Circuit Des Yeux

Friday 10 August I convinced Greg to go with me to Empty Bottle. We got there on time to see Ruby Fray before them. They deserve their separate posts. Circuit Des Yeux is miss Haley Fohr on guitar....mostly. I don't think she's twenty three yet and her music has this old timey feel to it. At the time of this performance she was a few days into moving to live in Chicago from Lafayette, Indiana. She started the band in High School. Haley sounds deep and old. Her music sounds to me like it would come from someone older. This somehow speaks to me as from a contemporary or elder. It would not be a surprise if she somehow stood out of her age-peers. We Are Hex are from Indiana. I cannot help but wonder if they speak from a similar urban experience or at least....I bring that up because when I like bands I'm always curious about where they're from and how environment influenced the music.  They sound nothing alike of course, Hex and Yeux. I know it's like using the telescope backwards, but that also works too. You ask different questions that way. It makes you extra curious of where they are from.
  It always impresses me to see the artist go it alone like her. You have the full band and you share and delude the tension of having eyes on you. I've seen awesome performers lose the crowd to ipods and such.  There is a lot to distract. And I think you need to not have a short attention span especially for her. Her songs mesmerize and then the weirdness stays with you. But I can see her music having to slow a burn for most younger attention spans..She leans more 21+ than all-ages. I remember her set was loud as hell. At this point for me to say "this is dark...that's dark". Dark barely gets me out of the couch. Everything I go to is dark or I stay on my ass. You look at these pictures and you don't think this "chick" can go loud, right? Haley will blow your ear drums out while putting you in a trance. You are taken by the gentle but loud influence of guitar drones. Swirls of repetition that keep you in orbit. A CDY song is tense like anticipating a truck slowly from around the corner of a mountain road in IRC....Ice Road Truckers?....in Peru? Thats right I only go out some of the time. So there is weirdness and tension. I say weird to describe to the outside what speaks to me on the inside. To me CDY is cool and somehow represented by it. Some of the segments Much of what I had to say about Ruby Fray I can also say here. You are just overwhelmed with her intensity. The people that go it alone on stage always fascinate me. They are the bravest of performers. Twenty and Dry from the album Portrait seems to put you in the moment before committing to an action of extreme consequence. The edge of deep contemplation and in-the-moment intensity. I'm glad she moved here. I can't wait to eventually have the long take of her music and buy the shirt. Greg bought it already. The picture is way cool.
Zig

Ruby Frey

Last Friday 10 August We went to Empty Bottle to go see Circuit De Yeux, more on her on a separate post. Ruby Fray owned this place as well. I looked up one video of the headliner but we were totally unprepared for Ruby Fray. They were fucking crazy. Feels like the impact of seeing School Of Seven Bells and Warpaint under the same tiny roof. The live show hit differently than the CD later.....wait. It totally works for me. I feel fortunate for knowing the music this way. I have not been out much so I was wanting for something to imprint on me. We parked next to the Church on Augusta. Ruby Fray pretty much had me from the first song. I did no research on them until now, well after the gig. You know with me the hurricane has to hit first, then I figure out what hit me and try to catch up. Before I could hold the moment with words the intense weirdness has to hold me before I can name it. I walk in not knowing shit and so for a moment....ok longer than that, I thought RF was CDY. My pictures mostly focus on Emily Beanblossom the guitarist/lead singer. I don't know if it was pure laziness to not move from my spot but the center of the moment was Emily. The crowd seemed modest in size the whole night. Oh, but guess who I saw....Dan The Fan! We usually like the same local bands and so when I see him I know I'm in for something I will like, if not yet. Ruby Fray were like fixers in this haunted, enchanted Otherworld that I wandered into, and kind enough they were to guide me through it. There is no getting away from calling them psychedelic. On CD the songs also have that rural darkness that I found in Man Is Man, Roma Di Luna, but y'all haven't looked them up neither. Rural, and psychedelic is how I can begin to describe Pith, the CD. Like they got no problem taking mushrooms and going where there's little indoor plumbing. If Julee Cruise kept your attention even with The Voice Of Love. It's easy to like the Twin Peaks related Floating Into The Night. So talk to me after you familiarize with Kool Kat Walk....alright where's that fucking map. I'm lost. Hmm oh, yeah. Julee is urban, sophisticated and mysterious. Ruby Fray is who she rents the cabin from. My parents, when I was a kid they would take me to go see relatives that worked far into the farmlands of Illinois. I never liked going as fondly as I remember now. The air smelled different, these relatives seemed so at ease with the quicker country darkness. Their work on the white farmers land kept me safely within the margins of city life, their work. Where was I taking this? Oh....with Ruby Fray, the voice to me wise and womanly at ease with this rural other-world. Live it was more of a full band sound. The music is different....more intimate on CD but no less striking, yet still for that reason I cannot say which ones I heard live first. So which songs sold me again on CD? Northern Washington, Closed Eye, Penny, Barren Hill bring me to a campfire where I go to warm my hands. These are cold, bad lands RF bring you to, but wiser you will feel when familiar to it. I wish I had lyrics to read. On stage you see and hear the whole band and on CD it feels more intimate, but still very intense. So if you bought the CD on the belief that what you hear live will be the same....keep the CD. Give it the chance to see where it takes you.
Zig