MOritat

Moritat did their first CD release for Clill Blanzin at Whistler this past Monday 25 June.  The Friday of that week they played Subt's I think with Sister Crystals but I couldn't make it. So this will be roughly a recollection of that Whistler gig while going on about Blanzin. And all these songs that I heard live are now in a more tangible form.....the CD, right. Before anything is recorded, it feels elusive to me and so I follow. The only way to see it....hmm is to see it. The window of time that I had on that Monday night was short. I had to be somewhere else soon. Every little thing cost time, from parking the car to the stop lights on Fullerton Ave. In many ways this gig will be no different from others I've seen of Moritat. So for this post I got all these pictures that go like way back. They've done Whistler many times before. Doesn't take the edge off the urgency to arrive on time. What a swelling crowd for a Monday night. With all the pictures I have I can just take a few less and just enjoy the performance. There's Julie....of course.
  I rarely go to Whistler on weekends. All live shows are on weekdays and so a packed Whistler is not unusual, no cover. That also means that people can wander out. This place can be brutally indifferent if it wants to, and I hate that. And yes there were people in and out, but also there were many that stayed and listened. So its a wonder to behold when people don't leave, and on a Monday. This was the audience that Moritat held at attention. And I gotta say this....they played Yellow House, from their first demo CD, and the song that first hooked me.
  The first time I saw Moritat (and for some reason I always start with that) something with how Venus played her keyboard in relation with the drums made me identify them as trip hop, not in every song, but enough for me to use that crayon...more than once. And we all bring our box of 64 crayons. Meanwhile they evolve faster than my slow motion pondering. I figured out why I say trip hop. I like the bass, keyboard, drums that always have that burst of urgency around the corner. Every instrument has its own clear imprint with its own separate space. You see and feel every instrument separately as if just jamming.  Noise, the second song on Clill Blazin has this.
  I kept coming back for Noise, they did live a lot. Starts with this bass that plays long just enough. It plays like it's just minding it's coolness, not directly seek attention, but the undercurrent takes you.  They can really sell a jam session, without boring you. You get segments where they are just instruments talking and I close my eyes to jam with them. I don't flop my arms about like in Nocturna but Moritat makes me move.
  Just when you think they sound a certain way, out comes Money to fuck it all up. And it's like Cindy Lauper says. No, wait. I love the song because it seemed so unexpected for me. I do vaguely remember hearing it now 'cause I think its where they make Venus play guitar live. I recall casually holding it down with a PJ Harvey post-it. When you hear the song it dawns the many worlds within Moritat. It makes for a lot of procrastination when writing about them. The first time I heard Money on the CD I thought it was PJ Harvey.  So here we have two different .....hmm sounds that Moritat completely own and project.

  So I'm trying to say with all this is that I like Clill Blanzin in ways I did not anticipate in relation to One Minute Fade or Yellow House. So I'm left with this impression that they are not done evolving and expressing. I did find common threads that span their entire work like with Blind, Yellow House, Noise, Wheelin'. And then theirs Money.....and so you don't see coming their  killer cover of Joy Division's Heart and Soul. I'm not a musician so from my blunt ears they don't do anything different aside from just playing it, and it works!