Incan Abraham at Universal Citywalk's 5 Towers stage on Friday, July 15, 2011
I am not sure how to describe Incan Abraham’s music, they are really hard to pigeonhole with their mix of synth-electronic-psychedelic-shoegazing melodies behind mellow-ethereal vocals. The LA band was part of the ‘98.7 fm Close To Home Concert’ series at Universal Citywalk's brand new 5 Towers stage on Friday night. I can say that this new stage is quite impressive, large enough to contain the largest groups that exist, and it could be quite a challenge to occupy so much space for a four-guy-band.
The Incan Abraham quartet played a few of their original songs which slowly expanded through long notes carried by lamenting vocals — sometimes a little bit reminiscent of Bono — surrounded by curious soundscapes, always going into unexpected directions.
Two of them were sharing the vocals, alternating and almost dialoguing with each other, or harmonizing with lazy to screaming voices between spaced-out instrumental parts.
In descriptions I have read of their music, the word pop is used, but I could not really hear it during their set, for me it was more some hazy ambient music than pop, but it could be a lot of things.
Their show at Universal Citiwalk ended into a joyous party, as a group of face-painted young girls joined them on stage to celebrate one of them birthday.
In their facebook biography, the four members of Incan Abraham say they spent their first month of existence as a band ‘in a cabin in upstate NY, throwing sounds against the walls and at each other until the very first recordings were completed’,… although they don't say why they had to go upstate NY!
The quartet appeared at the last SXSW Festival in Austin, TX in March, and released their first EP in 2009 (when they were called Red Tide); since then they've put out two more EPs, ‘Adult World’ and ‘Sunscreen’, that you can download for free on their bandcamp page: http://incanabraham.bandcamp.com
