Despite Brions widespread success writing more classically minded film music and the fervent cultish love that surrounds his lone solo album, 2001s Meaningless, the dude rarely promotes himself as a solo performer.As a result, his decadeslong residency at Largo has become a near tourist attraction of sorts.
![]() ![]() ![]() Somehow, this turned into a slow, dreamy cover of the pop standard Everything Happens to Me, and all of a sudden my dreams of vaudevillian pop, shoegaze, and drone combining into a singular genre seemed totally tangible. Brion played a few other brief tunes including a fascinating solo piano piece before taking requests. It became apparent this audience contained its share of Brion diehards when the crowd started shouting for tunes from Meaningless and soundtrack one-offs before yelling for covers. As a result, Brion played a ton of his own pop tunes, which he typically tackled in an extremely stripped-down fashion, as opposed to the repeatedly looped versions hes been known for in the past. He unveiled a work in progress that has much more in common with the experimental music world and the sampling notions of vaporwave and John Oswald than both the pop and soundtrack work hes known for. Brion had two projector screens setup and a device that (using some sort of MaxMSP or Jitter patch Id imagine) would loop, tune, and change the speedpitch of found video clips in real time. On top of these time stretchedprocessed videos, Brion began structuring one of the best pieces of fractured pop music Ive ever heard. It was impossible to tell if it was an old, obscure Brion number, a cover, or (hopefully) a new work, but the way the warped videoaudio blended with Brions live instrumentation and plaintive vocals hinted at a new world of possibilities for the marriage of true plunderphonics and traditional pop song craft. Brion would go on to employ this new video processing instrument of his on a spirited cover of David Bowies Moonage Daydream and a wonderfully dissonantcathartic version of his own Same Thing that closed the set (on the latter, the processed video became an impossible soloing tool of sorts). While the selections from his discography hinted at a possible underlying personal melancholy permeating the set, a sing-along cover of Bohemian Rhapsody, and a truly remarkable interpretation of a Les Paul tune more than made up for the perceived imbalance. However, upon leaving the venue I overheard several audience members complaining about the dourness of Brions set. Even Meaningless sunniest moments barely mask the pain, self-loathing, and paranoia hidden beneath the songs sugary surfaces. One of the mystical things about Brions live set was how the stripped-down versions of his songs, along with the additive chaos of his looped pieces, highlighted the emotions underneath in the same way. The combination of the wistful with the instrumental shimmer of Brions arrangements is what makes his records so endlessly listenable, but its equally thrilling to watch the composer alternately strip it all away and pile it up live. Perhaps, this different vision of Brions aesthetic is why his live shows are so legendary. All I know is Im not going to wait nine months to experience one again.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |