Live Concert Photography: SUUNS with FACS at Elsewhere Main Hall 5/23/18
Comprised of founding members Ben Shemie (vocals, guitar), and Joe Yarmush (guitar, bass), and Liam O’Niell (drums) and Max Henry (bass, keys), the Montreal, Quebec, Canada-based indie rock act SUUNS can trace its origins back to the summer of 2007 when its founding members Shemie and Yarmush got together to make beats, which quickly evolved into a couple of songs. O’Neill and Henry were recruited to complete the lineup.
Their Jace Lasek-produced full-length debut, Zeroes QC, was released in 2010 to critical praise from the likes of The New York Times — and with a growing profile, they spent the better part of the next year or so on the road, touring with Parlovr, Land of Talk and The Besnard Lakes, and they made appearances on the national and international festival circuits with stops at CMJ, SXSW, Primavera Sound, and others. Additionally, they co-headlined a North American tour with PS I Love You. 2012 continued on the frenetic pace of the previous year, as they curated that year’s SONIC CITY Festival in Belgium, played at The National’s curated ATP Festival, and toured to close out the calendar year, while finding time to work on their sophomore effort Images Du Futur, which was released the following the following March to critical applause from The Line of Best Fit. Adding to a breakthrough year, the album was long listed for that year’s Polaris Music Prize.
Amazingly, the members of SUUNS were able to squeeze in some time in November 2012 to collaborate with the members of Jerusalem in My Heart on an album that mixed the strengths of both bands — Eastern modes. drones, keyboard arpeggios, incisive guitar work and Moumneh’s vocals.
2016 saw the release of the John Congleton-produced third album Hold/Still, an effort that found the band capturing flawless live takes of each track, without overdubs and include several songs the band had been working on for some time but never released, included “Translate” and “Infinity.” They also curated their own program of the 10th Le Guess Who? Festival in Utrecht, The Netherlands and it included sets by Pauline Oliveros, Alessandro Cortini, Patrick Higgins, and the aforementioned Jerusalem in My Heart.
Felt, the Canadian band’s fourth full-length album was released earlier this year, and the band is just abotu to finish up a tour to support it, that included the Chicago-based post-punk/art rock act FACS as an opener. The tour included a stop at Bushwick, Brooklyn art space and music venue Elsewhere. Check out some photos from the show below.
Since their formation in 2008, the Chicago, IL-rbased post-punk/art rock act Disappears received attention music that thematically explored how difficult it can be to relate to others, how we seek out meaning and attempt to make sense of our surroundings despite the fact that relationships frequently fall apart, how patterns grow into unbreakable habits and how our world can rapidly shift in a way that’s unsettling and unrecognizable. And through the release of five albums — 2010’s Lux, 2011’s Guider, 2012’s Pre Language, 2013’s Era and 2015’s Irreal, the band revealed an uncanny ability to evoke the existential and anxious dread of a venal and vicious world in which nothing really works the way that it should or that we were told it should.
Early last year, Damon Carruesco (bass) left the band, and the remaining members of Disappears, founding member Brian Case (vocals, guitar) along with Noah Leger (drums) initially put the band on hiatus; however, the remaining members decided that rethink their sound and approach, recruiting Alianna Kalaba (bass) to help them push their sound and aesthetic in a new direction with their new band FACS and although the new project retains some elements of the sound that caught attention when they were Disappears — stark, menacing post-punk centered around angular and propulsive bass chords, explosive peals of guitar, shouted and howled lyrics and Ledger’s incredibly precise, rhythmic drumming; however, on “Skylarking,” and “Primary” off the band’s full-length debut, Negative Houses, which was released earlier this year, the band’s approach is much more stark, minimalist and with increasingly challenging song structures, centered around guitar work that alternates between slashing and dissonant ambiance and forceful percussiveness, economical yet equally forceful bass and abstract yet mathematically precise rhythms.
For these photos and more, check out the Flickr set here: https://www.flickr.com/gp/yankee32879/s4737i
