Tmas
(Dudley)
Tuesday 3 Jan 2017, 7:15pm
Hi all,
25 year old music grad here who hasn't played live in about a year and is seriously missing it!
I'm essentially hoping to start a sort of dance influenced collective/community with like-minded people.
Nothing too intense or complicated - not wanting to play live jungle/gabber/horrible Ibiza house or anything, just a constant four to the floor beat with short bass ostinatos and various synth 'riffs' - almost psychedelic in the unrelenting waves of sound. Harmonically and structurally extremely simple, again rather psychedelic in nature.
In terms of influences, the most obvious would be LCD Soundsystem - I'm thinking the entirety of 45:33, 'Yeah' (either version), Us vs Them, Get Innocuous etc.
The absolute main ethos of the group would be to get people dancing. Another would be that this wouldn't be 'my' or anybody else’s band so to speak - it would be a community project, where we all respect/value others ideas and place a higher value on the overall sound of the group rather than individual parts (similar to Goat’s ethos). As a hobbyist programmer, I have a couple of ideas for projecting interactive visualisations onto the group/a white screen whilst we play and create a serious audio/visual feast for people to fully get lost in - it's something we probably look into further down the line though. Personally, I would eventually like to completely de-personalise the music and play behind a semi-transparent curtain and fire projections onto it, but that is something that can be discussed.
Another focus would be on the idea of the 'set' rather than individual songs. Much like a DJ set is a continuous stream of music, I'd like to create (with others) an essentially relentless wave of music that the crowd can get washed under and just zone out to for 45 minutes or so (and then get assaulted by a cluster**** of noise at the end). No talking in-between tracks, just music. I'm not entirely sure as to whether it would be better to create a collection of 10 minute(ish) distinct tracks and have them link into each other or just go full Steve Reich and create essentially one extremely long track that slowly evolves over its course - that's something we could discuss.
If this is something you could get behind, I'd really love to hear from you. If you think you can provide anything useful to the group or just want to get involved then please do get in touch. I guess first and foremost I'm looking for people with preferably analogue synths, as that would be the main focus of the sound. Also an absolutely solid drummer who will happily play constant 4 to the floor-esque beats would be amazing (I could potentially do it myself but I'm not the tightest drummer). Solo guitarists/vocalists aren't really necessary I'm afraid - the tracks won't really be 'guitar based' and myself or somebody else could cover any part that comes up, as roles likely won't be static in the group. I'll personally probably swap between bass guitar/aux percussion but again we can just figure that out when we actually meet up.
In terms of gigs, I’d be more tempted to hit the warehouse/party scene more than the more established 'rock' venues, as the underground scene has more people who would be 'receptive' to dance music, but again this is just an idea that's up for discussion. Anybody who is already on the scene or knows promoters would be a huge bonus - if not then we'll have to get networking!
Cheers guys/gals, I know that this area is known for it's classic rock bands, but with the continuing rise in popularity of places like Digbeth, I seriously think that this could be an extremely fun and artistically satisfying scene to break into!