After Apes & Androids' recent Hiro-ics, I recognized their live show was "going-on-legendary." You know what? Friday night's legend comes without qualification. There's lots to love about these glam men, but what impresses me most about the Apes & Androids audio/visual experience is the patience and intelligence with which it's been conceived. Either that or the 10 ft. tall white-feathered monsters with illuminated Arc Reactor heart pieces that walked through the crowd at night's end.
What I mean is, in a way, A&A have been simmering off the radar for many bloody moons by now -- at least as off the radar as a band this theatrical ever could -- occasionally poking their heads out of their art spaces to test, hone, and maybe remind people of their intention. They're ready now -- as you've read repeatedly here over the last year, they've been ready for awhile. Blood Moon is out. And it is great. That their first-ever Bowery headlining show was a sell-out, or that it was "THE BEST NIGHT EVER" according to pretty much anyone who was there, wasn't a surprise.
Obviously there's a component of internet hype to the frenzied cheer Apes & Androids get in blogspace, but if we're acknowledging that, we have to acknowledge what they've achieved, something so few new bands benefiting from accelerated internet culture ever manage: this is a band that knows exactly what it is doing. They have carefully constructed a meta-aesthetic that perfectly and improbably juggles performance art, mystique, and satire. I've laid into how deep the debut album Blood Moon goes a few times. So this post is just about the visual goodies -- scantily clad alien ladies with tricked out wigs and multi-colored LED-infused hula hoops; raining confetti; smoking smoke machines; raised arms; painted faces; boys in dresses; glowsticks; MONSTERS -- most of which came by way of the Foundling Circus Guild, all of which are yours for the jumping.