Two awesome bands from San Diego we saw together this weekend, at a free event sponsored by a new upcoming car company(?!), not sure how widespread their appeal will be on this board, but here goes:
Astra
2012/11/10 Roxy Theater, Hollywood, CA
http://wtrns.fr/q_wgQwXQ1fWjWHZ
These guys are one of the leading lights in the nouveau prog scene. Often-but-not-always-heavy, psychedelic prog rock of the highest order, vocals with long instrumental passages. Two albums with Roger Dean-evoking cover art by Arik Roper. Several members are multi-instrumentalists; on stage they have a (digital) mellotron, two moogs, some other keyboard, & double neck guitar, in addition to guitar, drum and bass. No floor length sequin capes,
yet. This one is four long songs stretched over a fourty minute set. Jim O'Rourke would probably dig them based on his publicly acknowledged affection for Yes, if you need an excuse. Band site with vids to sample:
http://www.astratheband.com/fr_news.cfm
Earthless
2012/11/10 Roxy Theater, Hollywood, CA
http://wtrns.fr/YgpHl3K21oaY1zT
Heavy psychedelic instrumental power-trio acid rock shredding into infinity. This set is one continuous jam, a loose medley of a few of their themes strung together with high-octane face-melting high-gain guitar madness for fourty minutes. Here's a nice live promo vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0zdIvUYpn0 Earthless is kind of the equal and opposite band of Earth, in nomenclature and musical style. If they ever played a show together, the universe would explode.
White Hills also played, but we were unimpressed, and I had to leave to fulfill some lab protocols while my wife stayed for Enslaved, whom she reports were good but I did not have a chance to record them.
When we saw these two play together in San Diego a while ago they had a liquid light show with 5 overhead projectors going by Operation Mindblow (
http://www.youtube.com/user/operationmindblow), not this time though. It's West Coast Psychedelic Rock, you're goddamn right there should be a liquid light show! Some of the vids in the links reflect that, I havn't watched them all the way through, I think we were at some of those shows so these may or may not contain footage of our faces melting off...
As always, I can't get torrents to work, so upload this to dimeadozen for me if you feel enthusiastic.