After a minute or two of quiet instrumentals, Alyx picked up the mic. He held the microphone a short distance away from his face, but his voice carried easily and filled the Englert with a rich, full sound.

It’s hard to describe just how good Alyx is at singing. It seems effortless to him, taking on various vocal runs and belting out his lyrics. He immediately captured the audience’s attention and soon everyone was swaying and nodding to the rhythm.

After the first song, Alyx stood up and introduced himself, thanking the crowd for coming. “I was really expecting like five people to show up, including my mom… hi Mom,” Alyx said, sheepishly.

After this short talk with the audience, he began his song “Runaway,” one of his few tracks available on Spotify. In addition to Alyx’s lovely vocals, “Runaway” featured an impressive guitar solo.

“Runaway” was followed by a spoken interlude that sounded like something you might hear on SZA’s Ctrl. This eventually transitioned into “Body Rock,” their latest single.

After “Body Rock,” Alyx performed a cover of Rihanna’s “Stay,” in which he invited the crowd to sing along. He also brought on special guest Jim Swim to rap a verse on a new song called “Trouble.” Alyx then announced that he and Jim Swim were working on a four-song EP together, aiming for a summer release.

He closed his set by performing “Gimme Life” from his upcoming EP. It featured strong drumbeats and a slightly more upbeat melody than the earlier songs, like something that might be played at a relaxed house party. Alyx’s show ended with standing applause from an impressed crowd. After a stressful week and a hectic day, it was a great way to spend a Thursday evening.

It wasn’t until after the show, though, that I witnessed one of the most striking qualities about Alyx Rush. While waiting for the next artist, Tennyson, to take the stage, Alyx came up to two audience members in the row behind me and thanked them for their energy during his show. He said that seeing them dancing in their seats helped him to be less nervous during his set. The audience members were flattered, and they giggled in delight as the singer walked away.

The post Alyx Rush kicks off Mission Creek Festival at the Englert Theatre appeared first on KRUI Radio.

I mention this little detail because it seems to sum up his entire stage persona.

Philip Rabalais, you see, seems entirely one of us when he first steps on stage, just another skinny 20-something guy in horn-rimmed glasses and a size-too-large flannel shirt, someone you could easily imagine passing by on a Monday morning as you head to class.

This is unsurprising, considering that he’s no touring musician but an Iowa City local, a grad student in the University of Iowa’s Cinematic Arts program.

His introverted stage presence was not helped by the frankly sedate atmosphere that filled the Mill at the time he came on stage, leading me to have low expectations for the show ahead.

From the moment he hooked up his laptop to the Mill’s omnipresent audio system, however, Rabalais became something entirely different. Seemingly out of nowhere, the kid who had sheepishly mumbled “hello, I’m Philip” into the microphone flooded the Mill with bass and beats so infectious that half of the audience instantly fled their tables for the dance floor.

Phillip Rabalais had become a DJ, with all the low-brow, beat-heavy, Saturday night sensation-seeking sensuality that the term rightfully implies. With that baggy hipster flannel off of his back and thrown to the floor, the transformation was complete.

Setlists are useless when describing the flow of Rabalais’ performance. His songs had no distinct beginning or end; rather, melodic elements dropped in and out of the mix as the beat shifted up and down tempo according to Rabalais’ whims.

At times, I felt that he was composing new tracks on the fly, stitching new beats together from the wealth of samples presumably stored on the Macbook he that had hauled on stage.

His sound itself was heavily dominated by looped vocal samples. Rabalais wove a tapestry of male and female voices that were so heavily distorted that it was hard to tell if they were human or if they had been computer generated.

At other times, flutes, synths and sax entered the mix, hinting at the forms of more conventional dance genres but never quite conforming to them. The inhuman distortions of Blank Banshee and similar vaporwave artists are perhaps the most obvious mainstream touchstone for his sound.

The key difference between these artists and Rabalais, of course, is that all the ironic trappings of the internet faded away as he performed live and in person.

With all of the tables trembling and the dance floor full, the kid on the stage and the surreal, warped and modified sounds coming out of his laptop had somehow captured the schism between reality and possibility that gets crossed after a few drinks on a weekend night.

And as the show finally drew to a close, it was clear that Philip Rabalais himself – the shy grad student turned explosive club DJ – embodied that possibility better than anyone else in the room.

The post Witching Hour: Philip Rabalais @ The Mill 10/21/2017 appeared first on KRUI Radio.