Explosions in the Sky/The Paper Chase/Eluvium |The Middle East Downstairs - Cambridge, MA | 3/21/07
Instrumental music can always be a tough sell in a live setting, yet that didn’t seem to stop a sold out crowd at the Middle East for coming out to catch the Explosions in the Sky, Paper Chase, and Eluvium tour.
Opening act Eluvium (one-man ambient artist Matthew Cooper) spent his 45 minute set entrenched behind his Yamaha keyboard while a projector illuminated the stage with images of insects buzzing around. While I certainly have enjoyed his new album, Copia, it is tough to translate it into the live setting while you have hundreds of people talking loudly. Despite that, he built up slow moving synthesizer pieces that eventually developed into distorted, rhythmic movements that sometimes stretched on for 10 minutes. He occasionally threw in some guitar for a full wall-of-sound approach, which livened things up a bit. It’s a shame the crowd was yapping over him, because they missed out on a simple, but entrancing set.
