[photo courtesy of Edan at thepiratehat]
The first time that I saw These Are Powers live was about a year ago, early in the morning in a smokey venue with a cranky old sound system. I absolutely hated them. It never occurred to me that I might just be wrong about them, and that maybe the only thing that was really cranky and old that night was me. Several months later, I read a series of glowing reviews of These Are Powers performance at Siren Festival and had some reservations. Perhaps I should give them a “second chance”.
Friday night at Bell House, the performance by These Are Powers was truly a revelation. We were not distracted by negative conditions and simply concentrated on the band. We got it. These Are Powers create a textured beat and layer it with bass, keyboard effects and processed vocals. The influences are as diverse as German techno, Remain in Light and late-era Butthole Surfers. The band also seems to have a wicked sense of humor, which juxtaposes nicely with the sometime dark elements of the music.
The set included material from the upcoming release from These Are Powers entitled All Aboard Future. The release party for this new CD will take place on February 13, 2009 at Secret Project Robot in Brooklyn. These Are Powers will also perform this Friday January 30 at the DanBro space in Brooklyn in a ToddP event that features NYC bands and Baltimore bands in a “competition”.
We recorded this set from the same location as the Ponytail recording and the sound is excellent.
Direct download of MP3 files (HERE)
Download the Complete show in FLAC [HERE].
These Are Powers
2009-01-23
Bell House
Brooklyn, NY USA
Digital Master Recording
Recorded Next to Soundboard
Neumann KM-150’s > Monster Cable > Apogee Mini-Me > digital coax > M-Audio Microtrack 24/96 > 24bit 48kHz wav > Soundforge 8.0 (level adjustments, downsample) > CD Wave 1.75 > Flac Frontend (level 7) > flac
Recorded and Produced by nyctaper
2009-01-26
Setlist:
[Total time 34:14]
01 Cockles
02 Double Double Yolk
03 Chipping Ice
04 Adams Turtle
05 Life of Birds
06 Easy Answers
07 World Class Peoples
If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT These Are Powers, visit their MySpace page, and purchase their official releases from the Dead Oceans site [HERE].
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