![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexFirst of two music posts.
Last week I went to see How To Destroy Angels, courtesy of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cthulhia. The show was very much a theatrical performance experience and not your typical rock or electronica show. There's a video on the band page there that gives you a glimpse of what the show was like. For a sense of their sound, try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sUTVT7HzSg&feature=youtube_gdata
For those just joining us it's helpful to know that I used to work theater tech, particularly lighting, and used to be a freelance house roadie when I was working extra jobs for grad school money. So I'm a snob about my lighting design and the fact that most bands have... um, NO design at all depresses me.
I mean, your average show's idea of lighting is like "hang a row of par cans with some garish colors, throw a few motorized lights up and spaz them out a lot, yay done." This show had design. No, let me qualify that: this show had Design. Pin spots. Translucency. Multi-layered effects. Conscious color choices.
As you can see from the video on the HTDA site, the stage set used front and back curtained screens onto which lights and effects were projected. The screens themselves were multi-layered flexible reflective rods, which could be moved and angled as well as pushed out of the way. The result was that you had a translucent layer in front of the band, but could see lights that were projected onto or behind the band as well.
In order to make Design work you also need a show that's crisp and the band were ON. They hit their spots, they hit their cues, and the music flowed beautifully with the design and vice versa. At one point Trent picked up a tambourine and was just doing simple rhythms and it became really obvious to me that this wasn't just a band playing - this was a group doing a performance that included music, lights, movement, all done together. That's something you don't see often and I really appreciated it as a live experience.
The music itself is a form of experiment, pushing together electronica, Mariqueen's voice, and the industrial aesthetic that Trent Reznor is known for. There's singing, obviously, and she's quite good as a singer, but the music also blends her intonations and voice-as instrument (humming or holding a single note) into the electronics. I think the experiment works well - the band have a couple of solid memorable songs now and it'll be interesting to see what they develop as they add to the repertoire.
Last week I went to see How To Destroy Angels, courtesy of
cthulhia. The show was very much a theatrical performance experience and not your typical rock or electronica show. There's a video on the band page there that gives you a glimpse of what the show was like. For a sense of their sound, try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sUTVT7HzSg&feature=youtube_gdataFor those just joining us it's helpful to know that I used to work theater tech, particularly lighting, and used to be a freelance house roadie when I was working extra jobs for grad school money. So I'm a snob about my lighting design and the fact that most bands have... um, NO design at all depresses me.
I mean, your average show's idea of lighting is like "hang a row of par cans with some garish colors, throw a few motorized lights up and spaz them out a lot, yay done." This show had design. No, let me qualify that: this show had Design. Pin spots. Translucency. Multi-layered effects. Conscious color choices.
As you can see from the video on the HTDA site, the stage set used front and back curtained screens onto which lights and effects were projected. The screens themselves were multi-layered flexible reflective rods, which could be moved and angled as well as pushed out of the way. The result was that you had a translucent layer in front of the band, but could see lights that were projected onto or behind the band as well.
In order to make Design work you also need a show that's crisp and the band were ON. They hit their spots, they hit their cues, and the music flowed beautifully with the design and vice versa. At one point Trent picked up a tambourine and was just doing simple rhythms and it became really obvious to me that this wasn't just a band playing - this was a group doing a performance that included music, lights, movement, all done together. That's something you don't see often and I really appreciated it as a live experience.
The music itself is a form of experiment, pushing together electronica, Mariqueen's voice, and the industrial aesthetic that Trent Reznor is known for. There's singing, obviously, and she's quite good as a singer, but the music also blends her intonations and voice-as instrument (humming or holding a single note) into the electronics. I think the experiment works well - the band have a couple of solid memorable songs now and it'll be interesting to see what they develop as they add to the repertoire.
