Gel Set and HIDE

  I saw Hide and Gel Set at Empty Bottle at a Free Monday. Hmmm, well, at least that is how I recall it. They both are from Chicago. Hide seem mysterious, ....they remind me of Die Form. Its a wonder they are not far more known than they are. I downloaded two songs and they are fabulous right. But right now .....Heather is gorgeous on stage. But I would not remember that if I did not like the music. The fucking music!!!! They are somehow tapped in and just share this hard, dark electronic, industrial vibe....like Die Form. They don't pander, they share. Pandering just telegraphs. They are and create what you like before you know you like it. So I said mysterious, right? Heather bounces and writhes around the stage in a deep fog elusive even as she performs right in front of you.     This is the third time I see them.
  Gel Set opened and she was fabulous.  Her song writing is also very impressive. I'm trying to say about Gel Set......she drops you in the middle of the trance. Like an untimely interruption to a meditation, dropping in the moment, and there's like no fucking slow lane in the high way. You just have to work for this hypnotic euphoric feel. I'm glad she is from Chicago.
   The two bands that I caught, basically have it deep within their being that intangible knowledge of what compels people to dance. And Gel Set is a vastly different animal from Hide. Gel Set is cleaner sounding and Hide is more harsh-abrasive. I feel that Gel Set can produce that feeling of being in the middle of the night. She does not need to work into that midpoint. She just puts you there. Drops you in.  The beginning of the night seeming far distant but so is the end, distant. In the tunnel well before the light. The way some playwrights or writers can put you in the middle of a scene and right from there you are hooked to the action of the story. This is for me what Gel Set does in her music.  For me she seems  aware of conventions.....all these ways of making you fucking move and then does it some way you still did not expect and it hits you in the front like a truck, and that last line I would apply to Hide as well. You know with one song the depth and the breath of what they are capable of. One song and I feel, I know this is a brilliant songwriter, and this is a feeling I also have of both. And as Gel Set is on stage in full view, Hide merges from and into the fog. Vicious and mysterious, Heather is all over the place. Beautiful, dark and intimidating.
Zig

The fog made pictures difficult to take. This is no complaint. For me this is part of the mysterious. The fog is indeed part of the performance. Another veil to wear. Indeed Heather came out with a veil to cover her face before taking it off.