As I mentioned a few days ago, this week was the NOVO instrumental music festival that my friends at Mobtown Studios put on at the Windup Space. I think at one point I thought it'd be cool to try to go to all 5 nights of the festival, but since I had just finished a month of temping and was catching up on deadlines all week, that just didn't happen. Really I'm still trying to get back in the groove of seeing shows since my son was born, and getting used to the idea of just leaving him at home with his mom and getting out of the house for my own sake. So Thursday was the only night of the festival I checked out, because I was already out covering another show for Noise and wanted to swing by and see my friends' show too, and it turned out to be a good night to go.

The 2/3rds of the night's bill that I saw were Yeveto and Nathan Bell. I didn't know anything about Yeveto other than that they're Windup Space owner Russell de Ocampo's band, and I'm happy to say they were great and totally deserved to be on the bill regardless of one of the festival's organizers being in the band. It was pretty, patiently unfolding guitar/keybs/drums/cello music, and really any band that opens with a song in a 11/12 time signature like "Untitled (Remote Unelectrified Villages)" has me hooked pretty quickly. Aural States is going to start posting the live recordings from the festival in the next few days, but in the meantime the Mobtown site has audio from Yeveto's Microshow last year and that stuff sounds really good too. I'd never heard Nathan Bell before either, at least outside of the context of his playing in Lungfish, but his band was a pretty cool combo, with him switching between banjo and trumpet, and backed by a sitarist and a drummer/guitarist. I wasn't as rapt during their set as I was with Yeveto, but the sound combinations Bell's band came up with were just bizarre and beautiful. Right now the last show of the festival is starting, and I'm sure it's gonna be awesome, but I think I'm gonna stay in again.

(Yeveto photo by Al Shipley)

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 06, 2010 at 9:26 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.