Caribou @ Horseshoe

The Singing Saw Shadow Show were completely hidden by a white curtain while they performed, while their on-stage projectionists kept the curtain alive with various dancing, swirling shapes. Now, I'm not one to complain that the band isn't doing jumping jacks on stage -- my enjoyment of a show isn't predicated on needing to see people looking energetic. The SSSS's music seems highly improvisational, led melodically by a euphonium backed by a chorus of five saws. The problem is that it sounds like sleepy accompanient to a pastoral ballet, something that could have been composed by Mercury Rev at 5AM on the tour bus following a gig, featuring Grasshopper and whoever else happened to be awake.

As for Caribou ... for weeks, I made a mental note to go to this show, but I didn't get off my ass to actually buy the ticket until the moment I read that they toured with two drummers. Of course, this night's gig gave further confirmation to my theory that a band with two drummers cannot possibly suck. With only three people in the live band, there was a lot of switching between guitars, electronics, and percussion -- even during the songs themselves. That's something else I love to see at shows -- instrument swapping. I can't remember too much from the Cranes gig I saw in 1994, but I do remember seeing a prodigious amount of instrument swapping.

So forget about the gentle psych-folk on the records, live, Caribou are beastly, coating nearly every song with dense white noise that wouldn't be out of place at a Black Dice show. It's Can's funk filtered through early JAMC's chaos. Easily the best concert I've seen in about a year.

Rhythm and Sound @ The Mod Club

I stayed until the bitter end of Rhythm and Sound's DJ set on Sunday night, at which point approximately five exhausted people were left on the dancefloor. Good thing they slowed things down for the last hour or so. I didn't catch the name of the vocalists working with them, but I believe they were local guys (and they sounded great). Even though a large percentage of the attendees seemed unable or unwilling to dance to 75 BPM dub, most people remained enraptured by the music throughout the set. Although the beginning and end of their set was chilled out, the middle brought more uptempo reggae delights, and from dreadlocked crusties to Georgian opera singers, a good time was had by all.

It all made me want to run out and buy an armful of reggae 7" singles, if I had the soundsystem to go along with it.

M83, Ulrich Schnauss @ Lee's Palace

Tonight's in house, between sets music was pristine -- S3, JAMC, Loop, MBV. Talk about time flying while waiting for the bands to come on.

Ulrich Schnauss looks like a cross between Ashphodel label boss Naut Humon and former Inspiral Carpets vocalist Tom Hingley (it's the hair). He was the piano man for the night, madly tickling the MIDI ivories while his laptop seemed to handle the rest. Fortunately, he's got things sorted when it comes to volume ... OMG THERE'S SO MUCH SYNTH ... this should be the compulsory level of volume for all indietronic shoegazers. Although all the excessively shiny, bright synth sounds got to be a bit too much at times. Mostly, this was a straight run-through of "A Strangely Isolated Place", which in turn is a record that is difficult to stomach in one sitting due to all the shiny, bright SYNTH. There were points when I felt as though I was listening to the theme from Flashdance played at 3/4 speed.

I have a low quality bootleg of an M83 gig from last September. They sounded fairly flat, as the set suffered from a serious lack of energy. Some of that can be attributed to one specific problem, namely, the opposite of the Schnauss dilemna -- NOT ENOUGH SYNTH! How can you relegate the synth to the far background in "Run Into Flowers"? That song only works if you're drowning in that shit. In person, of course, the bass/drums beef things up considerably but the shortage of synth (and guitar) in the mix was a detriment to some of the songs. Also, the generally slower tempos (compared to the album version) hurt the faster cuts in particular, sapping them of some of their propulsive energy.

But when they're good, M83 are really really good. "Unrecorded" and "0078" were loud, tight, and noisy. "Teen Angst" even more so. But nothing tonight could touch "A Guitar and a Heart". Stripped of every last remnant of its Styx/Loverboy associations, it started as a krautrock jam from MAQ-era Stereolab, picking up a steroid-enhanced version of Arcade Fire's "Neighbourhoods #1" along the way, with the volume and intensity growing exponentially toward the end. That's an incredibly tough act to follow, but after a short sojourn off stage, Gonzalez returned for the Martin Gore moment of the show with "Safe", only to be joined by the entire band for the finish, as the song exploded into the full-on power ballad that is surely the song's true calling. Then, they finally delivered on their fine fine trebly noise promise with, fittingly enough, "Noise".

M83 are already at the point where they can play a 75 minute set with the quality control through the roof. Tonight felt like a greatest hits package, it really did. When the live show (good, with spectacular moments) catches up with the records (almost nothing but spectacular moments) then they'll be pretty much unstoppable.

24. Rhythm and Sound. 09:42

The end of the line will occur near the end of repetition #31 (during track 8, "Poor People Must Work"), at which point I will immediately go to bed. The last two hours are a blur. My mind is ready for more (still feeling the groove -- amazing), but my body has had enough. Typing this is giving me my final wind. I'll likely take a last dance, hit "submit" to publish this post at the proper time, and leave the album playing. Even though I'll surely be asleep before the album finishes (and stops for good), the best tribute I could pay to this music is to leave it playing, and letting it function as its own exit music after 24 hours in the spotlight.

Goodnight.

24. Rhythm and Sound. 07:02

When it started getting light around six, I turned off the lights, put on a pair of headphones, and listened as the sun started coming up. The subtle differences between the tracks are certainly best heard through headphones, and I easily became lost in the riddim. It felt as fresh as it did when I started listening to this yesterday. And I discovered, to no great shock, that my headphones don't reproduce the sounds on this album very well at high volume (much like my speakers, which were submitted to a similar volume test about ten hours ago).

The problem is that I can't imagine anything topping that sunrise experience in the next couple of hours. I started too late! I should have begun at 7AM.

24. Rhythm and Sound. 05:00

I don't want to jinx this, but it must be said: I'm coasting here. I've been typing away contently -- and alertly! Spontaneous dancing is back to being fun -- and spontaneous! I'm looking forward to having a 9 AM celebratory beer.

A few hours ago, I was wondering whether I could have done this with any album. That is, after enough repetition of anything, whether it be one two-bar rhythm or a dozen completely different-sounding songs, it'd be sure to turn into the same old endurance contest. However, I suspect that in the latter case, the songs would get increasingly tiresome to hear. But for a minimalist work such as "See Mi Yah", the possibility exists that one could "reclaim" the rhythm, i.e. fall off the wagon and get back on it a few hours later, which is what has happened with me.

24. Rhythm and Sound. 01:52

I crashed hard after the game, which shifted my situation to one of enduring the music to one of reliance on the music in order to stay awake. I never did catch up on my sleep this week. I needed the steady beat and the throb of the bass in order to distract my mind, to keep it busy, to give my body a rhythm to move to so that it didn't shut down.

Now that I've hit a second wind, surviving the music feels secondary to surviving the night without drifting off into sleep. The riddim sounds wonderful again -- less of a rush, but more of a ticking clock, albeit a soothing one that relaxes me as I settle in for the night.

These lines near the end of "Lightning Storm" are unspeakably cool. They're spoken in calm, impassioned voice, in a tone that says "even though I'm going to say this without raising my voice, don't think for a second that I'm not deadly serious about what I'm about to say".

Don't you dare touch my children
Don't you dare put your hands on them
I will rip down your city with thunderstorms

24. Rhythm and Sound. 23:10

Once I started watching the ballgame (with no sound, of course), time really started to fly. Then the Jays opened up a big lead in the 6th, I cracked my first beer, Chacin was pitching like a guy who'd been in the league for five years rather than a rookie making his fifth start, the lead was extended, and I was grooving along to "See Mi Yah" like never before. Funny how that works.

But the toughest part is surely still to come. Darkness has set in and fatigue is sure to follow. I'm barely halfway through.

24. Rhythm and Sound. 20:06

Last years' Music 24/7 Experiment remained enjoyable throughout its running time in large part because it never turned into an endurance contest.

Around an hour ago, I became conscious of the fact that the "See Mi Yah" experiment has now become an endurance contest. The "spontaneous dancing" is not only less exhilirating, but also less spontaneous. I've managed to do a bunch of reading this afternoon, which is good because it keeps from looking at Winamp's playlist. I've started to dread Rod of Iron's spoken word bits at the start and in the middle of "Lightning Storm" because they distinguish themselves too much from the album's flow, thereby causing me to regain my sense of temporal place. In turn, I think back to the last time I heard those exact moments of the album. Anything that involves dissecting the passage of time like that is detrimental to making it through the next fourteen hours. Even worse, my fave track "Let Jah Love Come" is losing its lustre. I can no longer count on it for a no-fail moment of enlightenment with each repetition of the album. Also, Tikiman's triumphant arrival on the penultimate track feels more and more forced -- the "surprise" guest can only appear so many times before his appearance ceases to be surprising or welcome.

On a brighter note, I'm LOVING Jah Cotton's toasting at the end of "Dem Never Know" more and more each time I hear it.

24. Rhythm and Sound. 17:05

I'm downing glass after glass of water, but I can still feel a headache coming on. I want more of these one-rhythm albums.

There's a short, but informative article at the Basic Channel website about the making of "See Mi Yah". "It's never a bore - and goes on in the listener's head, when voices, rhythm and sound will be long gone". I can relate to that, that happened to me all the time with previous listens. Also, according to their website, R&S are playing in Toronto next week, even though nothing has been announced in any of the papers here.

In Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting In a Room" (read about it on AMG here if you're unfamiliar with the record), each ~ 80 second-long repetition of the vocal becomes gradually more distorted until the words are no longer discernable. But the rhythm of the words remain discernable -- it's impossible to make them out, but you remain aware of where you are within the 80-second runtime between repetitions. But in much of the latter half of the piece, all temporal sense of place vanishes as well. You've got no idea when each repetition begins and ends.

That's how I'm starting to feel about "See Mi Yah", except that each repetitive loop is 46 minutes long, instead of 80 seconds. In fact, you can do the math -- the number of repetitions of the vocal in "I Am Sitting In A Room" is about the same number of times that I'll have heard "See Mi Yah" by tomorrow morning.