- 01
- Dec
- 08
- Stuck in an Endless Loop
- Tags: failure, irish, loop!station, review, shows
Post by . Filed under Aesthetics.
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“We’re doing this live up here. This is happening right here, in this moment,” the woman on the stage effused. “None of this is rehearsed.”
As if the preceding five minutes of music performance were not sufficient evidence. The single white females around me cast their stinkest eye as their rapturous attention was broken by a fit of laughter from our crew.
We had rolled into Slim’s to get in a solid Day After Thanksgiving show, hoping to shock our collective food coma from hanging over the rest of the long weekend. Upcoming served up a promising lead, a local Irish band with traditional flavor and six mile mean streak. Named for the hero of ancient Irish literature, Culann’s Hounds suggested four Warped Ones including a punk-looking dame with a low-slung melodeon and a fierce percussionist wielding a bodhran bigger than a Buick LaSabre. A few streams and I was sold, promising our merry band a raucous evening filled with whiskey and song.
“Who’s opening?” Zack asked.
“It’s an Irish show dude,” I reassured him. “How bad can the opener be?”
Some day I am going to learn to stop tempting the fate of a city this spectacularly capable of sucking.
By the time she made her introduction, we knew we had waded hip deep into opener Hell. The woman referred to her dreadful duet as Loop!Station, a name that described in entirety the ensemble’s sound. Loop!Station was one jazzy mezzo-soprano and a cellist in front of an array of delay and loop pedals – and that’s it. From the first repetitive stretch we suffered through it was clear that the band name, the equipment, the gimmick and the music itself was synonymous. Their set was a series of improvisational loops layered one atop another without any rehearsal with each performer harmonizing with themselves and each other, sculpting a soundscape seemingly out of thin air.
The description is more romantic than the execution. What in elevator pitch sounds like a fresh and unique musical performance is in practice an endurance match of extemporaneous vulgarity. Without any context, without any structure, without any real beginning or end, each piece is forced to rely on the process as a crutch and that novelty is already worn to a bloody stump by the end of the first tune. Both vocalist Robin Coomer and cellist Sam Bass are skilled players, but without any context for their technical ability the result is a sonic short bus driven by self-indulgence.
It takes a special kind of arrogance to suggest one’s musicianship has transcended the need for composition and here too Loop!Station falls miserably short. Coomer and Bass are a dynamic, suitable pair but completely unremarkable save for this cheesy effects gimmick. Never in the neverending drone of their set do either musician have any real solo that presses the limits of their technical ability. And fairly, how could they? Blistering riffs cannot possibly be expected to be composed on the spot, making the loop pedal gag an even greater restraint on their creativity than a song.
At the end of their set, the listener is left with a dissatisfaction not even a continuous string of gin and tonics could dull. Neither the potential of the performer’s playing nor composition is displayed in any real capacity beyond this terrible parlor trick that got stretched into a full length concert. The only remarkable achievement of the endless loop of this band is their ability to convert an extensive classical and jazz training into the equivalent of eurotrash techno.
Only you can’t dance to this rubbish.
