These Are Powers at Market Hotel. — Photo by Benjamin Shapiro

It seemed to be in a fit of cosmic appropriateness that, as the Dow average plummeted to the lowest point since 2002, my buddy Sean and I found ourselves last night participating in an alternative market economy at the fittingly named Market Hotel. We walked in late after drinks at my place to find a small crowd sputtering with nervous energy. I hadn’t been to Market in a while; the last time was marred with sound problems. Thankfully, Adrienne from Cake Shop (a Bushwick resident until she left us for Yonkers… lame!) was running sound and everything sounded as it should.

We came in halfway through Katie Eastburn’s set. You might know her from her work with Jarrett Silberman in Young People, a terrific band. But while her work with Silberman is often accentuated by neurotic tension, Eastburn’s sonorous voice seemed entirely at ease riding atop a keyboard and drum machine. Halfway through the set, as if on cue, a small semi-circle of devotees fanned out in a semi-circle around the stage, swaying gently. I had never seen her solo before, and left feeling that this format suits her murky bedroom pop sound well.

Next up was Soft Circle, the one-man disco assault weapon manned by Hisham Akira Bharoocha of Black Dice and Lightning Bolt fame. Bharoocha has been involved with a million incredible things around the city, most notably as the musical director for the BOADRUM events that we all cherish. On records he often works parallel to his friends in Boredoms, creating ambient pagan atmospherics akin to Yoshimi and Yuka. Last night he eschewed his typical tribal moodiness by drawing heavily from the disco idiom, a genre that connects to his interest in repetitive music; Bharoocha would loop a guitar line with his back to the audience and then spin around to add driving 4/4 beats on a trap set. Sadly, the set itself felt uninspired, more like messing around with his new looping gear than self-assured performance. After three or four songs the repetition of form bordered on burlesque and my friends and I had to go get some air and more beer.

We picked up some delicious Yuengling (amazingly, a 22oz still costs a buck-fifty) and headed back to catch the tail end of TeenGirl Fantasy’s set. I like these guys a lot. I overheard a few people gushing about them in the smoking section, sounds like Todd P shows have yielded gold yet again. While disparate critical references to Fort Thunder and Jan Hammer are apt, Logan Takahashi and Nick Weiss go father, stretching endless ironic overtones across media to project a saccharine bricolage fantasy space of nostalgic pop references. Their music is merely one element of the experience; they have collaborated with Providence-based super-genius Paperrad on various other projects. Also, TF have the best band website ever, hands down. 

I eventually pushed my way up front for a better view of These Are Powers. This band’s progression over the last few years has been amazing, and their new articulation of the ghost-punk aesthetic, "All Aboard Future" (out last week on Dead Oceans) is perhaps their most eloquent expression. Whereas their previous recordings hinged on a sort of anxious instability, "All Aboard" steps confidently into a new engagement with technology while keeping a foot in their previous work with spectral dub and tribal skree. TAP’s performance at Market Hotel reflected this; I’ve seen them frustrated with sound problems in the past (their set up revolves around an impressive array of phasers, flangers, and distortion pedals), but last night the sheer energy and assurance had the crowd moving in undulating waves. What kills me about TAP is their showmanship. Bassist Pat Noecker’s tribal windmills find their counterpart less in Townsend and more in the hypnotic dances of the cultists in Robert Siodmak’s Cobra Woman. When they’re on, TAP’s live shows feel like a form of invocation, a communal call to pagan worship.

When Noecker referenced the current economic crisis between songs it was with an air of optimism for substitute modes of existence. And during the last song, when he, Anna Barie, and Bill Salas invited crowd members onstage to rattle assorted percussive instruments, I think that some of us got the feeling that, under the threat of so much economic instability and technological alienation, there are unlimited potentialities for realistic alternative models of artistic interaction.

Sadly, I had to go to the next thing and couldn’t stay for Telepathe … Did anyone catch their set?