As embarrassing as it was to get lost in a part of town you are familiar with, I also paid the price and missed most of Breakfast Mountain’s set, but that’s okay, because Zack Osterlund, the mastermind of a set that one member of Truckasaurus dubbed “filthy,” is (full disclosure) an old friend from High School and I’m sure he understood. I have a feeling though that if his last song was any indication of the rest of his set that it was indeed “filthy”–he had the whole crowd yelling, “Fuck tha police, fuck tha police, fuck!”
This was the first time I got to see Atole play live with Marius Libman a.k.a. Copy, a.k.a. DJ Copy, trudging along on bass. The addition of Marius gives Atole’s somewhat wobbly live sound a more solid foundation so that the drums can really lock in. Two things struck me that hadn’t before: their songs began to take on a soundtrack element to them as I imagined high-speed car chase scenes and shady drug deals a la Superfly. The second thing was that with the bass they now sound like a relevant version of the Chemical Brothers–breathing much needed life into a genre many now consider to be in its last throws, much in the same way lead singer Manny juices up the crowd by showcasing his signature dance moves as he slides through the audience.
Who knew that when you combine a truck and a dinosaur you get an electronic act from Seattle? It’s hard to know where to begin when all I can think about is how rad and/or gnarly their name is. What was happening visually seems like a good place because perhaps more so than any other genre, electronic music often relies on visual elements in live settings to keep the audience engaged. Enter found footage splicing/mixing bonanza featuring all of the following: the famed match between Hulk Hogan and Ultimate Warrior, American flags flying through space, skiing, explosions, helicopters, 80’s computers, motorcycles, some questionable dancing, Jean Claude Van Damme, trucks drag racing, and the obligatory guy humping hay and a dude who poured beer on his head and vomited on himself.
As far as the sonic elements were concerned their set was perhaps one of the most legitimate electronic music live shows I’ve seen. No laptops, just synths, sequencers, drum machines–they sport a Roland 303 and 808 live, and a few Gameboys (if handheld gaming devices aren’t legit I don’t know what is) plugged in and making bleeps and bloops. It felt like I was living in a nine year-old’s dream world. The similarities to Aphex Twin and other staples of electronic music’s past were there but Truckasaurus is definitely more accessible and more importantly, fun. Their energy spilled out into the audience, who, for the most part, danced it up or at the very least, nodded along, raising their beers and cheering when Truckasaurus ended their songs with the sounds of explosives.
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