Church of Psychedelia.
Drinks drunk: 4 beers
