____twoism

Low stun/amaze festival crowd with 30 minute drone piece.

http://blog.thecurrent.org/2013/06/the- ... m-perform/


Personally I love Low and think this is wonderful. Have never really enjoyed gigs that sound like recorded music. I saw Fever Ray a few years ago and while it was great to see her play live, at times it was just like listening to a playback of the album.

Thoughts?

"...Sparhawk offered a little more context: “How many times have a lot of the people there seen us perform?” he asked (indeed, the band did just play a conventional concert for Current listeners back in March at the Fitzgerald Theater, soon after its latest album “The Invisible Way” came out).
“It was a big show, so we wanted to do something big and different. If I was there in the audience, that’s the kind of think I’d like to see a band do.”

As for the “drone, not drones” comment, Sparhawk had this simple explanation: “I got it off a friend’s bumper-sticker, and thought it was fitting.”


http://www.startribune.com/entertainmen ... 09701.html

Ha! Fantastic. Fair play to them for having the nuts to do it. Surely the only people moaning are those fairly ambivalent towards them to begin with?

'Drone, not drones.'

Superb!!

Logan71 wrote:Low stun/amaze festival crowd with 30 minute drone piece.

http://blog.thecurrent.org/2013/06/the- ... m-perform/


Personally I love Low and think this is wonderful. Have never really enjoyed gigs that sound like recorded music. I saw Fever Ray a few years ago and while it was great to see her play live, at times it was just like listening to a playback of the album.

Thoughts?

Might have been a bit miffed if I was someone seeing them live for the first time, but then it's a festival, not a fan-only gig. I think slightly different rules apply at festivals.
But then I'm not sure that for me Low can do any wrong.

Before I even clicked the link, I remembered seeing them a few years ago (jesus, if I think on it must have been the thick end of ten) and they longed out "Do You Know How to Waltz?" and lo, I check it out and it's the same track! From reading that review I don't remember it being as full on as this version sounds but it was still pretty epic.

Personally, I'm tempted to say that may actually be my favourite Low tune so I'm biased and would have really dug that. On the other hand, based on "C'mon" and that new one that didn't really do anything for me, if I'd only just got into them off the back of their last few albums, I imagine I probably would be a bit miffed as they're more, dare I say, popp-y (in context) than their older work. I'm gonna peg this as a bit of long term fan-service, but if they want to tour an extended wall of sound version of that one track, Im there!

In the broader conversation of whether bands owe it to the listeners to just play the songs, I'm a bit on the fence. For me a live show certainly needs to provide you with something you cant get by just sticking the CD on, or whatever newfangled contraptions the yoot use these days, but having seen Aphex do his piss everyone off routine more than once, I don't think it's unfair to expect that you'll get something approximating an audience friendly set.

I love that low track, and drones in general, so I think it was a brilliant little thing they did. People have the right to be a little pissed, but they did witness something monumental(ish) in music history, sort of.

As for what concertgoers are owed by performers: Diddly-fucking-squat. Music is art. Musicians are artists. You buy a ticket to see said artist perform said art. If the artist chooses to do a lengthy drone piece, or play Merzbow-ian noise from his laptop, or stand defiantly naked and silent onstage, your witnessing that artists expression (his art) and you've got what you paid for. You reserve the right to feel however you want to about the performance, but as long as the performer shows up and does something noteworthy, you've not been cheated.[/i]

I spent much of this winter (if you can call what we get in this climate zone "winter") listen to that song and other 'slowcore' acts all the time. The Curtain Hits The Cast is an absolutely amazing album.

Logan71 wrote:Low stun/amaze festival crowd with 30 minute drone piece.

http://blog.thecurrent.org/2013/06/the- ... m-perform/


Personally I love Low and think this is wonderful. Have never really enjoyed gigs that sound like recorded music. I saw Fever Ray a few years ago and while it was great to see her play live, at times it was just like listening to a playback of the album.

Thoughts?

Wow, listened to Low a few times before (love Lullaby and this new track they have out) and I love drone based music/ambient guitar based music, so I'm like in awe right now.

Parts of it remind me of Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

^


Yeah, I'm pretty sure Low & Godspeed have shared a stage in the past.

And to be fair, the guy has history in this area...

http://boomkat.com/cds/24432-alan-sparhawk-solo-guitar

"'How A Freighter Comes Into The Harbour' is a spectacular eighteen-minute exploration of looped guitar smudge that at times sounds like a dissolving choral swirl, the like of which you'd expect to hear on a Grouper album."