WHAT’S
NOT WEAK THIS WEEK – a local show roundup
By
Jake Weller
Thursday,
May 3rd
[Yohobitat/RUINS
Alone/Bill Horist]
Yoshida
Tatsuya—the brain and one of the hands behind legendary avant-prog duo,
Ruins—is going it alone at Chop Suey on Thursday as the aptly named Ruins Alone. Luckily, Seattle native, guitar virtuouso and
fellow perpleximatician, Bill Horist,
has his back. Each of them will be
performing their cacophonous and bewildering, yet mesmerizing and ultimately
mind-blowing solo sets before joining together under the ridiculous moniker Yohobitat to baffle the crowd into
submission with their mini-Voltron of weird and awesome. Horist recently held center ring at the
Josephine in a collaboration with noise veteran, Darin Gray, tossing each other
around on trapezes in a circus of sound.
It was as if two future humanoids had unearthed a couple guitars and
attempted to work the strange sound devices by assaulting them with various
household items and tools. One
particularly inspired section found Horist tossing corks into an inverted
cymbal resting balanced on the strings of his fretboard. Only someone who has truly mastered his
instrument ever gets bored enough to try out that kind of shit.
Friday,
May 4th
Argonaut’s frontman, Matt Sader,
sure knows how to celebrate the aging process.
Almost as if he felt the need to display the proud feathers of his
vitality to ward off the AARP pamphlets, he has sandwiched his sludgy noise
rock outfit between two absolutely essential Northwest bands, Lozen and Mico De Noche, for his birthday show at the New Frontier in Tacoma Friday night. Expect loud, expect awe, and
expect at least one bare-breasted Argonaut guitarist. That alone is worth ten times the price of
admission.
For
those of you who want to stay Seattle-side for the evening, The Sunset in
Ballard is doing some sonic soundscaping with Fungal Abyss, Noise-a-Tron, and
X Suns (pronounced “Ten Suns”). Philistines
may complain about the lack of a vocalist throughout this lineup, but those
people have never sat in a room experiencing the tantric succession of 7-minute
orgasms each of these bands induce. The
more worldly lager-swilling showgoers know that they will stumble out into the
night, after the refraining fog from the last fungal thunder chord finally
dissipates, feeling cherished, emboldened, and completely spent.
Saturday,
May 5th
Who
doesn’t like helping people? Okay, it
can be kind of a pain in the ass. KEXP’s
Audioasis is going to make it easy for everyone on Saturday by thrusting Brokaw, Blood Orange Paradise, and The Riffbrokers onto The Sunset’s stage
to shake their moneymakers and save the World.
Brokaw alone is worth the cost of being charitable, as they can work
that pole like no other band and have a habit of blowing nearly everything in
the room – well, minds and speakers, at least.
Only tried and tested scene veterans like these are capable of bring in
‘da noise and bring in ‘da funk in such a face-melting fashion.
In
typical present-day Seattle fashion, there are too many great shows happening
at once. Portland’s White Orange will be erecting their stoney wall of sound at the
Comet Tavern, following the one-two punch of Princess, and Wah Wah Exit
Wound. Lucky for White Orange, they
are incredible, since the spiraling psychedelia of WWEW guitarist Dave Webb and
spasmodic display of Princess frontman Andrew Chapman have a tendency to rush
through the eyes and ears, sending the audience into a maelstrom of esctatically
grinning confusion that would leave most bands impotent if they find themselves
in the unfortunate position of following both sets.
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