With Labor Day past, the summer is officially over, though JellyNYC of The Pool Parties fame and Less Artists More Condos teamed up with sponsorship by Smirnoff Vodka for one last party at Under The Tracks / Highline, an alleyway underneath an abandoned railway line tucked into a corner of Manhattan. As this was a few blocks from where I’m currently residing and was free, I had more reason to go than just to see Ecstatic Sunshine.
I first became ware of Ecstatic Sunshine through an Internet acquaintance that worked for Morphius distribution in 2007. I had found The Death Set through Best Fwends and it was from there that I became aware of what was happening musically just 90 miles north of me. Previously, my only previous interest in Baltimore was through the rave scene, which was how I wasted my weekends in high school and most of this decade. There is a lot of overlap now between indie and dance, but there really wasn’t as much back then. Rave was kind of insular and happy to do its own thing at its own pace and fairly resistant to change. When I got tired of hearing the same things over and over and over again, I jumped ship and was ready for nearly anything, so the casual and experimental nature of much of the Baltimore Scene was really much in line with what I wanted.
Ecstatic Sunshine, when I became aware of them, was Matthew Papich and Dustin Wong. Matthew was also in The Death Set, and Dustin was also in Ponytail. Matt left The Death Set and Dustin left Ecstatic Sunshine. I hadn’t had a chance to hear them perform since 2008 previous to the release of their second album Way where they complimented their minimal guitar driven sound with a drummer. After that, it essentially became a solo project, so I was curious if this show was going to essentially be Matt on stage by himself just playing riffs, essentially mimicking their output to now but with just one person. What I got was even more unexpected, but seemingly inevitable.
Saturday afternoon Edwina and I made our way under the highline having been told by a friend that it was amazingly dead and there was free food. After signing a release form that will allow Smirnoff to user our likeness to gain some cultural cachet and being handed a ticket for free dumplings for our trouble, we made our way inside.
Under The Tracks is exactly how it sounds. Nestled in an alleyway between two buildings, it was a makeshift venue that ran under the abandoned train tracks. The walls of the alleyway were being tagged and pasted by street artists and there was the general sense of bohemian decadence at being able to smoke while listening to live music and drinking. The Dumpling Truck had been backed into the venue to provide food, and there were three porta potties tucked into a corner. There was a merch area, and next to it, the Showpaper team had set up to take donations and hand out copies of their all ages show lists. The sound mixer was set up on a barbecue grill and there were visuals being projected onto the stage, but I never saw from where, through I honestly wasn’t looking that close. Behind the stage there was where the open bar had been set up, which I think was probably the main reason for the success of the show.
The first band was Womb Ripper, replacing the erroneously announced Knight School. Womb Ripper is three people playing and a computer, playing standard indie pseudo-punk to a computer spitting out 8-Bit noise. It sounded like Adventure had farmed out additional players to make a band. It was inoffensive, but to be honest, it was not really exciting either.
The Smith Westerns were second and they were frankly kind of amazing. It was a straight emulation of 60s surf pop. No pretences, but with a lo-fidelity embrace which added to the sound rather than detracting from it. The songs are standard feel-good love songs played straightforward and would be perfect coming from a portable record player tucked in with your Beach Boys, Dick Dale and Agent Orange. It was a perfect sound to end summer. I bought their CD for Edwina but haven’t yet had a chance to listen to it myself.
Ecstatic Sunshine was the third act and it was quite different from anything I could have reasonably expected. With the standard bank of pedals, he set up a sampler, and a mixer to compliment the guitar. Using the effects and sampler, what he did was create a set out of building loops and feeds to create expansive soundscapes out of his few instruments. Utilizing minimal percussive pieces he fed back the guitar pieces through the mixer but rather than falling into the trap of hearing a few bars of this over a few bars of that for minutes at a time, Matthew would remain busy on the sampler and guitar and the effects pedal to make certain that the elements stayed consistent they didn’t stay to long to become boring. The performance itself reminded me of WZT Hearts in that there were few discernible independent songs and they just fed into each other. It was rather remarkable and speaks well of what a “solo” Ecstatic Sunshine may hold for us in the future.