black midi, October 12, 2021

     Does anyone remember Roddy Frame? or his breakout band, Aztec Camera? Well, I am quite insistent that there were numerous occasions in which I felt that the music I was hearing were mostly Roddy Frame compositions being performed by King Crimson. I loved it. (I adore the music of Roddy Frame.) To fill in the blanks to this description I have to try to make you understand the energy, instrumental virtuosity, and incredibly tight wavelength these five musicians play with. I've never seen a keyboard player work as hard as whom I'm assuming to have been Seth Evans: I swear he moved faster, played harder, and sweat more than the drummer! The saxophonist (whom I'm also assuming was the same as the man from their most recent studio album, Kaidi Akinnibi--the sound system was so loud and muddy that I was never quite sure what was being said when Geordie would announce the names of his individual bandmates) played with such effect--with almost constant and purposeful abandon--that he left me wishing for more of his presence on the studio versions of their songs--this despite the fact that I am not a fan of the saxophone, in general. Award-winning drummer Morgan Simpson is quite entertaining and charismatic. And Geordie is quite the hilarious showman (and incredibly talented guitarist: Most of the time I thought I was watching the 21st Century combo-meld reincarnation of Steve Howe and Robert Fripp--his playing was so intricate, so finger nimble, and so constantly on the move). He has a vocal style that ranges from heavily-accented Irish or something-unknown-to-me to the deep romantic crooning of Terry Kath, Frogg Café's Nick Lieto, or perhaps Marianne Faithful. It's unique, diverse, and very powerful. Then there is the man that I somehow felt was the understated rock of the band--perhaps its heart as well--maybe even its brains--or, at least, one hemisphere of it: bassist, guitarist, vocalist Cameron Picton ("the Machine" Geordie kept calling him) who is picking up for the slack left by singer-songwriter Matt Kasniewski-Kelvin who is currently on hiatus due to mental health issues. The man (Cameron) is a master of all he surveys: his full-fret, chorded bass play was like having a second, lower end guitarist on stage (with keyboardist providing many of the deep gut-wrenching thrums of bass-pedal like notes). Matt's songs--which Cameron sang over--are usually more poignant, more serious, more motivated by social-political criticism. And he performs them with such Zen-like full-presence as to command the house. I mean, for example, his song of outrage at the calamity that is the lead-poisoned water of Flint, Michigan (my old home town), entitled "Near DT, MI"--from their 2019 debut album, Schlagenheim--was so powerful--it was the song that brought the mosh pit to life. With the fiery "John L", "953", "Western", "Ducter", and my favorite, "Slow", the band had the audience in the palm of its hand.

    As a side note, the warm-up band for the show was a five-member "mystic" experimental sound band from Brooklyn called L'Rain. They were excellent, performing six fascinating songs that seemed to all blend into one another creating a kind of 21st Century "abrasive ambient" soundscape ("a beautiful mess")--one that used incredibly distorted effects and loops and squeals and screams and keyboard thrums and saxophone blasts within which one incredibly talented and creative drummer (Buz Donald) performed a mesmerizing act of creating time while never using constant or straightforward time to orchestrate his own patterns. Though not what I'd ever call "dance music," by concert's end, as I was listening to a kind of King Crimsonian 21st Century schizoid version of "The Great Gig in the Sky" (the lead vocalist and band leader is a woman, Taja Cheek), I was swaying as if moved from the inside-out by some cosmic gravitational rhythmic force. It was a wonderful set from a band I will definitely be on the watch for (and truly deserves to be admitted into the PA database).