Concert Review of The High Places & Hecuba
Thursday January 22, 2009 at 9:00pm
The Echo, 1822 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, California
High Places
The Echo is a great place for a show, just about any night of the week. Sound is generally good, crowd is promising for site-seeing and many of the acts that come through are solid. I didn’t know much about High Places or Hecuba, but was pleasantly
surprised Thursday night by each of these acts. Both featured an energetic, young duet — one male and one female, both buying into completely their own acts. And the acts were complicated in an interesting way to me, upon consideration. There was something awkward and riveting about the duet in Hecuba. Their music was fueled by pre-recorded drums, while Jon Beasley played the bass (through several layers of effects apparently) and some keyboard, and the occasional cymbal crash punctuation.
Hecuba Live at the Echo
Isabelle Albuquerque’s vocals were only occasionally slightly off key, but it only served to highlight the home grown emotion in each of the duet’s performances on stage.
High Places (Rob Barber and Mary Pearson) were more reserved on stage but sounded equally interesting — channeling dreamy sounds of Calypso into a strange brew of world / Brazilian undertones, rhythms and more. With both bands, I found this phenomena of something like — how do I define the real here? What is the simulacra? Let me break it down since that sounds too art school.
He’s strumming the bass, but you can’t really identify the exact sound that is coming out of the instrument. There are cymbal accents in the pre-recorded percussion, so the real cymbal, not as significant an element of the beat, becomes drowned out by the recording. The referents of the second act, both sonically and vocally reminded me of the way dance hall functioned, or dub maybe — black sounds channeled through other cultures, producing a mish-mash of curious material that is in the end, intriguing.
High Places on MySpace, High Places Website & More on High Places
High Places on MySpace
High Places on Thrill Jockey Records
Review of the High Places EP on Pitchfork Media
High Places on Last.FM
Band to Watch: High Places, on Stereogum
Hecuba on MySpace and More on Hecuba From Online:
Hecuba on MySpace Music
Hecuba Official Band Website
Hecuba on Last.FM
Hecuba
Post Copyright 2009 Matty Byloos. Images from original sources — copyright retained by them. Thanks for letting me use them — please let me know if you would like me to credit or remove.
