New Year, New Hard Drive: The Instant Automatons

I've been sitting on this for a while now... I heard about these guys like a month or two ago now, on Harmony in My Head, and truthfully the only thing that's kept me from posting this is the serious amount of verbage on their website that I've just been way too lazy to read. In all honesty, I still haven't read it--but I have been listening to their music for nearly two solid weeks and I've decided that I don't really care what the website is trying to tell me about the history of the band, or what the band thinks about giving music away for free. In fact, I'm entirely sick of that topic. Whatever.

Anyway...whether you decide to label them Post-Punk, Noise, or just fucking garbage (which most of you will do), The Instant Automatons sort of rule. The singer sounds like Mark E. Smith from The Fall (and he shares the same first name). They've got these rudimentary pre-casio sounding rhythm tracks that somehow manage to work with the totally off-beat, out of tune saxamaphone--also played by Mark. The way I hear it: The Fall meets Ariel Pink meets Suicide, with a whole lot less talent, less detailed synth tracks, and way cooler lyrics. If you're bored with your music, download their whole catalog--legal and gratis--on the Instant Automatons website.

My personal favorite, basically because the lyrics are freaking radiculous, has been made available here for your convenient downloading pleasure. :
The Instant Automatons - Nothing Ever Happens To Me

Late To The Party, Early On the Bandwagon

[live performance review by J. Cortez]



It's a curious thing to be an opening act. Frequently, such performers are met with indifference by an anxious crowd as the artists on stage try their best to leave a lasting impression. Rare is the occasion when such a band is able to rise above and turn apathy into adulation. Rarer still is the opening act that realizes such an attempt is almost futile and just says, "Fuck it."

There was little fanfare as Crystal Castles took the stage at the Fonda this past Friday, opening for established indie rockers Metric. The curtains rose and the speakers droned a manic beat. What followed amounted to what felt like ten minutes of pure noodling on a small keyboard by one of the members, while a bright light pulsated from the stage floor. When the jams finally kicked in and the vocalist took the mic, noise transitioned into nuanced noise, very loud nuanced noise. No introduction was given, the audience was never once addressed, the lyrics were indecipherable (and it wasn't just the P.A. system) and their stage presence was solely represented by the blinding, flickering pulse of the strobe. Like a beating in the dark, their set was visceral and violent, leaving everyone traumatized but uncertain of what had just been encountered.

I was anxious to learn more about this band and when a Google search turned up a MySpace page, it was a little reassuring to find their web presence was consistent with their stage show. Castles seems to be playing by similar rules of anti-fame as Bay Area iconoclasts The Residents. Their presence isn't as masked, but there is the feeling when listening to the music that they are creating music not for any audience in particular, but rather for themselves. This then begs the question: why even perform for an audience if there is no apparent attempt to make a connection with the public?

In their case, the effect of doing so somehow brought everyone together in a flurry of confusion -- we may not have liked or understood what we saw or heard, but one thing was sure: we had witnessed. It was riveting, almost awe inspiring to see a band so involved in their own performance that the concerns of whether or not the audience enjoyed themselves mattered little if at all.




For more on Crystal Castles, visit:

http://www.myspace.com/crystalcastles