Since the Satellite was offering a free Tuesday show after their usual free Monday night, I decided to check out a band called Nightmare Air, and I guess their moniker is not a bad description of their music, as their dark fast-driving textured and discordant sound was swallowing the aerial vocals of bassist Swaan Miller.
With a loud and furious delivery, she was actually sharing the vocals with guitarist Dave Dupuis, who had a broken foot and apologized at the beginning of the show that he had to sit on a stool. He was actually half-sitting, half-standing, as he was managing to work on his numerous distortion pedals with his broken foot, while getting a maximum of noise whirling all over the place.
The red-light and fog-machine ambiance was just increasing a certain idea of danger which was escaping from their music, going from a car-chase soundtrack to a spacey-shoegaze-psychedelic rock to a new-wave-techno dance for a dark nightclub after midnight hours,.. yes these beats, by James Smith on drums, were powerful and a driving force through this loud maze.
The Nightmare Air trio have just finished a debut studio album in Los Angeles, and it should be released sometimes during 2012; I have read they have been compared to Silversun Pickups, A Place to Bury Strangers, No Age, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Mars Volta and The Smashing Pumpkins, so with such a sonic pedigree they should be all right.