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Poeticism meets the digital age
by Nikki Cormaci Apr 26, 2006
Show Review Nikki Cormaci The Cinematic Underground Radio Radio Thursday, April 20 Romantic poeticism met the digital age in The Cinematic Underground’s performance of its concept album, Annasthesia, at Radio Radio Thursday night. The Boston avant-rockers transcended genre, painting a gorgeous, multidisciplinary, filmic universe that paid loving attention to the details of structure and aesthetic unity. The ingenuity of the group was revealed through their employment of found materials. In one moment, the bassist played water-filled glassware loaded in an internally-lit, vintage, blue suitcase atop a beat-up aluminum garbage can. Later, the suitcase was closed and used as a prop for the dramatic departure of “the girl,” who overturned the trashcan, and beat the hell out of it in a percussive duet with the drummer locked in gorgeous intensity. In another moment, the bassist and female vocalist strapped bicycle wheels to their necks, flanked the band on either side of downstage and rattled the backlit spinning wheels with drumsticks. The imagery of the wheel also served a deeper purpose, as a metaphoric nod to the structural template used in the story’s creation. Nathan Johnson’s three-act story of love and loss oscillated from its initial moment of quiet potential to the explosion of inevitable climax in the dead center of the second act only to wash up at the end of the third in a mirrored reflection of the first. This was not coincidental. Nathan, a former biblical studies major, modeled Annasthesia off the analogical structure of ancient texts, in which linear structure is swapped for a more universally harmonious structure of concentricity. This meant the climatic title song in the heat of Act 2 sat at the axis of a large wheel, and more beautifully, this moment of highest energy was actually the origin of everything that came before and after it. Despite the extreme intellectualism of its conception, Annasthesia was remarkably accessible. The performance’s multisensorial ambush indicated the band’s generosity rather than its indulgence, and each of the component parts of the performance were compelling in their own right. Particularly captivating were Zachary Johnson’s watery illustrations, projected on the band and the backdrop, which storyboarded the musical narrative, heightening its filmic nature. The Cinematic Underground show opened with the Monday morning vocals of acoustic Brit rocker Chris Mears. Katie Chastain followed Mears, unleashing the voice of scorched Texas in a set of impressions tinted with tortured fragility.
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