Water Damage + Geologist

Water Damage at Blondies Brewery

Baba Yaga's Hut Presents:

Water Damage + Geologist at Blondies Taproom, November 10th

There is something really special about music based on drones. Whether it’s the vocals of Pandit Pran Nath, the ARP 2500 of Eliane Radigue, or the nearly-blown amps of Sunn O))), by changing the listeners’s focus on details to one that favors flow, drones are uniquely capable of transporting our brains far far away. The music of Water Damage, the loudly droning Austin collective is a goddamn splendid example of how the process works. Using the motto, “Maximal Repetition Minimal Deviation,” Water Damage create glowing fields of drones that pretty much suck you right in and boil you alive. They prefer if each of their sonic ideas takes up a whole reel of tape, and once they start they don’t look back. Everything proceeds towards an imaginary end point that is only achieved when the tape starts flapping.

The members are all vets of various projects – Spray Paint, Black Eyes, USA/Mexico, more eaze, Thor & Friends, Marriage, Swans, SUR, Astral Spirits Records, among others. Their approach to the form is less front-loaded than most of their peers, and the surface of their sound is sometimes ruffled by aural events of an un-drone-like nature. But the main gush is usually a blend of harmonic tones and textures pointing towards a goal that is just out of ear-shot, just over the next bluff, and perhaps forever just beyond our reach.

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Geologist is the nom-de-théâtre of Brian Weitz, whose pursuits have been an active part of the music underground since since he was 15, playing and working in alignment with an organic ensemble of friends that would one day choose to call what they were doing Animal Collective.

His album Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights? migrates from that tradition, containing a number of surprise affects of its own. #1 is that it is the first-ever proper Geologist solo album! For real. Surprise #2 is its pursuit of a musical answer to the not-oft-enuf-ast question: