Saturday, November 12
Doors open at 7pm. It's an early show, supposed to be over by 10, so expedience is of the utmost. It's 7:28 and everyone is still outside. It's cold enough that my extremities have slipped uncomfortably into that purgatory of numbness. Things are behind schedule, I'm cold and pissed off- it could be going better. It's times like this that I sometimes ask myself how much I really want to be going to what ever show it is I'm in line for. Not this time, M83 was playing and I wasn't going anywhere. No level of frostbite, hypothermia, or barrage of scalpers and homeless people was going to keep me away from my most anticipated show of the season. The same unfortunately can't be said for the 50 plus people lined up hoping to get a ticket at the door. Not likely as they were only selling 20; it would seem the show, part of their tour promoting the recently released double LP, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, had more or less sold out some time ago. Those people missed out on one of the best shows I've ever been to.
Special and innovative efforts seem to have been afforded to setting the mood as the festivities initiated. One of Dreaming's most fascinating attributes is how it's such a transformative and other worldly experience. To successfully recreate this state of mind the crowd would have to be sufficiently divorced from reality. A certain level of sensory deprivation and disorientation would be required to accomplish such a feat. Well, that definitely happened. A phalanx of assaulting and vivid flood lights, blanketed the audience, as ferociously deep and absurdly heavy tones engulfed the room. You couldn't so much as hear the sounds as you could feel them- battered and burdened by them, deep in your core; and maybe even a little below it. You could't so much as see the lights as your retinas were scalded by them. It was intense and destabilizing, shaking you loose from an apparently tenuous grasp on reality. Perfect. As the sensory bombardment eased, a figure emerged from the chaos. Rather than any obvious member of the band, a just shy of impossibly tall figured took to the stage, cloaked in black ceremonial robes, and wearing something similar to the alien/anteater mask that was revealed with the debut of “Midnight City”. He raised his hands as if he was gesturing to a brainwashed cult. It wasn't until after the shock and awe of such a creature wore off that I noticed that the standard and mundane constructs that cluttered the back wall of the Venue stage had been draped with a starry light back drop. It was gorgeous and went a long way from orphaning me from the last cognitive vestiges of being at regular show in a regular building. I was out in space (I promise I wasn't on drugs).
