[photos by acidjack]
After catching an exclusive acoustic warmup set the day before, we could not wait for Olivia Tremor Control‘s main Northside Festival set at Music Hall of Williamsburg. After short sets by the newly revamped Dinosaur Feathers and Laura Stevenson & the Cans, OTC took the stage and immediately tore into “The Opera House”, one of their most rocking numbers. Despite being on one of the festival’s bigger stages, OTC made the show feel like our own private window onto a living room jam session. The members chatted easily among each other, helped each other tweak their gear and evidently were still debating the setlist at points. While that freewheeling style could be a frustration with some bands, that is the charm of Olivia Tremor Control, who have always taken the “collective” concept of music-making to its fullest extreme (see, for example, the Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Show I recorded earlier this year). An always-quirky band with a penchant for multi-part songs, sound collages, strange instrumentation,and acid-trip lyrics, OTC have always kept things weird, though they also have a penchant for pure pop songwriting that most bands would envy. Close your eyes at certain points in this set, and you might have thought you were hearing the Rubber Soul-era Beatles playing unreleased b-sides.
This 75-minute set featured many gems from the Athens, GA band’s landmark 1996 debut LP, Music From The Unrealized Film Script “Dusk At Cubist Castle”, including two of my favorites, “Can You Come Down With Us” and “Memories of Jacqueline 1906”, both streaming below. Of course, the band didn’t ignore the 1999 record Black Foliage, or some of their non-album material, including “Shaving Spiders” from the Giant Day 7″ EP. Although they have been back together for a bit now, fans are still anxiously awaiting a full record of new material from OTC, with onlyThe Game You Play Is In Your Head Pts. 1, 2 and 3 EP from last year to dig into until then. If this set was any indication, this is a group of players with plenty of musical vitality left – let’s hope they keep the project going.
I recorded this set from the center of the venue balcony with Schoeps MK41 microphones and an Aerco custom preamp to create a warm, vintage sound. While we generally are huge fans of Bowery Presents and their fine venues, Music Hall has always been a challenge for us. On this night, I was not permitted to use the equipment we have used for the past two years to hang mics safely and securely from the balcony, making the placement less-than-optimal. Further, the house mix on this night left much to be desired, with the bass levels seemingly left at the settings from the GZA show two nights before. The recording was cleaned up in post-production considerably, and now is a solid if not spectacular recording by this site’s standards. Listen to the samples, and enjoy!
Special thanks to the Northside Festival.
Stream “Can You Come Down With Us”
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/O6150OTC0212/03 Can You Come Down With Us.mp3]
Stream “Memories of Jacqueline 1906”
[audio:http://www.nyctaper.com/O6150OTC0212/10 Memories of Jacqueline 1906.mp3]
Download the MP3 and FLAC files, and stream the entire show, on the Live Music Archive [HERE]
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The Olivia Tremor Control
2012-06-16
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY USA
Exclusive download hosted at nyctaper.com
Recorded and produced by acidjack
Schoeps MK41 (balcony, PAS)>KCY>Z-PFA>Aerco MP-2>Sony PCM-M10 (24/44.1)>24bit/44.1kHz WAV>Audacity (set fades, EQ, tracking, amplify, balance, downsample)>FLAC ( level 8 )
Tracks [Total Time: 1:14:18]
01 The Opera House
02 A Place We Have Been To
03 Can You Come Down With Us?
04 [tuning]
05 Courtyard>
06 Spinning Continuous
07 Black Foliage (Itself)
08 [tuning]
09 A Sunshine Fix
10 Memories of Jacqueline 1906
11 California Demise
12 Dusk at Cubist Castle>
13 The Gravity Car
14 Spring Succeeds
15 [tuning]
16 A Sleepy Company
17 I Have Been Floated
18 A New Day
19 Grass Canons>
20 Hideaway
21 Holiday Surprise 1, 2, 3
22 [encore break]
23 Jumping Fences
24 [tuning]
25 Shaving Spiders
If you enjoyed this recording, please support Olivia Tremor Control by visiting their website and purchasingThe Game You Play is in Your Head Pts 1, 2 and 3 from Secretly Canadian [HERE]
Thanks so much for recording the show. There’s just a couple mistakes with the song tagging:
The musical section of “Dusk at Cubist Castle” is incorrectly tagged as “Gravity Car.” They actually never played “Gravity Car.”
Your “Can You Come Down With Us?” track also includes “Black Foliage Animation 4” and “Courtyard.”
The real “Spinning Continuous” is tagged incorrectly as “Courtyard.” And an as-of-yet unnamed instrumental is tagged incorrectly as “Spinning Continuous.”
Thanks for the updates. I admittedly took this from the official posted setlist at BrooklynVegan, and at times those can vary. I’ve never been the best with their song titles, either, especially the sound collage stuff.