CONCERT REVIEW:Electronica: Greg Davis

The Greg Davis Group began their set around 12:45 AM Friday morning at Onopa Brewing Company, Milwaukee, WI. Davis took his music from his album and arranged it for a band in this live performance. It was a 3 piece using 2 acoustic guitars, electric bass, drums, keyboards, pump organ, mouth organ, various percussion, and a laptop. Davis has said to be a leader in laptop folk—combining elements of folk music, jazz, avant-garde, nature recordings, and computer/electronica.

The Beach Boys' “At the Window” is a song on the newest Davis album, Curling Pond Woods. Davis and his group creates lots of atmosphere, an ambient noise approach, from which the basic song then rides on top. At first, you might not hear the song coming, emerging from the atmosphere, but it’s like Radar O’Reilly on M.A.S.H. who always heard the helicopters look before anyone else. He announce their arrival, no one else heard the choppers, and Radar would say, “Wait for it.” Everyone strained to hear—and then sure enough, the chopper blades would pound the air. So with listening to Davis, you have to wait for it, and then sure enough, tumbling out of this atmosphere comes the song.

He incorporates many threads in making this music. Jazz improv is definitely a factor; in fact, you could call this a jazz combo, giving them the name the Greg Davis Triangle for how they set themselves on stage. There’s droning organs which act like a canvas for the pictures on top. Ambient noise adds depth, getting us out of the space of the bar and into a nature preserve. There’s also soundtrack elements in how Davis and group work to set the tone of the scene. Sometimes Davis and organist/guitarist Benjamin sing Beach Boy-like harmonies. When the beat got going, it inspired a rap circle in the audience.

I also noticed how the music often comes down to a drum circle, drums and various percussion creating beat and melody. For this set, Davis was including some interpretations of songs from the Talking Heads’ album, Fear of Music. On the song, “Drugs,” it broke down into a 3-part drum solo.

Throughout the set, though, when the song faded into the tonal, ambient foundations, I also felt that it wasn’t far from a Compline Service, the midnight hour service in the daily hours practiced in the Church. This service talks about coming to the end of the day, the hush of the day, and that’s what I felt there in Onopa Brewing Co. A hush, even while the street sweeper went past the windows, light flashing off the walls and faces of the bar. The nearly hour-long set closed with the final song from Fear of Music, giving a “Happy Trails” quality.

Watch for a future interview with Greg Davis to help discover more about what goes into his music. Thank you to Greg Davis, Erik Kowalski (a.k.a. Casino Versus Japan), and Todd at Carpark Records.

Collections of Colonies of Bees
Collections of Colonies of Bees offered up a great set before Greg Davis. The 4-piece group uses dueling Macintosh iBooks, drums (cymbal, snare, floor tom), various percussion, and 2 electric guitars. The music seems to emerge from variations on lead guitar which are then sampled and enhanced by the others, but you could boil it down to a guy playing guitar alone in his bedroom, imagining what if others were adding something to this, like a guitar circle, watching the guitar trying to add to the sound.

Here this group incorporates jazz, avant-garde, and even Sonic Youth at times. Sometimes there’s also hints to the backing music written by the Doors for Jim Morrison’s poetry on the album, American Prayer.

A lot of these pieces finally emerge into a song. You can’t necessarily expect them to head somewhere, to land somewhere, but there’s also direction. You’re just waiting for it to break loose from these elemental doodlings and break into a full rhythm jam. In that waiting, the music is like rain—the first few drops before the storm breaks open. It’s like the time at a concert when the lights go down but the band hasn’t emerged yet. It’s like sunrise when you still can’t see the sun itself. It’s like being in a canoe on a river just above the rapids, the water is smooth and slick and shows no sign of trouble before it plunges over the rocks and drops.

I look forward to hearing more from the Bees, perhaps an album. I only would wish that there was a way to set the glowing Apple icons on the iBooks so that they could change colors or blink to be a visual representation of what each iBook is adding to the music.