Blogarhythms

The first time I saw Hot Chip in concert at Great Scott in Boston’s Alston neighborhood during March of 2006 I was also treated to an opening set by local act Big Digits. I knew nothing about them, but the two-man group wowed me with their on-stage warm-up routine of stretching and calisthenics, earth-quaking bass, high-energy, drum-banging antics which left them and the crowd a sweaty mess, and a song called “Why Did You Reject My Steve Perry Fan Fiction.” Subsequently I discovered they’re members of a Boston-based arts collective called Compound440r, that the collective has a blog, and my introduction to them has actually facilitated the revelation of even more good music!

It was at my second Big Digits show, at Northampton’s Eagles Nest, where I was introduced to another 440r group, a male/female duo called Crystal Understanding. It was a stormy night last January, and when Emeyesi and I stepped off the soggy Noho streets into the Eagles we were greeted by the sound of arty, lo-fi, retro Electropop, and the sight of a cute girl singing and playing a keyboard next to a dude with a crazy beard. We shot each other a knowing glance and bowed our heads in a nod that said “awesome.” A copy of their EP was procured after the show, but we really wanted a full-length, something we didn’t get until this Summer. That LP, Hold the Gem, is a 12-song collection of crunchily melodic Post-Punk fashion-Goth video-game Electro beats (their sequencing software was originally designed to make songs for video games) topped with boy/girl harmonies ranging from dramatically tremulous to preciously playful, calling to mind acts as diverse as Joy Division, The Eurhythmics, The Blow/YACHT, and Architecture in Helsinki.

Listen to Crystal Understanding “World With No Windows”

Though not a member of 440r, I discovered Brooklyn-based George Lewis Jr. through a link to his MySpace page in a post on the 440r blog advertising a show he was playing at the Middle East alongside Big Digits. His music was vastly different from anything I’d heard out of Big Digits, Crystal Understanding, or their homies, but I was just as taken with it, particularly the tune “Hold Me.” I was blown away by the song, a lo-fi soulful rocker made in the mode of the formative years of Rhythm & Blues-based Rock ‘n Roll. I must’ve listened to the track 20 times in a row that night. The last time a song affected me like that was the soulful Folk of Ray LaMontagne’s Sam Cooke and Otis Redding riffing “Trouble.” “Hold Me” is a similar song, in a similar vein, so it’s unsurprising it’d hit me in a similar way. I plied George for more information, but he only proffered a few tidbits about an EP featuring “Hold Me” which he hoped to release soon. A little digging turned up his membership in a “rockin’ trio” called Mad Man Films, based out of Boston. As recently as this month a bulletin on his MySpace page advertised the Hold Me EP as “coming soon.”

Listen to George Lewis Jr. “Hold Me”

-El Keter