I love it when odd bands find each other and make a night of it. The small but appreciative crowd that came out on Friday night was treated to some weird stuff, something I much prefer to a night of seeing three bands that sound exactly alike. In fact, they were all missing one or more members that you would expect in a standard rock band. And judging from the types of music they play, these were three acts that probably weren't going to go the cover-song route any time soon.

Fkenal plays an intense version of math-rock that is both experimental, yet has its own sort of hooks. They substitute a projector for a singer.





This type of light setup doesn't offer a lot of various looks, so it was all basically sillouhettes.



The spinning RGB color filter in the projector can do cool stuff to drumsticks though.



The black abyss that is the Radio Room suited their light show well, but this isn't a band that needs an extra visual element. Their music is strong enough to stand on its own- it's not a soundtrack.

Corridor is a one-man band that gets lots of sounds from an enormous selection of pedals and a light show of his own.


You'd think that a guy with an acoustic guitar and a cello would make for a quick set change, but it still took half an hour.



One man, one guitar= one nap for me. He did change it up from the typical singer songwriter shtick by using loops and a cello, but to me, that's no replacement for a full band. Backing tracks are too static to be interesting- but any rhythm section player would say that, right?



"Hey, I used to play cello in the fourth grade." I told him as he was setting up. "Yeah," he said, "I get that a lot."



I'm still not all that good at putting words to how a band's music sounds. I'm much more comfortable presenting bands in a visual format. Picking the photos for these blog posts takes me about a minute total. Picking the words takes considerably longer. But, a description of Secret Fun Club's music came to me during their first song- if there was a feel-good documentary about a sex offender, this would be the soundtrack....





... and starring this drummer.



These guys are LOUD. The bass player's rig is its own P.A. system. The distorto-bass sound didn't change much from song to song, but these guys are pretty tight. If you like old-school noise rock like Milkmine and Happy Flowers, go see these guys.



Having such a visible and expressive drummer gave me lots of time to devote to honing my drummer-shooting technique.



Ok, so this was my first time visiting the Radio Room since it opened and to be honest, I miss the Zombie Lounge. I like how the bar area is more open now, but they didn't put a lot of thought into decorating the place.



It's flat black walls everywhere, except for the bathroom, which is now flat white.In contrast, this was the bathroom in April, back when it was still the Zombie Lounge:



It gave you something to look at while you were just standing there for a minute or two. I don't even remember there being a band sticker on the walls on Friday, they're just too clean, no one wants to mess them up.

The stage is bigger now, though, and they have an actual sound system, which is very cool. SInce the first two bands had a white tarp covering the back wall, I didn't get a lot of time to use those purple lights as the background. I think it'd be fun for a couple shows, but I wouldn't be able to to change up the look very much.

It still remains to be seen if the Radio Room is going to be as fun a place as the Zombie Lounge. I've played there with three different bands over the past five years, and it was always a blast. I hope that doesn't get painted over too.