Month: May 2014

Concert Review: Future Islands @ First Unitarian Church (April 29, 2014

Courtesy of 4AD
Courtesy of 4AD

By Esmail Hamidi

Last Tuesday, I was fortunate to see Future Islands headline the First Unitarian Church. Accompanying me were WKDU DJs Dr. Plotkin and Peter Liu, of The Love X-Perience and Hear Hear Mix respectively. Supporting were Ed Schrader’s Music Beat and Chiffon. Soundwise, the bill was pretty darn diverse, but all bands had their hometown in common: Baltimore.

One cool thing about the Baltimore scene is its interconnection – the music might be wildly different, but the musicians are all uniformly skilled and versatile. Dan Frome and Denny Bowen, both of weird noise rock quartet Roomrunner, were spotted filling in on bass and drums for Ed Schrader and Future Islands respectively. I’m normally used to these guys playing totally different types of music, but they still killed it in this setting.

All groups on this bill played perfectly. Chiffon caught my attention with a weird hipstery take on 90s radio R&B and BMORE CLUB that got me movin’. Their beats were very, very reminiscent of the programming on WERQ Baltimore 92.3 FM a.k.a. 92Q JAMS, a station that is best listened to cruising the streets of West Baltimore around 10PM in a late-model Cadillac.

To me, Ed Schrader’s Music Beat always sounds like The Monkees on PCP, and this was no exception. Every time I’ve seen them on the home front, this two-piece always succeeds in turning the floor into a swirling mosh pit. Unfortunately, this did not happen in Philadelphia. For further weirdo cultural experiences courtesy of Ed Schrader, check out the Ed Schrader Show on YouTube.

Lead singer Sam Herring mentioned that he was feeling a little under the weather that night. He was definitely holding back, but still delivered a great performance. He is a conduit for the music – gyrating and radiating sexual energy like a balding, bodybuilding Elvis gone new wave. Bassist William Cashion lashed out with expressiveness that a lot of bass players could take a lesson from. As the main live instrument in the mix, Cashion simultaneously anchored the band and played singing leads.

Synth player Gerrit Welmers’ compositional skills play a huge role in the Future Islands sound, and Denny Bowen’s always a clock on drums. Their live personas were somewhat less expressive than those of Herring and Cashion, but steadfast nonetheless.

That night kind of embodied why everyone needs a good show every so often. I know I did. It was…refreshing. Also, sidenote, I ran into Liz of Liz and the Lost Boys afterwards. You can peep the session they did with WKDU (and that I engineered, woo soundz!) here.

…Sleep Deprivation, Hoagies, and Yoga

By Jonathan Plotkin

This was written last fall, but slipped through the cracks until Jonathan fortunately remembered and sent it over to me. 

I recently had a bit of an unusual night. I went out bar-hopping with a friend and some girls he knew much later than I normally would (we didn’t start drinking until after midnight, which I felt was rather late for a Wednesday night). Afterwards we filled up on Wawa hoagies and by the time I got home at 4 AM, I was stuck with a choice: Should I pull an all-nighter and exercise at 6:00 AM, or sleep until noon and contribute nothing to better society?

Being the headstrong individual that so many describe me as, I decided to start my day early so I could crash right after. I managed to keep myself awake for 2 hours by snacking on chocolate covered espresso beans, until I was able to head to the Bikram yoga studio. For those who don’t know, lack of sleep, meatball hoagies, and whiskey typically aren’t a great way to warm up for 90 minutes of intense exercise in a heated room. The mind turns to anything else to distract it, which for me is always music.

What with the sleep deprivation and trying to work out the alcohol from my system, I began to have bizarre waking dreams synched up to whatever music was stuck in my head. Having recently just seen Spiritualized live, I couldn’t get their music out of my mind. I tried to recall exactly how specific songs went, causing a strange, Fantasia-like series of flowing colors to move behind my eyelids. As soon as I got home, determined to hear the space/psychedelic/gospel rock of Spiritualized the way it was meant to be played, I cued up Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space on my stereo and settled into my bed for the proper listening experience.

Of course, having been up for nearly 24 hours at this point, I immediately fell asleep, with iTunes just playing through their entire catalogue (just three albums, but still a sizable length of music at over 3 hours long). Now I don’t know how many of you have tried to go to sleep with blinding daylight outside, but it’s really hard. Your body naturally wants to be awake when the sun is out (no seriously, it’s science) and trying to fall asleep at 8 AM when you’re used to waking up then is damned near impossible. So impossible, in fact, that I kept waking up from bizarre whiskey/yoga dreams to hear the sweet sounds of Spiritualized playing in my room.

These dreams seemed much more like a Hollywood production than typical the random firings of my subconscious. They had plot structure that (nearly) made sense, real characters that weren’t just bastardizations of people I knew in reality, and music. Oh, the music! It was like having an honest-to-goodness soundtrack playing the entirety of my dream. A chilled out party had “Cop Shoot Cop” playing in the background. I went on a bike ride and I heard “Headin’ For The Top Now” playing as I climbed the hills. At one point, I met a girl and “Mary” played while she described the most tragic life my subconscious had ever imagined.

I honestly can’t think of a poetic way to finish this, I just wanted to share with you all the joy that comes with staying up all night, eating and drinking too much before a yoga class, and finally sleeping while the music you’ve had stuck in your head for the last hour and a half is playing into your ear holes. Bottom line: music + sleep = awesome and I definitely recommend that’s how you spend your next all-nighter, no matter what causes it.