Ed: This article was originally intended to run last week. However, a more timely article about Elliot Smith was printed instead at the author’s request. Bobby Birdman freaked me out. Y.A.C.H.T. weirded me out. And He Can Jog rocked me out. If you missed their show in the coffeehouse on October 18, you missed out on a great night of music.
He Can Jog, featuring Bryan Teoh and Noah Wark, started it off. Guitars became tones, beats became music, and rhymes became the backbeat. Noah rapped over loose beats and tones created by Erik Schoster (a.k.a. He Can Jog). Teoh tossed in some amazing guitar lines that sounded more like reversed piano recordings.
The three created a form of music that I would like to hear more of someday, whether by them or just in general.
Next came Y.A.C.H.T., an electronic artist who combines great danceable beats with cheap-sounding keyboards to create a very warm and innocent-sounding form of electronic music.
I picked up his limited edition (by limited I mean my CD was number four in a total of 25 CDs pressed) tour CD called Mike’s Crest, which sounds just like a limited edition CD. It has some really amazing stuff, but it also is chock full of a bunch of throwaway tracks that last only 30 seconds.
Really, I just wanted to get his new CD, but I was three bucks short, so I thought better something than nothing.
The show closed with Bobby Birdman. Bobby is a tall, skinny, pale guy who croons over electronic dance music. His voice reminds me of Greg Dulli lush with white boy soul. His music is what The Magnetic Fields would sound like if they only did electronic and if they actually took time to produce their music in a studio.
Needless to say, Bobby Birdman rocks. But he is kind of freaky. He quickly removed his shirt during the show, which showed us a lot (let’s not make this into a Jim Morrison exposure; we only saw the top of hair) down there.
He also decided to spend most of the show singing off of the coffeehouse stage. And if he wasn’t off stage he was at the piano playing amazing, haunting songs with the aid of Y.A.C.H.T., who manipulated the sounds of the piano. This was by far the highlight of the night.
I bought Bobby Birdman’s Heart Caves E.P., which contains six songs (two of which are so amazingly danceable you cannot help but silently groove with your headphones on).
I was glad I saw the show. I only thought that I would like He Can Jog with Teoh and Wark, but I came away pleasantly surprised and with two new CDs.