It’s difficult writing a review for a project which doesn’t have actual songs, song titles, and works with little structure. How do you describe it to someone? There’s no tree with which to hang the branches. But that’s EOTO, and that’s why on Wednesday evening about 100 people packed into the Fais Do Do at 10pm and didn’t stop moving for three hours. I was anticipating dance but not this much. It was one big party and if you weren’t dancing because of Hann and Travis, nothing was going to make you.
Jason Hann was on the drums/percussion and Michael Travis switching between his bass, guitar, keyboards and live mixing. Travis seemed to loop a certain jam, then he’d pick up his guitar or bass and loop another sound over it while Hann either held down the beat or explored further. What resulted was a constant mix of club sounds interwoven with a really gentle guitar/bass/keyboard riff that really brought the music to a fresh, club/DJ level. It let you slowly build the tension and release. Sometimes you could only respect that amount of sound these two guys from The String Cheese Incident were making/manipulating. Speaking of their former band, I have to throw out a disclaimer that I’m not a big fan of SCI. This sound is nothing like that. Far from it even. I’ve heard it referred as trip-hop, house…whatever it is, and whatever they are calling it, it’s a project worth seeing if you want to get your body moving.
I can see them being a very popular late night attraction at festivals next year, especially with a proper light board. Keep an eye on what Jason Hann and Michael Travis are trying to do. They have a bunch of dates listed so chances are they’ll be at your doorstep sometime soon.
Now I’m onto My Morning Jacket at the Greek in LA and Fleet Foxes at the El Rey two days later… Talk about switching genres!
