Genghis Tron/Yip Yip @ The Phix 10/12/2008

Due to a set of unfortunate circumstances I missed the opening band, which was too bad as I heard good things, but I will review the other two bands.

Yip Yip was interesting. Two pretty young guys, a lot of keyboards and electronic instrumentation, a few cymbals, a saxophone, and interesting headpieces made up this band's on stage entourage. Experimental music is hard to critique, because if it doesn't click with you, you tend to hate it, there's no real middle ground for it. So for instance, the band I saw last night, I thought was an awful band, because their experimentation sounded like untalented, drug-induced noise. On the other hand, Yip Yip was doing some cool things. Not a ton, but enough to keep it interesting. Plus the benefit of experimental electronic music is that it's almost always dancy. Quite complex compositions for a two person band though, reasonably enjoyable.

Genghis Tron was awesome. How do I describe this band? Part electronic, part grindcore. It makes you want to dance, it makes you want to be totally spastic. It's great. The orchestrated light show was better than most bands I've seen in arena shows. The presentability of their live show is obviously very important to them and it added a ton to the experience. Live, some songs come off better than others, and the mixing was a definite problem at this venue, so I will tentatively suggest I prefer the music itself on CD versus live. One thing I was astonished by was how well rehearsed the band was though. As the drums are all programmed, I was astonished the band would play straight through three songs without breaking and remain tight and on tempo the whole time. Especially with the spastic nature of their music, they show an impressive sense of time in their performance. The experience of this band was awesome though, well worth seeing.