Victrola at Galapagos

Originally posted on November 12, 2008

Listening to Victrola music at Galapagos Art Space was quite a different experience as compared to The Stone performance reviewed here in November.  A much bigger venue with a noisy bar area, the Galapagos stage is not ideal for the more intricately shaded music featured there last Friday (Twi the Humble Feather and Redhooker also performed).  Floating over the audience area, the floor of which is punctuated with small pools of water surrounded by metal railing, Victrola’s set sounded otherworldly, gradually convincing the closest audience members to quit conversation and listen, rapt.  “I’m Coming for My Things” was mesmerizing, and “A Song for Arthur Russell” was rocking enough to quiet down the bar, if only temporarily.  The violin and double bass shredding at the end of the final song, “India Whiskey Tango,” was particularly vehement at this performance.

note to readers: as of Jan 09, Victrola is now called Victoire
thanks to Wil for the photo

Victrola at The Stone

Originally posted on October 29, 2008

Brooklyn’s Victrola gave sonic satisfaction at The Stone last Wednesday.  With rich and dynamic bass lines, and gratifying timbral variety provided by clarinet, violin and synth, the whole mix was filled out by rhythmic chordal motion on a second keyboard, played by composer Missy Mazzoli.  The quintet shines particularly brightly in a burgeoning scene of art music wearing a pop aesthetic (in Victrola’s case, always elegantly); at times fully garbed in it—as with the infectious beats of the song “A Song for Arthur Russell”—at others only adorning it as an accessory—as with the Radiohead-esque keyboard chord progressions heard in the otherwise aleatoric sounding “I’m Coming for My Things.”

Check out Victrola Dec. 12th at Galapagos.

Photo taken from band’s Myspace