Live in person

I haven't been to a concert since last September when I went with friends to Columbus to see The Swell Season (or Glen Harsard and Marketa Irglova from the film Once, backed by The Frames). So, I've been looking forward to tomorrow night when my friend Andy and I will be going down to Cincinnati to see Isis and Pelican. These two bands play a genre of music quite different from anything else. It's an intelligent, complex, epic, heavy, ususally slow style of music that, to the casual listener, may sound rather repetitive. But upon further listen it's evident that this is a form of minimalism where lines and progressions incorporate small changes from one iteration to the next, and the tension continues to build over an 8- (or 12-, and even one 20-) minute song. Many people will call it metal music (and there are certainly metal techniques to be found in the riffs and percussion), others will call it sludge because of the slow pace. It doesn't really matter what you call it, since words are inadequate to explain the journey through their songs, although some of the song titles begin to give some idea: Mammoth, Pulse, Bliss in Concrete, Aurora Borealis (not all the songs are heavy), Hall of the Dead, False Light, Weight, Celestial (The Tower)...

Isis uses both yelling and singing vocals, while Pelican has perfected the instrumental epic. Both bands have an ephemeral other-worldly quality to them, perhaps Isis more than Pelican (listen to any song on the album Oceanic). Both lay down a masterfully intricate and well-crafted ebb and flow of sound, and though I've lumped them together here, they certainly go about it in different ways. One of my favorite things Isis does on occasion is build up tension over the course of 5 or 6 minutes, minor chords and yelling vocals, then after a quieter bridge, build the song back up and break the tension with major chords and singing vocals, only (after 8 minutes) to leave you wanting more, as in Hall of the Dead. On the less ephemeral side, Pelican is more apt to rock for awhile, then settle into some sort of groove which feels less like music that was written and more like something that we've all known always existed and was finally discovered, as in March Into the Sea.

It's an interesting side-note that these two bands and apparently other similar bands tend to release their music on limited edition vinyl which consistently sells out in incredibly short periods of time and becomes a valuable eBay item. But the vinyl is often a work of art in itself.

I was able to pick up this 180 gram vinyl record relatively cheap :

These bands certainly aren't for everyone, but are most definitely for anyone who can appreciate truly gifted musicians playing layered, complexly intense (without being extreme) music.