Okay, I’m lame, but I’ll do this quick. At Rubber Gloves in Denton there played 3 bands. The first of which was local anesthetic Violent Squid, who played a mostly subdued, sitty-downy affair complete with reel-to-real punctuations across a lovely, wilting Dead C inspired atonal guitar. The feminine vox bled in and breathed out, alternating between caressing, beatific moments of bright harmony and vibrato-laden crescendos of dissonance. To me, the music had a cubist character which exhibited sharp, vivcolor contrasts, sometimes swelling into fresh movements but often sporting hard lines and departures.
Oaxacan played a wholly improvised set, or so the guitarist told me. It was precise, and as Lee over at Womblife said, was reminiscent of both “Torch of the Mystics” era Sun City Girls with a little of that sweet ol’ Beefheartian twang thrown in. That probably explains the seamless quality transferred between them and Sir Richard Bishop’s white-light set of stellar melodies and improvisations because they also backed him up.
But the highlight of the night was seeing Bishop play. I’ve never heard a hollow body ring out so pure and rich, and he’s absolutely become a master of his instrument. I have to be careful here not to overreach, not to use too many superlatives because those have become so mundane when writing about music, but the most humble and most accurate thing I can say is that, after his set, I felt replenished. I felt human. The oscillations between those ungodly beautiful melodies and creative destruction was, as near as I could tell, perfectly balanced. The band’s precision was undeniable, their passion unmistakable.
Plus I finally met Robert Millis (mentioned in a post below) who was traveling with Bishop and handling his merchandise. It was an amazing night and I wholly recommend that, if they’re coming anywhere around you, you check them out.
P. Somniferum
