Animal Collective Seducing Montreal 5/15/09

The multi-sensory experience of live music.




Animal Collective started their show Friday night LOUD. loud sound pulsing and flashing lights felt jarring at first. This seemed quite contrary to the first time I saw them at Great American Music Hall in San Fran a few years ago.
Bands become louder as become bigger? Somethin like that.

I'm overheating because of the loudness- music gets louder, harsh lights flash brighter, look around, crowded, no way out, sweating neck, PANIC

.... sitting on the sidewalk outside for a cool down.
Upstairs.
On the upper stairwell in front of a screen overlooking the stage. I could see about half of the stage here.

You see where I'm going. Screen AND live. perspective perspective...

Well the screen quite disturbed me actually. I think it was hd. I could feel it looming over me and it was hard not to look. The better option for screens during performance is the kind of screen I've seen Radiohead play with. Rather than an -as close to perfect as possible- representation (also known as HD) of what's happening live, Radiohead had screens up of artistic bizarre close-up angles of the stage, manipulated, strangely colored. Lets suggest to the viewer another perspective, let's let them guess what's this? Let's inspire their curiosities with oddity in a manipulated shot of part of the action, perhaps. Not just simply give them an hd picture. No need for this, Metropolis. I'd rather just listen than have a view of an hd screen of live performance happening in front of me.

Here in the stairwell is when the show got better *hmm funny Montreal is noted for their stairwells. Katie says it's because back in the day during the building of the city (arrround 1850?) people wanted stoops. For example in NY the stairs are on the inside of buildings, but in Montreal they're outside. Which means there are stoops.
What an idea! Oh how stoops add to a city in a Jane Jacobsian type way.



Swamp sounds verberate throughout the audience. "There's a lot of reverb up here" says [I think it was] Avey Tare.
"No shit." says the dude next to me, commenting on the load of electronics on stage.

Mutually exclusive sounds become inclusive
= love?= connection? I always come back to love= connection.


2 sounds become three three become four four become five
five become one
All sounds one, we're ALL one. The audience feels it too.



possibly
describable
only
in
poetry
?

trickle tickle, wave, smooth, expand, involve, hum, shriek, cover, arrest, embolden embody empower, birth, surround, bloom boom, feather flutter heighten explain express understand, fall, breathe, rest

all the verbs that go with sound
The fact that I feel so much nostalgia right now has to do with this.

The reverb seduces me.. it's a trick?

Sway me bring me lift me out of my box lets go. Later, put me back. or not.

The more I experience Animal Collective the more I hear the music in everyday life. Individual sounds work into each other, play off one another, All building into something eventually......