Truckasauras, Copy, ER Don - Oscillate @ Baltic Room - 05/29/07

All the high-minded music critic jargon aside, the above is how I summed up last night’s bill at the Baltic Room when communicating via the economical language of text messaging. I mean it in a good way—I love nerds, electronics, and music.

I’ve covered Truckasauras pretty thoroughly here, so I’ll just add a couple thoughts. Last night’s show saw them playing to a slightly larger crowd than last time, but it was still a fairly insular bunch. It was also another birthday party, this time for their video artist, Dan Bordon—do these guys ever play anything but birthday parties? Bar mitzvahs, maybe? School dances? Their set was slightly more technically difficult than last time—their was some audible clipping and the video lost color at some points—but they also benefitted from an enthusiastic guest toasting from DJ Collage on “Hold On.” Finally, I somehow failed to mention the name of Truckasauras’ new album in my feature. It’s going to be called Tea Parties, Guns, and Valor, and it’s going to fucking rule!

Portland’s Copy (aka Marius Libman) goes all the way back to Kirkland with the Truckasauras guys (he’s also the older brother of Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head’s Shaun Libman), and the night had the air of a reunion to it, with parents and old high school pals mingling with Seattle’s techno boosters. Copy’s recordings are, like Truckasauras’, based on the the bright, grainy electro sounds of ’80s video games, but his live show is much more streamlined, with Libman playing a (totally sweet) black keytar along to pre-recorded tracks. He doesn’t break much of a sweat live—he plays relaxed, single-note progressions while his laptop handles the inhuman arpeggios—but his thick beats and old-school synths certainly gives the sound system a work out. If there had ever been a break-dancing game for the Nintendo Power Pad, Copy could have been the score.

Opener ER Don has been recording with the Truckasauras guys lately, straight from his Akai MPC to their analog tapes. If his set last night is any indication, that record will be full of brainy instrumentals built from jazzy loops, clean beats, odd beeps and gurgles, and subtle hints of orchestration. Live, the guy hunches over that MPC, tapping pads and triggering samples, pausing occasionally from his rhythmic swaying to scroll through his (imaginably vast) library of sounds. ER Don’s deeply musical compositions, and their constituent organic loops, kill that tired, old argument that all electronic producers do is push buttons, even if that’s what he does in the club (I have a theory that the main reason people shy away from electronic music is because they’re afraid of any sound they can’t see being made—so guitar strums and drum hits are fine, but triggered samples or drum machines are spooky; guitars run through too many pedals would presumably be a gray area—but that’s another post entirely).