Skip to main content[LOUD & ECLECTIC] Nanotear Booking and Old Town booze-hole Tube, whose folks organized the second annual installment of the Children of the Revolution festival, deserve massive credit for putting together an event as diverse and far-reaching as last Saturday's 14-hour sound marathon. Though decidedly bent toward noise and metal, everything from clean and catchy indie-pop (courtesy of the unshakable Shaky Hands) to electro party music found its place. And, wonderfully, CotR brought in a crowd that shunned nothing, a crowd that danced to a masked-yet-barely clad Fleshtone and, a half-hour later, thrashed and flailed to Black Elk's hair- and hell-raising set of hardcore/metal crush.
Plus, the setup at inner Southeast's cavernous AudioCinema, generally a practice/studio space, never forced the crowd to miss anything: With three stages, the break between sets was nonexistent, save for a brief pause in action during a last-minute sprint to the airport to pick up 31Knots' drummer, Jay Pellicci. Maybe it was the adrenaline of the hurry, but the trio, which played last, delivered a totally off-the-rails yet flawless set of prog-rock glory. Frontman Joe Haege's stage presence is one of utter possession: He swapped outfits mid-song, preached from a pulpit placed among the crowd and, at the end, mournfully pawed at a dismembered mannequin. It may have been the best thing I've seen since the rain started in October (and to think I almost bailed out from exhaustion before the set).
Other notable blows to the head came from D. Yellow Swans' hypnotic set of noise-immersed howls and spastic, barely defined guitar melodies and, prior to that, from experimental psych band Mustaphamond, whose drummer's arms call to mind hummingbird wings (a very large, very dangerous hummingbird). Behalf, a pure squawk-and-scream duo, gave us a taste of what hell is like, while Scout Niblett actually kept it cool for her set, skipping the grunge snarl and rage for something a little more Joni Mitchell than Patti Smith. And, through all of the above (and much more), the faces in the crowd were the same: Aesthetic boundaries are apparently null in the midst of revolution.
WWeek 2015