saw something tonight, had as much to do with a distinctive voice and catchy beats and rehearsed material as it did with a will to be honest. the 20 something guy with the mind on fire, ideals and ideas and something that probably doesn't have to do with sheer will, probably more to do with let's just say, here we are, at a place in time, saying what we are saying, a beat comes on, a feeling needs to be loosened up. a sense of place and experience and how i got there. the performance seemed to love this particular environment. out in the woods with electrified structures built from pallets, stages into the trees lit up and pink, mounted keyboards to branches and shadowy legs swinging with lit cigs from high up. a rather unremarkable and regular creature, elbows and tassle of hair and shiny processor eyes, writhes into a process, a place. sometimes in a dress ( a cheerleader uniform?) or boxers, awkwardly and perfectly stalked by his feminine god buddy, chant tribal bedroom teddy bear escorts - thru the magic it summoned just enough of - to tweak the entry point to the experience.
addressing that he simply is pressing a button, a voice effected, responds to and dialogues with itself, a biafra tonality and innate sarcasm reminiscence made plain for localized language and immediate understanding of some idea of friends together sharing. relaxing. observing,
this act did seem to want to respond thematically to hot political oppressions, usually relating to extreme nationalism of any sort, of christianity, of the south. our performance duo hails from greensboro NC. some guy named sam and dam if i didnt get his last name or the other performers name. you can google the 3 brained robot and find videos like i just did, realizing the person walking into the street as an extensionof the stage act, the situations that involve the crowd billowing a sheet under strobe lite, the clubkid context can blend to this or psychfolk necessity for skin and rainbows and animal masks does occur. tribal repetitions and conversations during the shows i talked to somebody during the set before the 3 brained robot, about what i dont know, some sort of art drama over cigarettes, and then 3 brained robot came on, partially obscured from my view, the intial reaction to (the talking)-"he likes to talk to you about things", this and that, personal experiences and observations about travels, revolving around observations of the south, tonight he did, remarked about effects of too much caffeine, was intrigued hovering on annoyed, but realizing this was part of the rehearsed pace, or carving a needed meditative space, i felt conversed with directly. as a button was pressed, in this instance there was no street, in this instance there were no other musicains, as he sometimes does, a bare chested drummer with neighbors across yards cheering him on, to darkened disco globe clubs, and now a ramshackle treehouse odeon called the space tower in east austin tx.
explanations of activity, about the process, playing a song, now positioned as a warm up, to re-approach after pissing inthe woods as if now was the beginning. explaining he needed to loosen up, sharing a vibe that all present could possibly relate to. it felt part of and owned in its presentation. suggesting that the boundary of awkwardness was involved, as much as a po-mo need for contextualizing, as it simply was the fucking truth. self-aware. where to go with it. showing art what is allowed, even if the magic is in techniques, the magic is in themes everyone handles in their own fingerprints, this one knew itself as much as it felt tapped into undercurrents and weird denominators, the pattern is one of no pattern. and it is recognizable in that it makes as much sense to throw it all away as it does to keep all of it, praise the spirit blindly, take it to the immediate share-level, address the audience and yrself with an outsider's idea of confidence, individual juju and ownership, a hug's inclusiveness. so it is great when something tweaks the moment and 3 brain'd robot kinda totally did it.
make music machines man made man, no longer blue on the computer w electric friends moving in stereo.
