Devotional Fade

Did you know I co-host a radio show? It’s called Mostly Minnesota Music, and it runs for 2 hours almost every weekend on WMCN from the Macalester campus. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now and absolutely love it. Every week, we pick a theme and then find and crowdsource music by Minnesota musicians to fit the theme. It has opened my eyes to many local bands and acts I had never heard of before, and has definitely sparked some new obsessions, including Alpha Consumer. I feel like we have an Alpha Consumer song play nearly every week, and every time we do, I stop and mention something to my co-host about how much I love the song. I’ve always dreamt of seeing the band live, and that finally came true on Friday night.

It felt a bit weird driving to the Cedar Cultural Center. The West Bank of Minneapolis (where this venue is) used to be my home away from home. It was where I would catch shows at The Triple Rock, Nomad, Palmer’s, and, way back in the day, the 400 Bar. All of those places are gone, and all that’s left standing venue-wise is The Cedar and Acadia. The West Bank is a super-vibrant community full of people from all kinds of cultures. You can’t just see it; you can smell it as you walk past small restaurants, each boasting everything from Iranian to African food. The smells are divine, and just seeing so many people out and walking around has always made this part of a town one of my favorites, but one that, now that a lot of my old haunts are gone, I don’t go to anymore. I was excited to get back here and to spend my Friday night at the non-profit, volunteer-run Cedar Cultural Center.

Alpha Consumer was the opening act on Friday night, and I could feel my heart skip a beat as the trio took the stage. I didn’t know what side I was going to get from this band, as the singles I had heard over the years have been all over the place, but I knew that I was going to get something spectacular, and that’s exactly what happened. The set started with an almost meditative cymbal ring from drummer J.T. Bates. I watched, completely transfixed, as J.T. raised and lowered this super small cymbal into the air while hitting it with a timpani-mallet-looking stick. It wasn’t aggressive, and there were times when I felt like I had to strain my ears to really hear the cymbal, but that’s what pulled me in and made the moment when Jeremy Ylvisaker joined in on guitar. Michael Lewis joined in on bass (and eventually, saxophone).

Alpha Consumer’s set was full of foreign sounds and familiar feelings. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, given what I had heard from them before this show, but it was absolutely lovely and stunning. There were moments of complete calm and even quiet to the point where I swear you could hear a pin drop in the high school gym-style venue, but there were other moments where swells of sound and emotion were almost deafening. You didn’t just hear or feel these swells; you could see them as J.T. Bates would quickly rise from his drum throne to really emphasize a cymbal roll or a drum hit, then return to his seat as the wave receded into meditative peace. It was stunning and really added an element to this act that I won’t be forgetting any time soon.

I don’t know how many songs Alpha Consumer ended up playing. Truthfully, I wasn’t counting. I was barely even taking pictures because I felt so lost in the world that they were creating for me and the rest of the audience. Was I so far behind on this local supergroup that their sound had changed from the more upbeat and standard kind of songs I had heard on the radio show, or were they catering their set for what was to come from the headliner? Honestly, I didn’t care. I was in love and so happy to scratch their name off my bucket list, but I only lightly, because this is one of those bands I will absolutely see again.

Although it was Alpha Consumer that got me through the door for this show, as far as making this my pick for Friday night, I was intrigued to see what Matt Gold & Dustin Laurenzi would be all about. The online description of their new collaborative record, ‘Devotional Fade,’ called it “electroacoustic rhythmic improvisations – equal parts meditation and dance.” I mean, what does that even mean? I couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t hear it in my head, but as soon as these two master musicians took the stage and started performing, it all made sense.

There were pieces throughout their set that felt very barebones, almost ambient, but then there were pieces that felt much more boisterous and, dare I say it, even mainstream, with the way the beat hit and intricate layers of everything else these two musicians were creating. I loved how I could get lost in my own head at moments, but when things were starting to get a bit dark, as they often do when I go into my own head, Matt and Dustin would pull me out with an infectious groove that left me wanting to do nothing more than dance around. It was honestly a bit scary how just two men could create such insane worlds to travel through. The worlds didn’t just come with different sounds and tones; they came with different depths, and the improvisational quality of the music made each journey feel a bit more like a choose-your-own-adventure than a curated experience.

I was drawn into this show and into Matt & Dustin’s world by that super confusing description of their music. I was determined to find a better way to describe it for the masses, but about ten minutes in, I realized that’s just not possible. Their sound isn’t experimental enough to be noise, but it definitely has noise qualities. There wasn’t enough structure to call it standard jazz, but it wasn’t avant-garde enough to be called free jazz. There were moments of peace and calm, but there were too many moments of a louder sound to call this ambient. There were acoustic elements to the sound, but there were also electronic influences that reigned supreme, so you couldn’t really call them an acoustic act or even an electronic one. Long story short, I have no clue what I would classify Matt Gold & Dustin Laurenzi as, but that was the point. Why do they need to be classified? Why do I have to try to find words to make them appeal to the masses? This is a collaboration you need to hear, and if it speaks to you, you will get lost in it. If it doesn’t, you can move on. That sounds harsh, but I can already tell that this sound won’t be for everyone, and that’s not what these two musicians are trying to do. They are trying to create something new, something beautiful, something weird, and something deep. They absolutely did that and more if you ask me.