The only problem with music without vocals is that your mind tends to wander and wander, because there is nothing to try to understand,… or is it a problem? Live music is usually played very loud – and yesterday was no exception – and I usually struggle to pick up the lyrics, but it wasn’t the case with Caspian who was playing a late night set at the Echoplex. Just like Explosions in the Sky, the post-rock band from Massachusetts used a lot of guitars to build momentum, producing dense sonic walls, alternating between meditative periods and violent moments, climaxing several times during their long ambient tracks.
They seemed really happy to be there, saying it had been too long (three years) since they played in Los Angeles, and, although they didn’t talk much during their set, they performed their atmospheric music for close to two hours, with an encore of three songs, responding to the public’s very positive reaction.
The whole thing was very, very ambient, quite cinematic, if your brain was willing to provide the images, and at times contemplative. It wasn't that nothing was happening, their soundscapes were abruptly and constantly changing like a moody-stormy weather, but you had to do some efforts if you wanted to follow them and stay interested. It was accessible music but at the same time not easy listening at all, and like for any post-rock action, there was no need to search for melodies or classical structure, most of their songs were heavy and foggy meanders, tricking my mind to the point that, when I left the Echoplex, I got the impression they had only played one very long song from start to finish. That’s also the problem I have with this kind of music, I simply cannot differentiate the songs, it’s too cyclic, hypnotic, quiet-passionate-furious-quiet, and I got lost very fast,… but that’s my problem.
Beside the heavily-charged-guitar atmosphere, the music was built around a lot of synth loops, mostly handled by frontman (or was there a frontman?) Phil Jamieson, an omnipresent drumming, either furious or sparse, some rare humming-moaning vocals, and the result was slowly engulfing everyone into a trippy vortex. The audience was rather quiet and still, producing some slo-mo head-banging most of the time, as the music couldn’t possibly have triggered more than this despite the guitar battles and multiple sonic assaults going on. On stage, the members of the band were often bending on their guitars, balancing in synchronization, looking like trees of a forest ravaged by a strong wind.
I didn’t see any setlist, but they certainly played a lot of songs from their last album ‘Waking Season’ – that you can listen to on Bandcamp – and a few others, as this is a band which has already three studio albums and a few EPs under its belt. There was a little variation with their previous material from the album ‘Tertia’, but at the end, the choreography was quite repetitive, the songs started very peacefully, ascending into an almighty crescendo each time, with cathartic guitars propelling everyone in the sky. It was a very efficient and rewarding formula, which was bringing a real emotion that people were mostly keeping inside themselves,… except this girl who came next to me for the last songs, she seemed to have decided that it was a rock show after all, and during Caspian’s grand finale with more drums brought to front – they may have played ‘Fire Made Flesh’ and ‘Sycamore?’ – she was kicking the barricade, doing some hard head-banging, and screaming in the middle of this crowd who was shoegazing so quietly.