Thank you for everything Kurt Vonnegut. When you said "Life is no way to treat an animal" you spoke to everyone who's been through the nauseating experience of loss amid the redundancies of American "star-time". An iconoclast, where Twain was a progenitor, a writer's longevity that outlived those who died too young, the smiles you gave us live on.
Kurt Vonnegut
November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007
Most audiences fortunate enough to have been witnesses to the musical crimes of At Sea might note the following: their disruptive ignorance of old musical rules, their lack of theatrical stage gimmicks aside from imitating head-down shoegaze guitarists of the early 90s, the confusions over misspellings of set lists, the presumptuous remarks they make about things they just don’t like, and so on and so forth.
But sincere observers, partitioned off from disgruntled affiliates or self-appointed critics too quick to call At Sea another post-rock band, will note that the music begins in simplicity and subtleties. It comprises textures, layers, rational systems destroyed by the beauty of orchestral melodies, the drums that sound like the drum tracks from your favorite album (whatever that album happens to be), and the interplay between reverberating waves of sound and sentimental low end. There is no be-all-end-all of description of their music precisely because of the spontaneous arrangement of the process they follow. At one moment a combination of Mozart, Shostakovich, and Debussy springs to mind, at another Mono’s You Are There, The Cure’s Pornography, or Mogwai’s first three albums. There are feelings and not reasons, and the feelings fluctuate. In a sentence, their music is cinematic and best left to the references of images.
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"Tuesday night Honolulu was treated to a performance by one of her local bands, At Sea who took the stage at Nextdoor downtown, or should I say they floated over the stage just long enough for the audience to get a glimpse of them between the lofty sounds and spacey visuals.
It is rare that an instrumental band can headline a show. At Sea proved beyond a doubt that it can be done, and they did it with ease. They held the crowd at their beck and call from the first sweet note straight through to the last noisy attack. Phasing between swelling intensity and ambient string pads exhibited At Sea’s commitment to rehearsal and the on-stage communication that comes with the intimate knowledge acquired in the practice room.
At Sea’s well thought out balance of bowed strings versus plucked strings and percussion would have done the trick alone, but the addition of low lighting, quality ambient films projected behind the band, and the audience’s willingness to be whisked away to outer space made for a perfect mix." -By: Will Conner, text taken from
Kalamakua.org
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"The night was all about sensory overload, starting with a new experimental progressive rock band, At Sea. Add a cello to the rock formula of guitar, bass and drums, change out the drumsticks with tympani mallets (basically drum sticks with felt heads), stir in a creative mindset and you get dreamy meditative music with a backdrop of rolling thunder. Advisory: Must hear to understand." -By: Michelle Takiguchi, text taken from Honolulu Weekly, Vol. 16 Num.6
