Bentley Anderson was a big fella psychguitar noodler. He played seated with a wide array of pedals in front of him. The sound was looped and processed which gave rise to a meditative effect. He played a couple of long form meditations that tucked and rolled with the final section ending with a muddily processed field recording of Amazing Grace.
SBHOTM is a loose collective of musical freaks from the Boston area. They work on psych, noise, drone improv. There were 6 people on stage. Check that, 6.5, the 0.5 being a mannequin head with a Mohawk and terminator shades fixed to a mic stand that peered menacingly at the crowd. Four people twiddled knobs one being a Moog, another a Mellotron. They were joined by bass and drums. One of the twiddlers was a young lady who was either a Karlheinz Stockhausen devotee, or someone’s niece working a summer job as freak drone operator. At the start of their set, one dude duct taped some oak tag to the wall as a receptacle for a decidedly lo-fi video screen which he proceeded to shimmy in front of as he sang. The songs were very Can-like with garbled vocals and a motorik drum and bass assault. One tune had the singer opining on “sweating the small stuff”. I have seen this outfit several times since the early oughts. One memorable show in the back room of Bar had the crew dancing around a stolen Charlie Brown tree with drum and cymbal cases on their heads in a sort of a long-haired short-bus Bacchanalia. Look at SBHOTM on Spotify and you will see countless releases, many live recordings of this ever shifting group. I should note that pre-show and set breaks was expertly helmed by DJ Caren spinning vinyl, she had the good sense to play some Dire Wolves, a perfect trippy jammy mix. This group is way out and not for everyone’s taste but they are truly original. They ended their set with an unceremonious “thank you”, as if to imply “haven’t you people had enough?”
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