[ATTENDED: June 24, 2017] Suffer Dragon
Two trips to PhilaMOCA in three days. This time to see a local band that I really like, Palm.
I arrived in the middle of Suffer Dragon set and immediately went upstairs where no one was (it as incredibly hot once again). I enjoyed that angle quite a bit. It was very close to the stage and you could really see what both guys were doing.
For Suffer Dragon is a duo–guitar (Adam Babar) and one drum (Daniel Betts). I didn’t know any of their songs until I looked them up online–there was basically one live video that I watched. I gather they might be pretty locally famous. Indeed, back in May, Palm opened for Suffer Dragon.
What made this duo different from many other duos is that Betts also played keyboards (drumstick in right hand, left on the keys) and the Babar’s guitar was hooked up to some crazy effects pedals that made many things he played sound very un-guitar-like. He was the singer as well.
I heard maybe five songs. They played a song about Stadiums and while the drummer got his gear set up someone asked the guitarist what his favorite sports team was. He said, um soccer? Then he said he wanted to have a sport that was just sports against each other like baseball against football. But he conceded that football always wins everything. Except for boxing, maybe.
They played a song which he introduced as having written yesterday and it was as short as it is because the power went out while they were playing it.
Their music is angular and noisy and chaotic. When I listened to them online before the show I thought it was just noise. But in fact they are very well attuned to each other and all of their sounds and noises are if not well thought out, then certainly thought out. They were always in synch with their timing and tempo changes.
It made their interesting sounds (during tuning the guitarist’s notes were making space alien sounds, it was pretty wild) all the more logical. I didn’t really enjoy their recorded stuff very much but live they were a really exciting band to see.
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