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Anna and I went to check out the Skaters and others at Silent Barn on Friday. I didn’t know much about any of the bands, except for little excerpts here and there I had read on the internet beforehand which helped me not so much, like this one from the Skaters Last fm station:

“Best described as a the moon-chantings of plains Indians who found accidental gateways to other dimensions in rotted old trees filled with bioluminescent bacteria.”

I did know, that as a Berliner (born and lived there on and off), I may or may not have a built-in mechanism that helps me to actually like audio distortion and soundscapes with esoteric meanings. In fact, this past Fall, I spent some of my most productive and inspiring days at this café in Kreuzberg called Wendel, where I would work on my laptop for hours to the tune of detuned guitars, broken balalaikas, kitchen utensils, and circuit bending. I do long for those days, and so I decided to bike the long ride down Wyckoff if for no other reason than nostalgia.

We arrived in time to catch the end of G. Lucas Crane vs. Long Horse. I think. At the door I was informed of the sliding scale suggested donation (between $7-20), and would have probably paid ten, had the girl collecting the cash not pointed out the “overhang problem” I was having with my sandals (which she loved and had herself). I’m sensitive about my feet, and so I paid 7. I wove my way through a group of mostly stationary listeners, to where I could see the table of sound gadgets and a guy connected to them via chords and cables and headphones. He was madly turning knobs, inserting cassette tapes, pressing buttons, the whole time intensely rocking back and forth. There were these three obvious fans in the very front who were offering a response rock, forth and back. It looked evangelical. The sound was layered and heavy, and mixed to the point of almost total distortion. The last song ironically petered out with a solo singsongy underlayer of layman’s music. It made me smile.

We needed a beer at this very point. The “adult beverage bar” was downstairs, so we made our way, and paid 6 bucks for two Busch beers in a can. The first thing that caught my eye amidst the set of Rainbro in the whitewashed basement, was this Barbie Styling Head, which had the hair hacked off (like every Barbie that has survived someone’s childhood). It was creepy and awesome. Rainbro noodled on his tightly strapped indiglo guitar, pensively and carefully turned the knobs of his tetris-like sound gadget board, and delivered a sound that was tight rhythmically, and sounded like a tropical ukulele fed through a Nintendo. It was playful.

Upstairs again, Anna and I waited for headliners The Skaters to set up, as a crowd started to fill in the cracks of Silent Barn’s main space. The Skaters gadgets were set up on the floor of the kitchen, which is where they were played. The most noise-distortion-drone-like sound of the three, the Skaters were the ones that really took me back to the good ole Berlin days. There was a good pain in my brain by the end of it.

We missed the Finnish Kemialliset YsTÄVÄT and Javelin from Providence, not because we had a good excuse, but because we wanted a glass of wine at the Kingdom before calling it a night.