The Saturday Giant is the digital one-man-and-looper band whose real name is Phil Cogley, and whose latest album is about those pesky Reptoid Theories: the ones that have Princess Di and G.W. Bush shape-shifting behind closed doors. Treated to a weird performance as part of a doctoral seminar on creativity, Phil has earned Ohio street cred as one Super-Duper Looper: performing previously at a TEDx Conference in Columbus, there probably isn't anyone whose crafty use of select technology builds up such soundscapes without the egoism that calls for showing off technical proficiency. The first tune, "The Times They Are Up," was built of sweet electric riffs and choice piano notes, before Phil broke out in the best white-boy beatboxing he could muster, getting up close with a specialty Shure mic. After minutes of velvety drones, the tune turned darker and more rich, and the Boomerang III propelled a whole different section of that same opening number. Phil felt the downbeat as his four-beat strumming went off the rails intentionally, by one eighth note or more. The song crashed into itself.
Phil laughed as he described his complicated rig: "it's all cables and knobs and stuff." Having recently recorded and mixed "You've Heard of Dragons," his April 2010 solo release, Phil said it's "less of a challenge to make an album that sounds polished," and that his live performance can't, by nature, strive for his thesis in the studio: to "put it [his music] in the world as perfect as possible." Playing live, Phil's ability to pluck away at his strings in different ways was essential: eyeing carefully the timing lights on his Boomerang, he strummed violently, with and without a pick, playing as squarely as possible against his own voiced beat. In describing his willingness to experiment with new forms and sounds, Phil called himself "blue collar: ...it's a mindset that I have, that means I'm going to work hard."
I didn't catch any revelations about the coming Reptilian Empire, though I was entertained thoroughly in a conference room in a lavishly sterile basement conference room of the Marriott, on the campus of the University of Cincinnati for about an hour. I heard Phil's pronounced tenor attempting to soar across the MIDI-trigger'd, double-amped, violently-strummed electric. Phil couldn't pin down what it is he does: "post-rock" was suggested, as was a Todd Rudgren reference; later he admitted his songs "don't necessarily follow" the structure of The Pixies or Nirvana... but there's something there.
One of the most characteristic parts of Phil's show (The Saturday Giant is a very likable, bad-Spanish translation of the popular show "Sabado Gigante") is actually not his ability to stomp on the looper triggers at the right time: it's his keen embrace of whatever gear lets him produce crispy guitar notes on the top four strings, and killer, threatening bass drops from the last two: magical pickups, or keen outboard frequency analysis. No matter: beatboxing and looping can really only lead to one-chord drone tone soundscapes with an Eastern flair, and Phil's dramatic starts and stops were inflected with quick choices and intentionally-less-than-sharp beats. His lyrics are stock, it seems, if lizardly in a vague way-- I caught him singing dramatically, of "the blood of our babies" as he moved his capo and adjusted some knob on his pedalboard, and the cadence behind his voice carried on. He then broke out in a Brian-Wilson falsetto line that could have used some heavy verb-- but nothing is perfect when it's live, and that's the beautiful point to be made: as his closing song broke out in a new rock beat and a quite Pearly and Jammy progression that kinda beat up on my ears, I wondered what it sounds like when Phil works without an audience: "the way I work now is I go in the basement and press record..." He should keep up on both pursuits.
If you'd like a "hand-stenciled, hand-assembled" copy of his disc, check here for availability: http://thesaturdaygiant.bandcamp.com/track/reptilian-s
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
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