Love songs for melancholy robots
i dragged my proverbial ass off the couch last night to go see the notwist, and was glad that i did. the notwist sound a bit like math rock meets electronica: take lyrics about gravity and algebra, throw in some beeps and boops, beautiful synth-y orchestral music, and a lead singer with an earnest but distant voice, and it's magical.
this was second time i've seen them play, sort of. i saw them in toronto a few years ago when they teamed up with themselves to form 13 and god. so now we've got math-rock-electronica-music-for-robots teamed up with themselves, a rap outfit from LA who do something farther from rap and closer to avant garde spoken word. it sounds very strange, but it totally worked. visually, it was a strange sight: gesticulating black man rapping (and wearing a belt that had a scrolling LED that changed messages every song) while these stoic, geeky, skinny, glasses-wearing germans play electronic love songs in the background.
but back to the notwist - the band looks like a really unassuming collection of geeks. they're german, which kind of explains their strange appearance. (don't all germans look a bit strange? like they've got better things to do than get dressed up for a performance?) they all wear glasses, and not in a rivers cuomo geek-chic kind of way. they actually need them for vision correction, and aside from muppet man (keep reading) they're not remotely cool glasses. the lead singer looks like he should be an english TA, and the bass player looks like the kind of guy who never leaves his basement.
i was standing right in front of the...erm...the guy who modulated their samples. not like a dj, but in a distinctly notwist-y kind of way. he used two wii controllers to control the samples, at one point using a wii light saber that lit up orange and red. if ever there was someone who looked like a real-life muppet, it would be him. he had long wavy hair and big black glasses that sat on top of a nose that could have been a triangle of foam. have a look at this picture and you'll see what i mean. he's the guy in the bottom left corner. muppet, no?
they played a great mixture of new and old stuff, and came out for not one, but TWO encores. i'm glad that they played consequence, which breaks my heart every time i hear it. i think i'll make a mixed CD of songs that are heartbreakingly beautiful, but i don't know if i could stand to listen to the entire thing.
i spent part of the evening standing next to this tragic asian hipster, who couldn't have been more than 19 years old. he was wearing skinny pants, an ironic vest, and noisy cowboy boots. he kept doing this twitchy dance, flailing his arms and jerking his head back and forth. had we not been at a concert, and had he not been completely effed up (drunk? high? probably both) i would have thought that he was having a seizure. halfway through the show, the group of kids behind me lit up a joint, and i swear, it was like a beacon for twitchy hipster boy. he reached over me to tap one of them - a perfect stranger! - to ask if he could have some of the joint, and was shot down. so then he waited until it got passed to someone else, and he asked again. and then he waited for it to go to another person, and asked again. i think he got the hint at that point, and just kept trying to get more beer out of his already-empty bottle of stella.
the strange thing is that i'm pretty sure that i saw him at the M.I.A. show, where he was also completely out of his mind. this was last november, and i thought that he had probably just turned 19 and hadn't figured out how to drink in public yet. well, i don't know that he's learning all that fast...but i'll keep you updated.
this was second time i've seen them play, sort of. i saw them in toronto a few years ago when they teamed up with themselves to form 13 and god. so now we've got math-rock-electronica-music-for-robots teamed up with themselves, a rap outfit from LA who do something farther from rap and closer to avant garde spoken word. it sounds very strange, but it totally worked. visually, it was a strange sight: gesticulating black man rapping (and wearing a belt that had a scrolling LED that changed messages every song) while these stoic, geeky, skinny, glasses-wearing germans play electronic love songs in the background.
but back to the notwist - the band looks like a really unassuming collection of geeks. they're german, which kind of explains their strange appearance. (don't all germans look a bit strange? like they've got better things to do than get dressed up for a performance?) they all wear glasses, and not in a rivers cuomo geek-chic kind of way. they actually need them for vision correction, and aside from muppet man (keep reading) they're not remotely cool glasses. the lead singer looks like he should be an english TA, and the bass player looks like the kind of guy who never leaves his basement.
i was standing right in front of the...erm...the guy who modulated their samples. not like a dj, but in a distinctly notwist-y kind of way. he used two wii controllers to control the samples, at one point using a wii light saber that lit up orange and red. if ever there was someone who looked like a real-life muppet, it would be him. he had long wavy hair and big black glasses that sat on top of a nose that could have been a triangle of foam. have a look at this picture and you'll see what i mean. he's the guy in the bottom left corner. muppet, no?
they played a great mixture of new and old stuff, and came out for not one, but TWO encores. i'm glad that they played consequence, which breaks my heart every time i hear it. i think i'll make a mixed CD of songs that are heartbreakingly beautiful, but i don't know if i could stand to listen to the entire thing.
i spent part of the evening standing next to this tragic asian hipster, who couldn't have been more than 19 years old. he was wearing skinny pants, an ironic vest, and noisy cowboy boots. he kept doing this twitchy dance, flailing his arms and jerking his head back and forth. had we not been at a concert, and had he not been completely effed up (drunk? high? probably both) i would have thought that he was having a seizure. halfway through the show, the group of kids behind me lit up a joint, and i swear, it was like a beacon for twitchy hipster boy. he reached over me to tap one of them - a perfect stranger! - to ask if he could have some of the joint, and was shot down. so then he waited until it got passed to someone else, and he asked again. and then he waited for it to go to another person, and asked again. i think he got the hint at that point, and just kept trying to get more beer out of his already-empty bottle of stella.
the strange thing is that i'm pretty sure that i saw him at the M.I.A. show, where he was also completely out of his mind. this was last november, and i thought that he had probably just turned 19 and hadn't figured out how to drink in public yet. well, i don't know that he's learning all that fast...but i'll keep you updated.