Royal treatment

If you're familiar with my musical tastes, you'll know that one of my all-time favourite bands is Royal Trux; when I heard that Neil Michael Hagerty, one-half of the acclaimed duo was coming to town I naturally had to go. ALso on the bill, Alexander Moskos' latest project, Drainolith, and locals Eraserheads.

I saw Eraserheads a little while ago performing in the Mugshots Courtyard. Their projections worked a little better with an actual projection screen.



Here's Omar!



The whole lot!



More Alex!



And so on!



Everything electronic worked out pretty well this time, as well!



I've seen Alex Moskos perform many times, but I can't recall if it's ever been with the same band: He's served in Goa, Unireverse, backing Damo Suzuki at the Avant-Garde, Thammes, AIDS Wolf .... He also teamed with headliner Hagerty recently in Dan'l Boone (Hagerty also produced Drainolith's latest).



And here's Mr. Shapiro, half of rhythm-section-for-hire The Trippy Twins.



Hairy action!



It was an evening of minimalist drumkits.



Rhythm section action!



Although the headliner was billed as Neil Michael Hagerty, it was really the latest permutation of The Howling Hex on stage (Hagerty gave out the band's anme after every tune). He was joined by spoken word maven Lexie Mountain and percussionist Eric Van Leuven. Here's Neil, seen just a few minutes earlier playing the House of Targ's Metallica game with grave intent.



Tiny drum kit action!



Lexie explains the intricacies of cat-folding.



Neil sings!



Lexie shakes!



Eric hits!



Singalong action!



Extra Lexie!



Harmonica action!



A mighty fine night.

Acoustic-electric

Acoustic guitar was not what I expected when I walked into the new Capital Music Hall for the first time to see Islands. The guitarist in question, Stephen St. Pierre, acknowledged as much as he strummed his way through a very good set. The audience was most receptive, and clapped him out for the last few bars of his closing number.



I took some of these pictures at 400 ISO; the lighting guy at the Capital must have set them on "grill."





There was a Soft Disaster cover near the finish.



The act I had expected, Unireverse, then worked through their set. I was stuck to the left of the stage, so most of my pictures feature Alex Moskos. Makes up for getting a decent picture of him when he was here with Goa, I guess.



They had a visual element going on, with images projected on a screen off to the left, but as Alex noted the Capital is not really well designed for that sort of thing.



A horrible Brian Damage photo.



This is as much of Michael Caffery as you're going to get.



They finished their set with a quick game of Space Invaders.



Just kidding - it was their Moog adaptation of Black Sabbath's Electric Wizard. Another cool and well-received set.

• Show reminder: It's one-man action as Mayor McCa and Rhume perform at the Clocktower Pub. Josh Gabriel and Once Past Silver perform at the Avant-Garde Bar.

Who goes there?

What ... we ... have here ... is a failiyuh to communicate. There was some minor confusion over whether the Islands show at Capital Music Hall had been moved (it hadn't, but the rumour definitely was about). I was even tempted to zip over to Babylon to see if they had in fact moved, but decided to hell with it and walked off to George St. I got there expecting to see The Unireverse on stage, only to hear some kind of acoustic singer-songwriter stuff. No, The Unireverse haven't traded in their Moogs for Martins and Taylors. So who's that on stage?

Answer: Stephen St. Pierre, with Takamine.



Unfortunately, Malajube couldn't make it - Unireverse went on second.



Islands took the stage about 10 p.m., played for an hour, did a three song encore.



Good show, perhaps a bit more sedate than their Babylon show. This was my first time in the Capital Music Hall's new digs. Seems pretty nice, and I thought the sound was very good.

He is Damo Suzuki!

So, a cult favourite artist from the 1970s goes from town to town, performing with a bunch of musicians he's never worked with before. If that isn't a recipe for disaster, I'm not sure what is.
Fortunately, former Can vocalist Damo Suzuki is a vocal alchemist par excellence, and with three quite different backing units performed a trio of exciting and dynamic sets at the Avant-Garde Bar Oct. 14.
Although Suzuki's voice is tuneful enough that you can make out what he's saying, even with his accent, the effect of word-riffs is to make the ear (or, at least, my ear) listen to it more as music. Sure, you could direct your brain to string the syllables together into words, but the rhythm the tone, the melody - that's what it really wants to absorb.

His first accomplices were Brad Crowe and David Jackson of Kerista (they've also played together in Anorak). While Crowe manipulated a device of unknown provenance, a keyboard and a Danelectro pedal with extreme finishing wear, Jackson gave his Apple laptop intent study.

Damo himself!



And Jackson, Damo and Crowe, and some gadget with different coloured buttons.





The IDM and sound manipulation was mostly low-key, though there were a few moments of harshness, some heavy groove, vaguely orchestral harmonies ... a lot of grist for Damo's mill as he switched from a heavy growl to the more melodic vocal riffs familiar to anyone who's bought one of Can's classic albums Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi, Future Days or Soundtracks.

For his second set he called on Unireverse (Brian Damage of Phycus, Michael Caffery of Daydream Square and Beautifuzz, Alex Moskos of Goa! and Kubelka) and Joel on drums (who also appeared with Goa! when they played the Avant-Garde this summer). The members of Unireverse likes their Moogs, and they like their krautrock (they covered Brainticket on their recently released album, Plays The Music) so they might have been the most "appropriate" of the enlisted ensembles.

Damo, and just visible behind him, Michael's ghostly image.



Here's the whole bunch ...



Joel got squeezed into the corner; I wedged myself under a table for this picture.



Alex Moskos gets down on the keys.



Mr. Damage in a very snazzy shirt.



More Damo and a less spectral Michael!



A brief break, and group No. 3 was up. Mike Dubue (Hi Lo Trons), Jamie Gullikson (The Flaps), Adam Fogo, Steve Matylewicz and Brendan Allistone (although Adam did try to convince me everyone's first name was "Jan", for some reason ...). It would take too long to go through all the bands the various members are involved in, but there are ties with Burti Lasky, Pleather, Wax Mannequin, Gammahoochee (or whatever it's calling itself nowadays), et. al. For pure instrumental chops I think you have to hand the ribbon to them, and their second "song" with Damo, fuelled by Jaime's fast'n'funky drumming was probably the show's highlight.

On your left: Fogo, Gullikson, Damo, and a bit of Allistone ...



On your right, more Damo and Allistone, plus Matylewicz and Dubue.



Drumsticks - they're not just for breakfast.



The explosive finale!



Damo really was amazing - his ability to sing for 20 minute stretches without a drink is remarkable all in itself, if you ask me ...