The Octopus Project at The Grog Shop

Last night I saw The Octopus Project at the Grog Shop. Well, that's not true. I saw three opening acts and left at 11PM because I had to work today. I'm a feeb, but at least I heard some live music.

The first act wasn't even named on the program. It was a one-man band who got up on stage and humped his synthesizer. He had some interesting sounds sampled, but it had no groove. I suspect that's true of almost all electronic music--the rhythm section is always on the beat, never before or behind--but this was really dry.

I seem to recall that the second act made noise. Gradually escalating levels of noise, followed by silence and applause, then starting up again. I'm not going to dignify them with a link.

The third band was a German techno group, Jeans Team, on a brief American tour. They looked ridiculous but I have to say they rocked it out. Looks like they've been together for over 10 years.

I learned about Octopus Project from eMusic. I downloaded Hello, Avalanche and I like it quite a bit. It's instrumental and mostly electronic, though the drums sound real. High energy stuff, I recommend it.

As much as I hate having to lay out cash every month ($12 for 30 songs is my current plan), eMusic has been a pretty good way to take risks in discovering music. I found Octopus Project through the "neighbor recommendations" function, where your downloads are compared to others'. That's how I got Evil Nine's album You can be special too.

Anyway, I sense another tangent coming on. More later.

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