Last night was the Gothamist party Movable Type 10.0 at the Knitting Factory. I went because this was the last Apes & Androids show of the year and they were headlining, which usually means they do something crazy.
I got to the show kinda early and went to the bar and had a few Kronenbourg's. A&A were scheduled to take the stage at 11PM so around 10:30 or so we headed into the main stage room. Some band was on stage setting up who were not Apes and Androids. The band was Bad Veins from Cincinnati. I'll start by being nice and telling you that they sounded decent. They were far from spectacular but they didn't suck either.
What pissed me off about these guys was the douche level. It was like they took every hipster music nerd cliche and rolled it up into one. First they start with a damn reel-to-reel tape player as a backing track. Which is dumb for two reasons, the first being they don't even make reel-to-reel tape any more. So these guys have to go out of their way just to record a damn backing track when they could easily do it on a digital format. Which brings up the second part, "Analogue is so much better sounding, man" - I mean come on dicks, maybe analogue is better but fucking reel-to-reel? Do you really think you look cool because a reel-to-reel tape deck is your third member.
Then it got even better, the singer starts off the song singing into a fucking megaphone. Come on! The best part is that the thing was feeding back like crazy and yet he stuck with it. Then on the next song he switched to a telephone he had hooked up to a mic stand. What I didn't get was that he was singing into the speaker end. Which means he either rewired the phone that way or his vocals were actually being picked up by the mic right next to it and he was just faking the phone thing.
Oh and here's the final kicker for these guys. The singer sounded almost exactly like Julian Casablancas. He was even using the distortion Julian uses. You know, where it sounds like he's singing through a fucking drive through speaker? Which was funny because in between songs he was talking to the crowd but no one could understand what the fuck he was saying.
After that whole thing ended I went for another beer and waited for Apes and Androids to get set up. After they finished tuning up and shit they all left the stage. Then the house music went down and a weird chanting chorus thing came on. It was the chorus of "Hot Kathy" but done in a very Viking-esque style. Then the band comes out into the crowd wearing black robes and carrying a boat above their heads. The boat was covered in black light paint and was glowing as they went in circles through the crowd.
After a few rounds with the boat they brought back stage and went on to perform. This is were I'm going to jump ahead a bit because they just played for a while. They were fucking spectacular but the only semi-weird thing that happened during mid-set was the glowing orbs got passed around.
At the end of the set they played the outro track they often close with. I was kinda surprised because they didn't play "Hot Kathy" which is by far their best tune. When they finished the outro they all kinda put down everything and there was a pause in the performance. In my prior experience this pause usually means something insane is about to happen.
Then out from the stage door came three horn players. You see "Hot Kathy" has a section with horns which are usually just done on the keyboards. I thought it was cool that they added live horns but I was expecting a bit more. Despite my slight disappointment "Hot Kathy" sounded amazing. And then it happened, towards the end of the song the stage door opens again and out come a troupe of Asian drummers. They were wearing what I assume is traditional costume for this sort of troupe. Then they started jamming with Apes & Androids to finish off "Hot Kathy". It was A&A, three horns, and about 6 Asian drummers - it was unbelievably awesome.
After they finished the song the drum troupe kept playing while the band members stood around watching. The crowd was still going crazy and you could tell by the looks on everyone's faces that this was one of the best shows they had ever seen. When it was all over a guy towards the front yelled out "Apes & Androids, you made me cream my pants" - which is a fair assessment of this show. I've seen some amazing performance by this band but this was probably the best one. Apes & Androids - I'll see you next year!
I got to the show kinda early and went to the bar and had a few Kronenbourg's. A&A were scheduled to take the stage at 11PM so around 10:30 or so we headed into the main stage room. Some band was on stage setting up who were not Apes and Androids. The band was Bad Veins from Cincinnati. I'll start by being nice and telling you that they sounded decent. They were far from spectacular but they didn't suck either.
What pissed me off about these guys was the douche level. It was like they took every hipster music nerd cliche and rolled it up into one. First they start with a damn reel-to-reel tape player as a backing track. Which is dumb for two reasons, the first being they don't even make reel-to-reel tape any more. So these guys have to go out of their way just to record a damn backing track when they could easily do it on a digital format. Which brings up the second part, "Analogue is so much better sounding, man" - I mean come on dicks, maybe analogue is better but fucking reel-to-reel? Do you really think you look cool because a reel-to-reel tape deck is your third member.
Then it got even better, the singer starts off the song singing into a fucking megaphone. Come on! The best part is that the thing was feeding back like crazy and yet he stuck with it. Then on the next song he switched to a telephone he had hooked up to a mic stand. What I didn't get was that he was singing into the speaker end. Which means he either rewired the phone that way or his vocals were actually being picked up by the mic right next to it and he was just faking the phone thing.
Oh and here's the final kicker for these guys. The singer sounded almost exactly like Julian Casablancas. He was even using the distortion Julian uses. You know, where it sounds like he's singing through a fucking drive through speaker? Which was funny because in between songs he was talking to the crowd but no one could understand what the fuck he was saying.
After that whole thing ended I went for another beer and waited for Apes and Androids to get set up. After they finished tuning up and shit they all left the stage. Then the house music went down and a weird chanting chorus thing came on. It was the chorus of "Hot Kathy" but done in a very Viking-esque style. Then the band comes out into the crowd wearing black robes and carrying a boat above their heads. The boat was covered in black light paint and was glowing as they went in circles through the crowd.
After a few rounds with the boat they brought back stage and went on to perform. This is were I'm going to jump ahead a bit because they just played for a while. They were fucking spectacular but the only semi-weird thing that happened during mid-set was the glowing orbs got passed around.
At the end of the set they played the outro track they often close with. I was kinda surprised because they didn't play "Hot Kathy" which is by far their best tune. When they finished the outro they all kinda put down everything and there was a pause in the performance. In my prior experience this pause usually means something insane is about to happen.
Then out from the stage door came three horn players. You see "Hot Kathy" has a section with horns which are usually just done on the keyboards. I thought it was cool that they added live horns but I was expecting a bit more. Despite my slight disappointment "Hot Kathy" sounded amazing. And then it happened, towards the end of the song the stage door opens again and out come a troupe of Asian drummers. They were wearing what I assume is traditional costume for this sort of troupe. Then they started jamming with Apes & Androids to finish off "Hot Kathy". It was A&A, three horns, and about 6 Asian drummers - it was unbelievably awesome.
After they finished the song the drum troupe kept playing while the band members stood around watching. The crowd was still going crazy and you could tell by the looks on everyone's faces that this was one of the best shows they had ever seen. When it was all over a guy towards the front yelled out "Apes & Androids, you made me cream my pants" - which is a fair assessment of this show. I've seen some amazing performance by this band but this was probably the best one. Apes & Androids - I'll see you next year!
Apes & Androids
Bad Veins
Link:
Full Set on BSC Flickr
**Link:
A review from someone who has never seen them before and doesn't like the songs on MySpace - for all you doubters out there.
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