Saturday night, NYC born, Cleveland bred, and NYC returned twin brothers Aku and Akwetey Orraca-Tetteh brought the noisy future rock of their band
Dragons of Zynth to the Iron Horse, where they opened for Saul Williams. If the name itself doesn't give it away, a listen to their debut album,
Coronation Thieves, and a look at
their Myspace makes it clear that the Dragons are carrying on a legacy that includes far out black artists like Yusef Lateef (under whom they studied musical theory), Sun Ra, George Clinton, and Afrika Bambaataa -- this is space age stuff for computer brains, with electronic beeps and mechanical fuzz on every track.
Aku Orraca-Tetteh
While the electro sounds can at times play a neutering role on the record, a protective film to keep the intensity of the music from fully reaching the listeners' ears, the live performances strip much of that away, allowing the tracks to achieve full sonic force. In what I initially thought was a mis-step, DOZ chose "Anna Mae" -- the
critical favorite in
Coronation Thieves reviews -- as their opener. A slow, dreamy love song awash in the aforementioned fuzz -- and by far their most subdued track -- I thought it would have been a better choice as a late-set come down. As it turned out, the song merely lulled the audience into a pleasant but unsuspecting security before the band pulled out "Get Off",
Coronation Thieves' most dangerous rage-r. Beginning with a soft intro & verse not unlike "Anna Mae", "Get Off" doesn't bust out until the chorus, which brought an until-now quiet Aku out from behind his keyboard, gesticulating wildly while spitting the lyrics at a crowd suddenly brought to life. From this point on, Aku was the clear star of the show, working himself up into a similar state in similar parts of the remaining songs (including jumping into the crowd during #2 rager "Who Rize Above"). Unfortunately, therein lied the problem that became more and more clear to me with each song: DOZ essentially has two sonic formulas, that of "Anna Mae", with it's gentle fuzzy melody, and that of much of "Rize" and "Get Off"'s chorus, with Aku's fiery vocal performance. "Anna Mae" is the most critically beloved track because it's the most effectively realized use of their safe, soft, pop style, and "Get Off" is the album's best track because it's the best synthesis of that formula with the more dangerous one; the rest of the tracks just stand as not-quite-as-good attempts at the two (listen to "Anna Mae" followed by "Labor Day Lung", or "Get Off" followed by "Rize"). However, the magic of the first two songs was enough to leave me with a good impression of the show overall, and the performance on "Get Off" was probably the best performance of a single song I've seen so far this year. The audience (bigger than I expected for a Saul Williams show) responded very positively, somewhat surprising since I imagine the vast majority are unfamiliar with DOZ. Though I don't know how much of that was their east-coast liberal self-satisfaction with being present at a performance by Black People [I never really, completely believed in it until I lived here for a while, but east-coast liberal self-satisfaction exists just as much as the stereotypes would lead you to believe, and being present at a musical performance by Black People is definitely Something White People Like.]
Mp3: "Get Off"Despite the samey-ness of their songs, Dragons of Zynth are still doing something different and far more interesting than most indie-rock blog bands, and it's odd that they don't seem to have collected as much buzz as plenty of their more boring peers. It's also encouraging to see that, despite well-publicized
complaints to the contrary, there's a significant heavily black-including-and-influenced rock community out there. This morning,
Pitchfork posted a new track by
Power Douglas, that features TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe on vocals, and was co-written with Aku. Their new EP,
Pentecostal Fangbread, is out tomorrow, and also features DOZ's Akwetey Orraca-Tetteh on guitar. You can pick it up (so to speak) at
Amazon's download store.
Also check out former DOZ member
Crunc Tesla:
And
Apollo Heights, whose
White Music for Black People was released last October, and I'm bummed I hadn't heard of it until now. Very good sounds. Why did this never even get a Pitchfork review?
