2014 EMP Sound Off! Finals

After three great weeks of shows with Laser Fox winning week 1, Thee Samedi winning week 2 and Otieno Terry winning week 3. Fauna Shade took the wild card slot to round out our four final competitors.

Unlike the prior 3 shows, which were held on the 3rd floor, the finals were in the Sky Church and Chipotle was serving tasty tacos gratis. Chipotle is one of my favorite local businesses, they sponsor many great local music and arts related events like the EMP Sound Off! and they donate free food to the Vera project too, and they have good vegetarian and vegan options. Good restaurant with it's heart in the right place, I appreciated having good tacos at the show.

After some munching we moved into the Sky Church and Laser Fox opened up the Finals show and put on a solid set.
Opening is a tough slot - the crowd is cold, and even if you do get them warmed up some, when the last couple bands (3 & 4) play your performance won't be remembered as well. Laser Fox put on a good show and worked the crowd, getting some "Laser Fox" chants going. Nice way to open the show, but winning from this slot is tough.

Next up was Thee Samedi. The second slot is better than the first - Laser Fox warmed the crowd up, so Thee Samedi got to start from there and see if they could work them up any more - and they cranked up the crowd even further.
The music was thrashier than Laser Fox and the showmanship was more towards the transgressive and somewhat brutal end of the spectrum, which definitely got the crowd moshing and raising a ruckus. They were into it and appreciative. The showmanship is mostly from Noah, the front man who thrashes around, sometimes on the floor, and does odd things with a microphone. He's also prone to minor self flagellation too.

There was less blood than in the semifinals, but still more blood than anybody else in the venue. The band was a good solid loud power trio, cranking out thrashy fast hard tunes and having a good time pounding out the aggressive in your face music.

Definitely a hit with the crowd, we'd have to wait until the bands finished up before we'd find out what the judges thought.

Next up was Fauna Shade, a fun guitar oriented trio from Everett. The drummer Eduardo Contreras is a friend of mine from the Vera Project. We hung out there quite a bit at Veracity shows and member meetings and main stage shows over a few years. He's busier working in Everett and playing in a band so he doesn't get back to the Vera much recently & it's great to see his band doing well.

The follow-on effect gave Fauna Shade the opportunity to build on the energy from the earlier acts, and they took it. I was definitely rooting for Eduardo's band, not to take anything away from anybody else's bands, they're all awesome, I just know Eduardo well.

The band was tight and the reverb was cranked up - on the vocals more than anything. I enjoy the band's sound and already have several favorite songs - I managed to see them once in Everett, then of course in the Sound Off! semifinals, so I knew I liked the sound.

Fauna Shade rolls with the classic power trio with guitarist/vocalist lineup and the singer/guitarist is the face of the band, playing and singing and engaging the rapidly intensifying mosh pit in front of him.
The bassist is more introverted, focusing on his instrument and getting all kinds of odd scratches, shrieks and piercing sounds out of it then filling the bottom end as another shaggy reverb-drenched song kicks off and amps the crowd intensity up some more.

The band goes form spacey noise to tight intros into complex songs, clicking into and out of sections of song with well rehearsed tight transitions, making it all look easy and most of all fun. The guitarist was obviously enjoying himself and engaging with the audience with more energy than I noticed in the prior shows - he stepped up his game and really nailed my favorite songs, getting me and the crowd screaming and thrashing and sweating. Eduardo played a good tight set and the rhythm section was solid and so was the guitar. The best technical performance of the evening so far and while the showmanship wasn't in your face and aggressive - playing guitar and singing does pin you down to one spot much of the time - the music was so good and rollicking that the show kicked our asses anyway.

I love a good rock and roll show put on by a band that has decided on a good approach that is new yet feels classic and I enjoyed the heck out of Fauna Shades performance. In my mind they were the best so far, and had set the bar good and high for Otieno Terry. OT (as we chanted his name, oops maybe a spoiler) had put on an awesome show in the semifinals so we knew they were fully capable of nailing it and bringing the house down. Were they going to be that on tonight?

Otieno came out and kicked it off with a solo a cappela number, which is a ballsy move. With no musical accompaniment and no rhythm section we weren't moving much and there wasn't exactly a groove. Otieno basically had to nail everything, hit every note, get those phrases down and the intense emotions across with his voice and his stage presence and nothing else. He was more than up to it, and the crowd loved it. After the opening number the band came out and the rhythm section started thumping away at the low end, the pianist playing some jazz influenced chord progressions and an intricate lead figures here and there, and the dude on the end - who is pretty much my all time greatest side-man at this point - brought the cool factor up by an order of magnitude through his own stage presence.
I've never noticed someone so good at bringing his A game to a performance yet somehow never deflecting the spotlight from the lead (Otieno) - the perfect side man. I didn't catch his name, if anybody knows it add it to the comments.

I liked the way the backing band was in suits and ties and slacks, they even had nice dress shoes: they looked sharp.

The band was ridiculously talented - my favorite bassist of the night, dude was popping and thumping strings and having a great time driving the beat that you just couldn't resist down into your guts - that's where I always feel that punchy low bass that just makes you move. The crowd was intense and the set was great. The pianist was tasty, playing intricate passages and augmenting the sound, sometimes playing fairly minimally, other times holding up a chunk of the rhythm, very nice work that gave the band a different and better or perhaps cleaner sound than most of the live bands I see.

Otieno was on his game, taking us along through the emotional rigors of the stories his songs told - and boy can he communicate that emotion!

I also can't help circling back to the side man that I have a man crush on. The cool suit and the backing group made me think a little of the old rat pack; I grew up on Dean Martin's variety show with the singers in their sharp suits telling funny stories and alternating leads vs. side roles. OT's band's approach was that kind of an old school approach, although with more of a smaller set of more inspired musicians rather than the rat pack's larger bands where the inspiration was more in the arrangements. These guys would've fit right in with the rat pack.
When they got the 3 part vocals going it was pretty darn cool, these guys have an effortless style and the sound was great and very much their own. Fauna Shade set the bar high on musicianship and Otieno Terry pushed it a little higher while putting on a powerful show across the board. I was rooting for Fauna Shade but unfortunately OT was just off the scale. Well, unfortunately for Fauna Shade and it's winning ambitions; for the rest of us it was a musical blessing, music as a spiritual connection. By the end of the dancing and yelling and clapping and bouncing my feet hurt and I was sweaty and grinning - another great show, there's so much talent making music in Seattle it never stops amazing me.

With the performances finished we hit the usual post-show pause while the judges tally scores and the audience expressed its appreciation for the bands and the audience appreciation award went to Thee Samedi, a well earned award. Finally the judges results were announced and Otieno Terry won it, and deservedly so. Fauna Shade came in second which was great too.

Another great Sound Off! this year, filled with talented bands and great sets and memorable performances and the killer songs. Very well run, judging was spot on, all in all this was an awesome series of shows.

The best part is that now there are 12 more bands on my list of cool bands to keep an eye out for so I can see how they're doing and what they're up to. You can never have too many band crushes or too many opportunities to see great bands, so it's all good!

Kudos to the EMP and the Sound Board and all the volunteers who put this event on, and the Studios who sponsored the event like Fastback Studios, London Bridge Studios, Robert Lang studios, and the Snoqualmie Tribe and BNSF and Talking Rain. Thanks to all of you for helping put on a great Sound Off! this year, I enjoyed it immensely.

EMP Sound Off! Round 1

For no good reason I haven't made it to the EMP Sound Off! events in a few years. This year I got tickets and rounded up my friend Charles to take pictures, and I'm glad I did: the first night of the Sound Off! was impressive. Troy Nelson from Young Evils (he also has a Saturday DJ slot on KEXP) was our MC.

First up was Tommy Cassidy. Just like Charles the photographer, Cassidy is from the Tri-Cities and went to Hanford High School. That plays a part in his message and we'll get to that, but first some details about the man and the band. Cassidy raps in front of a live band with horns. The band is fun and loud and has a women with a strong voice singing leads, alternating with Cassidy's raps and occasionally backing and filling during them. This band cooks along, and when the horn section comes in for some backing it's cool. When they run through some leads on the trumpet it's even better, and they even had some cool old school muted trumpet stuff giving a completely different sound and feel to one number.
Cassidy varied his approach in different songs, using a slower back-off-the-beat approach which somehow gave almost a visual quality to his raps, and also using a rapid fire intricate aggressive intense flow in another number that was visceral and powerfully emotional. Cassidy's range and lyrics and patter connected with us - his comments about being from the nuclear Tri-Cities and feeling like a stranger in his hometown resonated with everybody who's been a teenager.
Cassidy drew the first slot which is pretty much impossible to win from. He took a cold audience and warmed it up, did great work and impressed us, but then 3 more acts got to go on and distract us from the first performance, and they got to start with a warmed up audience. Cassidy showed he's more than capable of opening a show and I expect him to move up the bill quickly if he can make it to Seattle very often.
Quite talented and tight, Cassidy and the band got the crowd warmed up and into it.

Next Sophia Duccini took the stage with a violinist/fiddler and a backing vocalist. Duccini plays guitar and piano and sings, and the group gets an interesting range of sweet to haunting sounds and songs out of the lineup. The vocals stand out, with Duccini's strong leads carrying a good portion of the songs and the gorgeous harmonies reinforcing and ornamenting the songs and emotions. Duccini and her band cover a range of styles from piano based pop in the older sense to guitar and fiddle instrumentation with a folky Americana feel. Interesting music, I tend to think of it as small scale and a little quiet but Duccini instead made it introspective and recursive and filled with a different meaning each time they hit a repetition. It engages you and pulls you in without having to pound on you, it's almost a more hypnotic approach in some cases and more conversational in others. Getting the audience to connect to the music and get enthusiastic without that bottom end - no bass & no drums - is challenging but Duccini pulls it off, her music drives when she wants it to and she easily carries the rhythm on the guitar and piano, switching back and forth between songs. Already I'm torn between the first 2 performances, both groups are ridiculously talented and skilled. At this point I'm thinking the decision is between these two acts.

Next Laser Fox takes the stage. I've got to admit, the name is brilliant. It works really well in a chant - wait, I think that's a spoiler. Laser Fox kicked it off with a singer, drummer and two dudes at keyboards, one using an analog (or emulated analog) setup, and one of the two (couldn't tell which) filling in the low end so you had a good base line. It might have been sequenced or prerecorded bass, it's difficult to tell.

The lineup varied a bit from song to song, here one of the keyboard players is playing the bass guitar and the vocalist has taken over at the keyboard. The singer is the focus in this band. On a few songs he played a hollow bodied electric guitar and sang.
Laser Fox looked good, sounded good, and they sounded like they felt good. The crowd started getting into it and dancing and moshing, and the vocalist started strutting around and gesturing as he sang. The dude had charisma to spare and was totally pulling it off with the mosh pit getting bigger and more intense and just eating it up: we loved him. Laser Fox knows how to put on a show, and the pacing and slot (good hot hip-hop to warm up, internal and relationship songs (some were both) to whet our appetite, now a big loud testosterone filled performance - in a nice NW way, we are after all a polite Scandinavian influenced culture topped things off nicely. We were already having fun and then that danceable electronic music hit and we started moving, and the vocalist was moving with us and dancing and dropping and totally thriving on the attention. They got that feedback loop going where the audience intensity feeds off of the band's performance and then the band feeds off of the increasing audience intensity. Hot stuff, we were bouncing around and sweating and moshing.

I was sweaty and sore, and normally I'd expect a let down after 3 acts this good. On the other hand, a buddy had spoken highly of Dames. Dames plays a largely guitar driven sound with keyboards and (judging by the Macs) either sequenced or recorded bits too.

Dames brought their audience with them and turned in a rocking set, keeping the energy level high and making us sweat and bounce even more. The guitarist lead vocalist was the focus through much of the show and his voice held the songs together and felt very personal, like he was talking to you and a few friends, not to a few hundred sweaty fans bouncing around in the mosh pit.

The mosh pit was bigger than ever and fun, filled with smiling people bouncing around and surging off of each other. All the thrashing fans in the mosh pit showed an innate politeness and niceness, and those are not terms I usually use to describe a mosh pit. Seriously, it was the nicest, sweetest mosh pit I've ever been in. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't lame or low intensity at all, it was full of people flying around and surging forward and to the sides and sweating and thrashing, your typical intense mosh pit. Nobody was in studs and leather, no really big dudes who like bruising people, and none of those boneheads who like to cover their faces with a bandanna then do spin moves with feet flying, putting everyone nearby at risk. I was happy not to run into any of that, it made being in the mosh pit after more than 5 decades on this Earth much more manageable.

Dames also had the most elaborate set - they put up a vinyl goose. OK, not terribly elaborate, but probably the best I've seen since The Lonely H did the light sabre duel in the way back in the 2004 Sound Off - they came in second. Not only did Dames bring the crowd, they were great to mosh with and their joy in the performance was infectious and the night ended up being a sweaty dance party on top of a rocking show - and that's one of my favorite things to experience.

I'm amazed at the level of talent on display at the first weekend of the Sound Off contest, every band was great and did something completely different and unique. Laser Fox ended up winning, and they arguably put on the best show. Dames was the runner up so they have a shot to make it as the wild card band and for once the judge's selections seem pretty solid. In the past the judges always seemed to reward the weakest bands, so this was refreshing. I shouldn't be surprised, the judges included Hollis and Marco Collins and I respect them both for their musical taste - Collins helped form or should I say update my taste a few decades back when he was a DJ on a local Seattle radio station and Hollis performs and contributes to some of my favorite musical stuff at a ridiculously high level - you can't nail that many things that well without having exquisite musical taste and judgement. Definite hat tip and high fives all around to the judges for representing and choosing awesome dynamic performers to advance.

I've discovered that the mosh pit is a time travel device. When I get into the mosh pit, my age decreases by a decade or more: I'm much younger and more energetic, and it's a fun and occasionally joyous experience. Then I get out of the mosh pit and go into the cold outside air, and the missing decade comes back from his smoke break, and he's got another couple decades of his buddies he invited over, and I feel SO OLD. I shuffle back to the car lifting my sore feet with my sore legs, sweat evaporating and cooling me off rapidly.
While the end of the evening is a little painful, there's a tautology here that guarantees that it's always worth it. I was sore because I had been dancing and moshing, and that's a spiritual experience to me. At the best shows the music takes you out of yourself and engages you in every way. You move and respond to the music physically, just as you react and respond to it emotionally. You're sharing this experience in a fellowship with the rest of the crowd. Good lyrics engage your intellect too, and emotionally charged writing often fires off associations and memories.

It's a wonderful and intense experience, and I'm always happy to be introduced to more bands that are figuring out how to engage and move a crowd, how to create and present their art and entertain and thrill us. Here's to four new to me bands that are all worth keeping an eye out for and going out of your way to see. All of these bands know what they are doing and I look forward to watching them progress, and yes to, some day saying "I knew them when..."