COLUMBUS DIY

When I was in high school one of my best friends and his parents lived downtown at a gallery space called Skylab. After a couple of years I caught wind that there was a younger group of people running the space. One of the first shows I caught there at this point was Lambsbread. Through a densely smokey room we talked about Lethal Weapon, Joe Pesci and weed. They kept me coming back to Skylab and now I'm not only close to the people who were running it then, but old friends are picking up the reigns as those people move on.

Last night the weather was great and the bands were late as hell. At some point its annoying. At another point you figure fuck it, its saturday and I dont miss gallery hop anyway. It just gave me time to swill some beer and watch the tarheels get their asses handed to them.

Lambsbread was the first act to play. There was about a year long hiatus of jams from this Delaware 2 guitar/drums free noise act and now they have returned to Columbus. One of the guitarists, Zac, moved to Detroit to be in a band called Traum. Traum is more free jazz which usually isnt my bag when taken from the angle given. The remaining Shane and Kathy played some guitar/organ sets while he was away. That shit tore. Everytime I saw them they set a standard of intensity that was never topped by an act on the same bill. Long story short, Zac is back in town for a while and so is Lambsbread.

The only way you can really describe their sound is as a dense fog of metal and hardcore riffs surrounded by constant churning speed change. A riff starts then fades into the murk as one solo covers it, but you know it will come back through the smoke later in the jam. The last Lambsbread set showed alot tighter soloing and practice evident since their last Columbus appearance. Their jams have been making me think of old biker exploitation movie chain fights and shit like that lately. I'm into it.

Dolphins Into the Future from Belgium was bound to be the gem of the night. While touring through Belgium, Skaters met this guy and dragged him with them. His set consisted of altered tape looping through a 4 track with a infinite stream of effects through a twin reverb fender. Out of the sea of dudes playing solo tapes I've seen I would say this set easily impressed me the most. There was alot of depth and complexity going on which takes a true amount of skill to perfect. Still, I've seen skilled guys who still just can't effect you with their shit, and this guy was painting alot of imagery with his sound. It was refreshing to see somebody this good; this shits valid.

All these kids always roll with the illest records, lately they have been into 80s roller skating music which got a nice dance party popping inbetween sets.

Skaters is always a colorful bunch. They are electronic muck noise at its best from Brooklyn. They manipulate middle tones in the weirdest way, its pretty hard to listen to but if you do theres alot to hear. Think dense electronic middles with alot of depth hidden in it. I like that aspect of this band alot. Or maybe I was just baked as fuck, who knows what they sound like. If you cared you would have went. They were cool dudes to chill with. By the time they finished we all had the munchies so bad we ate bagels and these killer sausages aaron fried up.

After the show Matt Bush had a twilight viewing of "Trick or Treat" featuring appearances by Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne. This movie knocked my metaphorical dick in the dirt. It's about a metal head kid who gets picked on by jocks in high school. He accidentally summons satan while playing a record backwards, then next thing you know, the unholy forces channel the boy and he overpowers every jock in town. Best scene of the movie consists of a girl listening to a tape on headphones of "unholy metal type shit" (actually consists of casio drum loop and weird gross synths) and she can't control the dark force which causes her to strip and masturbate before satan rapes her. Check this movie out to see Ozzy play a preacher for about 15 seconds.

Overall I would say best Lambsbread set I've seen in years, Skaters was solid as always and I feel incredibly lucky to have seen Dolphins Into the Future.