Woods

Had a nice Friday-before-holiday-weekend short workday yesterday. A little later in the afternoon Mary Beth and I went to the park and walked around the forest and the pond. The weather's absolutely delightful. It feels like fall came right around for September. I know that it will get hot again. That's completely inevitable. But the weather's given the feeling that fall is really and truly here right "on time." It's an illusion that we can at least enjoy and lose ourselves in for the moment! Then a little later I went up to Crosstown for the opening reception for their gallery exhibits. Noah Miller had one of them and it was really good. They looked like paintings (and they were) but the construction was atypical. They were made of individual pieces of wood jigsaw-cut into the shapes and individually painted with housepaint and then nailed back together to present the "canvas." They were generally pictures of houses (hence the material theme in line with house construction). They had a blocky minimal look that was a "future"-leaning as well as a little nostalgic in feel. It was super crowded given it was a big opening thing. I saw lots of people I know but mostly didn't a chance to talk to any given I was moving along in the crowd. Did talk to a couple, but that's it. Then came back home to pick Mary Beth up and head on over to the show at Black Lodge. Panic Signals (aka Josh!) was up first and his set was really good. Black Lodge has a nice bassy sound system and his stuff sounded good on it, but actually I thought he'd sounded a little better last time I saw him at The Lamplighter as it's shittier sound system brought out more of the noise and harshness in his sounds. Especially the trashcan percussion sounds he uses, they really cut through on a less nice sound system and last night the heavy bassiness subdued them a little bit. (This isn't a critique of the actual music or performance, just the way it worked within the different p.a.s, the music was still just as great.) Next it was Okapi who traveled from North Carolina and it's a duo with cello and upright bass. I liked the music quite a bit with the interplay between the stringed instruments, but the singing kind of ruined it for me (it was sort of like if Rush was sung in a normal octave range). Last it was Artificer who, of course, was absolutely mind-bogglingly incredible (as always, of course)! While everyone was playing, the screen was projecting just this one goofy screensaver type thing of an astronaut swimming through space (like, water in space). I dunno, just making note of that. Okay, I think that gets us up-to-date!