It is difficult to write about music in general but it is even more arduous to describe electronic music, words are missing, you can’t talk about melodies since it is all about beats and noises, but those are only vague words.
Gatekeeper’s set at the Echoplex on Tuesday night was full of beats and noises, but it was more about a sort of aggression of the senses than everything else, with loud throbbing sounds and matching beacon lights, flashing right in our faces, as if the two guys behind their computers had made a bet to make deaf and blind as many people as possible. At the top of this, there were the fog machines constantly filling the space of a dense yellow smog which was making a thick wall between the audience and the Chicago/Brooklyn duo, Aaron David Ross and Matthew Arkell.
I swear, if I see them in the streets, I will never recognize them, as this explosive sound-fog-light display was making impossible to even see a glimpse of their faces.
They said to have worked on Hollywood film scores, which works perfectly to their cinematic compositions filled with sonic swirls, techno beats,… yeah I totally could see epic pursuits and weird apocalyptic fantasies going with that stuff, but this is what bothers me, if it is potential movie background, is it enough?
And where are the images? Apparently in everybody’s head, since, looking around me, most people had closed their eyes and were having their own inner trip, trance-drug like. And it may be what I understand the least in this kind of music, there is no communication at all with the music makers, and there is a strong individuality in the way people appreciate it,… If this is the music of the future, it is quite cold and where is the human contact?
Nevertheless, the two noise-makers seemed to have fun, although I still couldn’t distinguish anything, but they seemed to never have enough of their pulsing lights and sense-killing-brain-smashing-earth-shaking display which, at this point, was looking and sounding more like a Universal Studios ride than a concert performance, but may be that was the goal from the beginning.