Humanoid and Nightcrawler 1947 at Cafe 9

Tuesday, May 16, 2006


May 10 at Cafe 9

It was billed as DJ DrinkDeeply presents Humanoid and Nightcrawler 1947, but I'm not quite sure what that means. There was a DJ there, she was spinning before and between the bands, but she didn't do anything I would call presenting. I understand when I see Go Kat Go Presents... or DJ Eric Bruce Presents... because those people take the mic and introduce the bands and tell stupid stories or whatever. But that's quite different from this weird invisible presenter thing. The shows at Bar are billed as Shaki presents, but we never see nor hear from Shaki. I'm not sure how I feel about either type of presenter. One seems gratuitously self-promotional, the other seems pointless.
Humanoid are an instrumental noise-metal band. As such, they were a bit slow and repetitive for my taste. But then again, everything seems slow and repetitive for my taste these days. I believe this band has some of the same characters who are involved with Coup de Grace, but this time they're actually playing songs. I had almost the opposite reaction to this band as I did to CdG. In this case, I wanted more chaos, less structure. It's the sort of thing that threatens to jump the line into self-indulgence, but, in this case, I don't think they did. It was more of a shared experiment or an exploration. If only the guitar player on the right would turn and face the audience. They haven't been around very long and I look forward to seeing how they evolve.
I've grown intolerant of technical difficulties in my dotage and so had a hard time getting into Nightcrawler 1947. I suppose they were doomed from the beginning, trying to play Cafe 9. I've never seen electronics work well in that place. They rely heavily on a computer as a third instrument, besides the drums and bass. So, after a while, once they gave up on the computer, it was just drum, bass and vocals. There were moments, though, when it was interesting. Unlike most bands in New Haven, these guys actually offer a performance. They dress up and bring their own lighting effects. The singer has no hair (even eyebrows), the bass player is painted up and the drummer is gender-nonspecific. Besides all that, though, there was music. I'd call them goth-industrial, but I don't quite understand the subcategory system (EBM? IDM? Darkwave?) I think I preferred the songs the drummer sang, mostly because all baldy seemed to do was scream. In either case, the vocals were heavily manipulated with various effects. The drummer's Zombie song is the one that sticks out as most memorable.
Another thing this show did for me was to codify the fragmented nature of the audience in New Haven. It was really the case that everyone present seemed to be for one band or the other and didn't intermingle. It became obvious when Humanoid finished and everyone in front either moved to the back or left, while all the people who had been in back moved to the front. The Humanoid crowd were the typical hipsters I see at a lot of these shows, but the Nighcrawler group were the people I see more often hanging around outside Gotham on Wednesdays. (Nightcrawler also brought in a couple of hyper-violent meatheads, for some reason. I'd think they'd be turned off by the gender ambiguity, but I guess they get off on the aggression of the music.) Maybe that was DrinkDeeply's role here; she provided the link between these two disparate groups. If so, I think she's doing a real service to the community. There are so many different music cliques in New Haven and it's a shame they are so separate. I think they have a lot to learn from one another.

Pictures:
http://flickr.com/photos/oldangelmidnight/sets/72057594135093725/

Bands:
http://www.myspace.com/humanoidsapiens
http://www.myspace.com/nightcrawler1947


Also, I was told earlier that Lars Schulze, the singer from the Cryptones, killed himself. I didn't know him, but I've seen the band and written about them here. It is unfortunate. Apparently, there will be something in the Advocate this week.