Mandy’s Performance Quality Scale - A+
On March 26th, 2009 The So So Glos and pals Alma Mater landed at Pomona College. At approximately 8 pm out on The South Lawn, they put on one of the best live shows I have ever seen at the Claremont Colleges.
The So So Glos return to the Claremont Colleges, this time with pals The A.M, for another fantastic blowout. The show starts promptly at 8 pm this Thursday and will take place outside of the Pomona College Smith Campus Center. Check out both bands on myspace and come on out to the show.
The So So Glos: http://www.myspace.com/sosoglos
The A.M: http://www.myspace.com/amalmamater
The Brooklyn improvisational robo-psychedelia quartet, Psychic Ills, debuted in 2006 with their acclaimed album, Dins. The band just liberated their second album, Mirror Eye. The record is intoxicatingly groovy: an eclectic compilation of synth sounds and primitive beats. A notably eastern theme vibrates throughout; sitar-y guitar riffs shake, tribal hand drums rattle in raga, and unintelligible vocals echo like a sage’s song on a misty mountain. The synthesizer is overbearing at times, at others climactically orgasmic. Overbearing in “Sub Synth,” an entire track devoted solely to the synthesizer, modulating to create this airplane or spaceship power up or take off that dies down into shutdown. Climactically orgasmic in tunes like “I Take You as My Wife Again,” wherein the synth produces this helicopter-percussive beat, paints a picture of a chopper that eventually finds an ominous jungle of clattering symbols and reverberating whistles and vocals that then grooves into a simple, mid-tempo electro rave party. Mirror Eye reflects a young band with a distinct style, impressive range, and achieves a sort of robo-primitive awareness that may lead (and bang along) the way for aspiring artists of improvisational electro-psychedelia.
-SNICK