Right after seeing Prize Country, I went back to the Soda Bar to check out MutantSpaceBoy's first show.



That's the best group shot I have, unfortunately. But, it's Harley Magsino on bass, Gabriel Sundy on Sax and guitar, and two other guys I haven't met yet.



The new album is Gabriel's multi-year project that has finally come out on CD. Some of the music goes back to 2004, so as might be expected, it sounds very different from what the live band was doing. Half the set was songs from the album, and the other half was improv.



The lights here have an incredibly ugly color scheme, so I found myself converting most of them to black and white, leaving just a few with a hint of color. The lighting is very uneven across the stage, but the couple bright spots make it perfect for some experimentation.





Harley is a sick bassist, and I could just stand there and be mesmerized by his chops and ability to know when to hold back on using them. Since he was standing under the brightest spotlight the whole time, I decided to go for the high-contrast/Blue Note look. He's got a pretty bass too, one of these days I'm going to have to ask to play it. I've got a really funny story about the last time I played a 6-string bass, but I'm not going to tell it here.



Nailed it! Catching drummer tricks is hard when it's your first time seeing him play and you don't know when they'll be happening.



The music is hard to describe, especially for me. It reminded me most of the Jeff Beck: Wired album, which also had crafty guitar work layered on rock beats played by jazz musicians. It's four excellent players listening to each other and reacting, so it has some brilliant moments and some uninspired moments but it's always interesting. They played some songs from the CD and maybe it was just because it was a different lineup but they sounded quite different from the CD.

The crowd loved it.