My number one question as I walked down into the Yacht Club’s packed, dark basement was how Halo would transfer her studio sound mixing skills to the stage?

Rather than playing individual tracks, Halo created a disorder of sounds that worked to create an atmospheric, ambient tone to the basement.  For the first ten minutes, Halo mixed together a disoriented drone sound as if she was starting the engine to a mysterious spaceship waiting for the crowd to come aboard for the ride.

The crowd walked on board, not really sure of the destination. Halo then began to mix in more sounds, foreshadowing the abundant amount of noises she had in store for the night.

But also, she took her seat in the captain’s chair and commanded the ship by projecting her voice throughout the basement.

I stood shocked at Halo’s vocals, not because of their sound, but after playing a ten-minute interlude I almost forgot she included her voice in her work.

She mixed in her vocals with the next atmospheric tone, which felt like she commanded the ship to a John Carpenter 1970’s horror film.

The noises were uncomfortable and daunting, as Halo’s auto-tuned voice closely resembled the possessed daughter in William Friedkin’s 1973 film, the Exorcist.

Halo then stopped the ship in Berlin, as she showcased her influences of the ambient mix of keys and horns that closely resemble Brian Eno’s solo work, and his efforts on David Bowie’s first album recorded in Berlin, Low.

Soon after, Halo slowly transitioned into her next blend of sounds that resembled Dust.  It started off with a continuous drum pattern, establishing the switch in tone. Then, Halo mixed in an assortment of sounds, ranging from noises of laughter, piano keys, synthesizers, and her auto-tuned vocals.

She closed her performance with the fan favorite, Dust’s “Moontalk.”  At this moment, the crowd starting bopping more back and forth, finally able to recognize a song from Halo’s unique medley of sounds.

Though soon after, the lights came on and the spaceship landed back home.  Halo took the crowd on a journey exploring new sounds, some from my perspective never before implemented into song; making Halo resemble the avant-garde.

I left the basement unsure where Halo will go next in her career.  If after creating three critically acclaimed albums with Hyperdub and collaborating with a plethora of other artists in the experimental, electronic field, she might continue tapping into the sounds of where no other artist has gone before; taking her listeners deeper into the uncharted territory of space.

The post Mission Creek Festival: Laurel Halo @ the Yacht Club 4/5/18 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

With a show that dipped its toes into dub, Detroit techno, and funk, Iowa-City based Purcha$e strode the line admirably through his embrace of the obscure; his music was as out of step as multi-color Christmas lights strung across the ceiling of the Iowa City Yacht Club in April.

Unlike the smooth collage of a well-curated mix, it was clear after only a few tracks that the beauty in the spaced-out dance music came not from what tied each song together, but in how layers of contrast allowed them to drift further apart. In his world, points are scored for sounds with jagged edges and sharp cuts, all while staying in touch with his best intergalactic qualities.

After a jarring intro that featured howling Arabic on top of a Motown drum beat, a tight spiral hook brought the crowd into motion. Equipped with only his grey laptop under the yellow light of the stage, carefully blended tempos helped the punchy acoustics contract and expand as they bounced off of space’s dingy brick walls.

“Love Again”, a month-old single, and perhaps Purcha$e’s most polished offering yet, packed the musician’s most redeeming qualities into three minutes like a Chris Carter tribute; slightly anthemic in its downbeat delivery, fidgety melodies squealed from the stacked JBL’s on either side of the stage. With each glance up at the shuffling crowd, a coy smile confirmed that he was completely contented in his element.

As time passed, tracks picked up additional layers of grit like a snowball rolling slowly downhill. “Vice District #4” and “Tropic Blue” from last summer’s seven-track mini album brought an added boost to the bottom of the EQ, while the detuned chord progressions that ensued leaned on rough, uneven textures. Unlike the retro backbone of earlier tracks, which merged Latin rhythms and soulful claps with bloated bass and kick drums, the final third eschewed any sense of comfort for intensity brought by climbing BPMs that called to mind footwork or dubstep.

The further each song drifted from center, the more appropriate it seemed for the Iowa producer to be opening for Laurel Halo, whose polyrhythmic sound experiments on Hyperdub have been met with unfettered critical acclaim. Where the grooves found in Purcha$e’s live show are inviting in the directness of their loops, Laurel’s are disjointed, chewed up and spit out through layers of distortion, but are no less captivating.

With one final juke, Purcha$e shifted down a gear to make room for a subtle onslaught of apocryphal chants, an appropriate return to the trance-inducing ephemera of the show’s opening minutes. The sinister riff that followed was the sonic equivalent of a room full of art-folk trapped in a darkly lit basement. Matched with a loathsome low-end punch, the jam fizzled to completion, and so too did an unquestionably enjoyable set.

The post Mission Creek Festival: Purcha$e @ The Iowa City Yacht Club, 4/5/18 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

Halo will be performing twice in Iowa City, her first act being on Thursday night at the Yacht Club starting at 10:30 PM.  She’ll be performing her tracks live, which will make for an exhilarating experience seeing how Halo transitions from the studio where she does the bulk of her work to the stage.        

On Friday night, she’ll get to showcase her music as its intended as the songs will be pre-recorded on a DJ set list. This performance begins at 11 PM in the Yacht Club.

Halo’s journey is an interesting one.  She grew up in Michigan, a state full of musical history as it introduced the world to Motown in the 1960’s and brought back rock n’ roll in the early 2000’s with the garage rock of the White Stripes.  

Hailing from Ann Arbor, MI, Halo learned how to play instruments such as the piano, guitar, and violin.  From there at age, 19 Halo began composing music on her own. She drew inspiration from Detroit dance parties she attended, her experience in jazz ensembles, and her time as a free-form DJ at the University of Michigan’s radio station WCBN.

Halo’s musical taste is also influenced by classical theory and the writing of acclaimed science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick who’s known for themes of altered states of consciousness and authoritative governments.  Halo’s latest album, Dust, sounds like a sheet of music straight out of a science fiction film.  

Once Halo established herself as a young composer, she decided to put her work out for public consumption by releasing several EP’s from 2006 to 2009, but really got the ball rolling with her 2010 EP, King Felix, which was released by the New York experimental pop label, Hippos in Tanks.  

Coincidence that the Hippos in Tanks label itself was heavily influenced by Dick’s 1981 novel VALIS?  I think not.  

After working for the record label, Halo was able to collaborate with more musicians similar to her taste, and in doing so recorded an electronica album with four other musicians titled FRKWYS 7.

Halo learned from peers in the New York avant pop music scene, and as a result, she released her breakthrough album for a different, more prestigious label in London, Hyperdub, titled Quarantine.  

Her first album for Hyperdub garnered critical success with the Wire naming it the No. 1 album of 2012, saying “Halo’s confidence with melody and her deftly written and direct, often harshly vulnerable vocal lines raised Quarantine above the vague techno-dystopian mood that permeated much of 2012’s electronic music.”

After the success Halo took her talent and focus to Berlin hoping to take in the city’s rich musical history as an inspiration for future music.  This isn’t the first time a critically acclaimed musician moved from the States to Berlin, as David Bowie ventured to West Berlin in 1976 and there the rock star ignited a paradigm shift on his style by exploring electronic and ambient music; Halo was looking to do the same.

From there, Halo went on to collaborate with more artists, many being musicians outside of her bubble of electronic pop.  She then recorded two more albums with Hyperdub, her latest being the moody, disorienting Halo released in 2017.  

The post Mission Creek Festival Promo: Laurel Halo @ The Yacht Club appeared first on KRUI Radio.