Boards

JOHN SAID: "We love Drowned In Sound" and hello to Mike Diver- even though he works elsewhere now.

The show took place on the auditorium stage of a defunct high school in Portland, Oregon (Washington High School, oldest high school in Oregon) as a "music event" on the roster of the 7th annual Time- Based Art festival (TBA) which is a yearly "convergence of contemporary performance, dance, music, new media and visual arts projects" put on by Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA). It is amazing (in some cases, not all) how cool things become when artists get enough control. It can be horrifying in some instances but in the case of Time- Based Art festival it is fucking impressive what these bohemian nit wits managed to pull off.

PICA got control of the huge, old Washington High School building, swooped in there, filled the trophy cases with layers of colored and painted foam rubber which was a visual art piece that was a tribute to "National Parks", put on 10 days of performance art of the brain meltingest, tongue and cheekiest highest order on the very stage where countless bygone generations of high school "Pygmalion" casts once stood, digitally mapped the building's exterior and shone a freaky light show on it's main entry facade with a 20,000 lumens Barco projector which was propped on top of an old van (very trippy), put on acts like Gang Gang Dance, HEALTH, Picture Plane and the piece de resistance: installed a candy machine which dispenses Pocky, ginger candy, altoids and Trojans!!! Fucking aye- artists should rule the world.

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HEALTH:

Well, well hell: Smell. It seems I've just seen the two best Smell bands play in the same week: No Age playing in front of phalanx of nazi security beefcakes at Seatlle's Bumbershoot Arts & Music Festival (saw Holy Fuck that nite too!) and HEALTH playing last night in a defunct high school in Portland, Oregon.

Health are with out a doubt the tightest train wreck you'll ever witness. As they ferociously steamed through ten songs I felt like a passenger on a japanese bullet train whose conductor and engine driver were obliviously having a gay tryst in the caboose and we were coming into Osaka at two-hundred seventy-four miles per- but you know? I wasn't at all afraid. I had a wild card: BJ Miller. Man, nothing keeps euphorically spastic guitarists in line like a kick ass, brick wall of a drummer. He who controls the thunder, controls the lighting- kinda.

Even though the mercurial trio of human bolts bassist John Famiglietti, guitarist/vocalist Jake Duzsik and guitarist/percussionist Jupiter Keyes jumped, swirled, swerved and danced wildly about like KARP giving a farewell performance after eating raw oysters and washing them down with two half-gallons of Tobasco Vodka- they never missed a trick. They never flubbed a pedal cue, always knew where they'd left their microphones laying, never had to run to a mic stand to make a vocal cue and they never once fell off the stage, tripped over anything or bumped into anything- quite miraculous really. Health's set was on it's face a full out meltdown but at the end of the day it stood as a controlled, mathematical, glorious and triumphant explosion of wonderful music.

10/10

Note: make serious plans to catch them soon here:

DiS Presents HEALTH@The Harley in Sheffield, Oct. 5th

X-RAYS and other filmic evidence:

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CRIMEWAVE!!!

http://s587.photobucket.com/albums/ss315/hovercrab/?action=view&current=MVI_5000.flv