It’s that time of year again: when headlining bands go on at 1:45am after inching their way across south-western Ontario through a snowstorm. But this is entirely understandable when said bands are Oakland’s experimental hip-hop contingent Subtle and former Hella basher Zach Hill. Californians are not a winterized people. No matter. It was a Saturday night, and the 40 or so souls up past their bedtime seemed intent on catching every last note.
And last notes are what we heard in Subtle’s case — for a while anyway. According to a MySpace post, this current tour is to be their final fling while singer/conceptualist Adam “Doseone” Drucker explores the supergroup scene with TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe and the inexhaustible Mike Patton. Despite the late hour and a rushed soundcheck, Subtle brave-faced it through a good chunk of their latest opus, ExitingARM — with Doeseone once again doing the lion’s share of the entertaining though rapid-fire raps and endless between-song banter. The set wasn’t nearly as memorable as their last performance here; stacking the bill with such show-stealing tour-mates as Zach Hill and Pattern is Movement probably didn’t help things.
In particular, Philadelphia’s Pattern Is Movement quickly won over the crowd with their idiosyncratic drum-and-keys free-dance freak out. Not unlike the nerd-as-cool image of Toronto’s own Dan Werb (a.k.a. one half of Woodhands), the lads in PiM play with a passionate intricacy that belies their literally massive presence. (Until Les Savy Fav's Tim Harrington and Fucked Up's Pink Eyes decide to team up, these guys will remain the biggest and bearded-est indie act around.) Drawing mainly from their Hometapes-released album All Together, singer/keyboardist Andrew Thiboldeaux wailed with an operatic sweetness — which almost sounds like a more refined combination of Frog Eyes’ Carey Mercer and Dirty Projector Dave Longstreth — over drummer Chris Ward’s frantic stop-start beats. Even with Ward’s ongoing hi-hat problems, tunes like “Sound of Your Voice,” “Peach Trees” and a brief cover of Phil Collins' “In the Air Tonight” had the crowd primed for a rapturous sing-along finale.
But the highlight of the evening came with Zach Hill’s performance of “Necromancer” from the second disc of his recent Astrological Straits record. Fittingly, for a drummer who’s just gone solo after seven years with avant-thrashers Hella, this performance would feature Hill alone, drumming to a recording of Brooklyn jazz pianist Marco Benevento’s half of the 30-minute free jazz duel blaring through three monitors positioned around his compact kit. The backing track, however, was merely a point of reference for the unrelenting frenzy of Hill’s playing.
With long dirty-blonde locks down over his face, Hill steadies his breathing during Marnie Stern’s triple-tracked spoken intro to “Necromancer.” And then — @#%%!!!!@&##aaaaarrrrgghhh — more motherfucking drums than I’ve ever heard, all tumbling over each other like the sound of an entire scrap yard being bulldozed into the grand canyon. High velocity break beats collapse in on themselves, cymbals implode in white heat sizzle and the incessant machine gunning of impossibly precise bass drum patterns. Hill’s playing is nothing short of mind blowing — albeit entirely self-indulgent — and all I can do is stare in disbelief as the intensity gets ratcheted up with each passing minute. It’s almost as if Ornette Colman’s double-quartet Free Jazz album was being channelled through one player.
Hill pauses only twice during the entire performance, and looks up at the crowd even less. It’s like he’s possessed, or at least tapping into some percussive stream of consciousness that I’ll never understand. By the end of the 45-minute set I’m utterly exhausted. But walking to the back of the room in a daze I realize that all I did was listen to him play. By 3am, when Subtle finally wraps up their set, I feel like I’ve earned my exhaustion.