Live Review: Stickfigure Distribution January 2008 Showcase

Last week I caught two of the four nights in a row of Stickfigure at The Drunken Unicorn. If you are somehow unfamiliar with Stickfigure, they have been an Atlanta underground music institution since 1992 and consistently put out Atlanta's most interesting independent releases. Wednesday night I got there just in time to catch most of Big Penguin. They were doing the power duo thrash punk thing and it was cool:



Next up was Zandosis. They were a serious noise-jam band beating on weird instruments and using lots of feedback. I thought it was decent, but as much as I like noise, I think it was a little over the top for me.



I had just recently discovered Sorry No Ferrari, so I was excited to catch them again. I'm a sucker for straight-up post-rock instrumental bands, and so far I think they are the best of this sort of thing I've heard in Atlanta. They really rocked out hard for this one:







As many of the folks got drawn into the usual MJQ Wednesday night hipster dance party, Music For People put on a great performance to close out the night.



I returned for the final night on Saturday. First up was Nerdkween, someone who has been on my radar for a long time, but I had never been able to really check out until now. I thought she was really awesome and wish I had looked into her sooner. She does "post modern pop tunes" and they are ever so dazzling. I highly recommend checking her out.



After that it was time for Killick. He was a dude playing some weird 18-string cello/guitar hybrid instrument designed specifically for him to play called the H'arpeggione. He was doing what he described as "Appalachian-Trance-Metal". Very interesting stuff:



After that it was time for The Subliminator. If you don't know him, he does avant-garde spoken word and plays Theremin machines. He is very cool and very unique and if you like music as art, it's mandatory you check him out. As always, he put on a great show:





Envie is a band (or I guess project) that I had been meaning to look into, but never did for some reason. Big mistake, because they were really good. Very interesting art-pop that I thoroughly enjoyed. Sean of Lid Emba was even playing drums. They were probably my favourite discovery of the showcase.











The final act of the night was One Hand Loves The Other. I thought their self-titled debut album was one of the better local releases of last year and had been wanting to see them live for a while. I hadn't realized until seeing them that Mikey from Music For People was in the band. They put on a great show and I'm excited to see what this band does in the future because they are certainly poised to be something special. They will be playing Stickfigure's February Showcase along with Strezo, Sick Figures, and Antic Clay, whom I'm very excited to see, on the 23rd at The Drunken Unicorn, so you should catch that show.









Overall, I thought the Stickfigure January Showcase was pretty awesome. It's great to see so many talented and creative artists in the ATL doing their thing. The event highlighted everything good about the state of music right now in this town and all over the world.