ATM + Yvette at Death By Audio

Went to check out both of these guys at DBA last night, Ted from ATM had sent me his latest cassette and I had been listening to it for past few days, so when I noticed he was on a bill with Yvette I had to go catch both of these guys at my favorite venue...that refuses to change, the last holdout, surrounded by vespa's and condo's.
ATM set up a semicircle on the floor with tiers of effects, and tom drums, from the shows I remember with him drumming for These are Powers, the heavy submissive beat is key, and the hit of a real booming tom is the cornerstone to being beat-notized. The effects come on heavy and thick, a repetitive echo-y sludge bounces around the concrete walls and Ted put on his sunglasses for Suicide effect. He's got the same kind of mechanical menace, combined with primitive rhythms pounded out occasionally on the cluster of raised drums beside him. It's a frightening version of Dirty Beaches, take away that twisted attempt at soul, the classy yesteryear vibe, or Handsome Furs neo-springsteen pop, you have this utilitarian unglamorous future. Like Mattress opening for the Liars, Ted's got an impressive master plan and is singlehandedly pulling it off.


Yvette set up in the same way, right there on the floor in front of the stage, facing each other with cases of pedals at their feet. You don't realize from the single the elaborate footwork required to create the dense layer of electronics that come out that guitar amp and the amount of control Noah has over that blinking mess...bursts of ringtoned chords, swapping between a high pitch bell feedback and a sweeping crunch. Rick is pounding away in precise polyrhythms, from hitting the metal edge of the toms to some kind of trigger attached to the top of the drum head. Just when you thought this overwhelming rhythm can't possibly get bigger, all kinds of alien rumblings come in on every hit. They are wizards at incorporating these kinds of technical possibilites without it ever being a crutch of complication, losing momentum live. They're capable of crafting an impressive collection of sound that doesn't even seem like it's possibly happening with guitar and drums, even though I'm standing two feet away. It's being done on an incredibly high level of established groups and you're lucky to catch them at a small venue like this, not that it's going to help you figure out what exactly is making these sounds. Go pick up their great single and then get creeped/chilled out with ATM.

Yvette - 4 song self released EP

Noah from Yvette, sent me their latest single the other day, a 4 song EP from his band Yvette, of course I love the matte feel of a screen print...and on both sides of the sleeve...it's those extras on a self released single that show how much these guys care about the music inside. What we're got inside is the magical focused combination of a duo, traditional drums and random percussion elements and what might be tweaked guitar.
The A-Side, "Vibrations" has a frantic tribal drum energy like Health or These are powers...or even going back to the Liars, Drum Mountain, but this feels slightly more subtle, there's a quieter power buried under layers of these effects. The far off ghostly vocal, all broken syllables, chanted, working over the melody rhythms, this feels like all of the good parts of Animal Collective combined with a decayed bank of blinking electronics. But this isn't a case of glitchy accidental sounds ending up as ambient background feeling. They must search out this grating steel specifically to lay the heavily echoed layered vocal back, way down into the cave.

"Plussed" is an ode to ring toned, arc welding These Are Powers nightmare tones...and these guys are a duo? The layers of recording here, the chugging loops, huge room echo tom sounds, is impressively put together. None of it feels like it's being played off a laptop, so I really want to see what kind of an experience this is live.
The guitar is mostly deconstructed, hardly even a strummed string anymore, just the base wave of a vibrating string sound, a program to approximate the second hand description of a note. They've got a lot fo Black Dice up their sleeves, really unique unsettling sounds and rhythms. The shoegaze etherial vocal is maybe closer to The Soft Moon, so distant and layered it starts to not even sound like a vocal....or at least like it most definitely doesn't belong in this bladerunner back alley, it's too 'nice' soundign compared to everything else.

The B-Side, "With Fangs" has big synth teeth and ever pounding drums. Hugely hyptnotic and dark, I can't get past HEALTH's self titled record on Lovepump United and how you had no idea where that album was going, it was surprising at every turn and Yvette is able to pull off that same freedom, in four tracks they've managed to carve a huge swath out of noise that goes everywhere from the Swans to The Big Sleep. All the while kind of working in an angelic way, the vocals are equally buried and unrecognizable but essentially the harmony is deliberately opposite rhythmically and instrumentally from the obviously human parts.
On "Less" they have this synthetic sound so completely nailed, the drums recorded perfectly huge, I'm convinced they have carved out their own variation of ghost punk...like this swirling distortion effect on crash cymbals? It's a rocking back and forth in the corner of a padded room beat, that compels me to move and flip this over again.

I love that there are bands like Yvette further strip mining these future primitive sounds, I could use more of it. So glad they sent this, looking forward to seeing them at DBA Dec 8th.

Check out their bandcamp page here and buy the single here.