Are You Electronic?

The Spokesmen checked the Sacramento Electronic Music Festival Saturday night at the Townhouse for the last night of the event. We were basically Lifeliner groupies for the evening and taking in the whole scene. As an outsider to the world of electronic music here’s my general observations of the event:
I have no idea what is really going on with all the tweaking of knobs and buttons on all the equipment! In general each of the acts had a minimum of one or two mix masters hunkered over a table laden with two or three glowing drum machines, some laptops, various other analogue or digital gear and tangles of cords and wires. As the set progresses, these dudes will fiddle with knobs and tap the glowing buttons as if it were a keyboard. To the discerning ear it may seem obvious what they’re doing, but to a newbie the first question we asked ourselves was, “is that stuff legit? Is he actually doing something or is this just something prerecorded he could walk away from?” The answer of course is yes, they are talented skillful at whatever it is that they are doing…It just looks too complex to be true.
Some highlights of the event were:

1) Lifeliner opening up the night with an excellent set of drum and noise machine tweaking 101.
2) The group Homo-Erectus playing their set with oversized paper-Mache Unicorn head helmets.
3) MothSpy donning Zorro outfits had a nice slow groove with ebow guitar and a guest female vocalists.
4) Night Night provided a glorious rendition of Bella Lugosi’s Dead. Best line of the night, “I’m just checking email up here…”
5) DJ duo downstairs using an actual Nintendo hooked up via midi and set to beats. Excellent cover of Ace of Bass.
6) Paper Pistols has a huge sound for just two guys. Turns out Mogwai doesn’t really need 6 or 7 people in the band, just these two guys!

7) Lovely array of fixies displayed up and down 21st street.