Oneida and Kinski at Neumo’s, Or "The Constant Cycling of Hyper-Minimal Progressions"

Masters of atmospheric drone/psych/whatchamacallit rock Kinski and Oneida put on a powerful show at Neumo's last Saturday, sharing the stage for a final jam session following their individual sets. There's enough stylistic overlap between the two bands that its surprising when people you've never heard of who write about music more often compare Oneida to the more abstract noise efforts of Sonic Youth than with the more obviously similar Kinski. The predominantly instrumental and intense, hypnotic rock sound is perhaps better described by the geniuses at Pitchfork in this less than glowing review of the 2004 release Secret Wars "....Songs are built atop the constant cycling of hyper-minimal progressions, fairly bludgeoning the listener into a state of docility with as minimal an approach as possible." Word.

Contributors to Seattlest have been going to Kinski shows since the band formed in the late '90s, and last year's Alpine Static is the first album we've heard that comes close to the quality of seeing them live. For some reason this type of music seems to work better in person than recorded. We're new to Oneida and we're intrigued enough by their performance to want to check out their last album The Wedding (released May 2005), which they talked about a little with Chart Attack last summer.

Unrelated aside: Some of the contributors to Seattlest have only been to a few shows since the smoking ban took effect last December, and we were surprised last Saturday to find ourselves actually missing the protective shield of second hand smoke. Now that the fog has lifted, we realize only now what the clouds of cancerous gas had been protecting us from all along: patchooli stink, corn dog farts (thanks, Andy) and the overwhelming fumes of a big bag of Dick's. The smoking ban supporters of Seattlest have seen the light, stared in to the abyss, seen the enemy... and the enemy is your stinkage.