Re: (idm) Panasonic/Trans Am tour

From Michael J Makunas
Sent Wed, Apr 21st 1999, 16:07

On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, nils wrote:

> > In Detroit, the ads for Friday's show (doors at 9PM) list Trans Am at the
> > top and Pan sonic underneath (along with "Laddio Balacko Plus DJ On").
> > Anyone know what or who Laddio Balacko is?  I get the feeling that I should
> > be very, very afraid...
> 
> In Boston (earlier tonite) the order was LB then
> PS then TA.
> 
> Interesting audience.  A lot of young hipsters. 
> Pretensious arty types.

Though it wasn't you average art rock crowd. I'd say it was more
"nerd-punk", but maybe I need to get out more often.

> Extremely loud show.  With earplugs I almost went
> deaf.  Side benefit: some nice body vibrations,
> esp. with PS.  At times I felt my colon moving in
> new and distinctive ways.   They did a good job
> with the sound, though.  You could get a hint of
> what was happening in the treble without too much
> painful screeching.

It was loudest show I'd ever been too  and the first time I had to buy ear
plugs at a show. But despite that, it was a great show. The vibrations
were so strong that I probably would have enjoyed the show even if I was
deaf. Anyway...nils described the show pretty we so I won't go into more
detail, but liked the fact that they weren't too freeform since I think
some their less beat oriented stuff is boring.

> PS a bit disappointing.  Seemed caught between
> their newer 4-on-the-floor techno beats and their
> older super-sparse click-and-whir abstraction. 
> They mostly set up loops with their weird analog
> tone generators, about 8 bars long, then added on
> other loops to achieve polyrhythm and texture. 
> Heavy use of delay.  A lot of 4/4 and some 8/8 and
> some nice expansion to 9 and 11 later on.  There
> were some nice transitions between pieces,
> surprises galore there. But otherwise lots of
> loops, I was hoping for more free-form playing.