Beats Antique @ The Depot 10.03

The stage was loaded with drums to prepare for the evening’s shows, a sweet foreshadowing of the rhythmic performances about to ensue. Sorne, The Fungineers and Beats Antique made up the lineup for the evening, and all of them put on a show aimed to get you moving to the beat.

Sorne started out the night, and with a full drum kit on the left, a DJ and a kick drum on the right and Morgan Sorne in the middle belting out an insane range of beautiful vocal madness while sometimes banging on yet another drum, you could feel the music. After looking them up online (because I liked ‘em) I’d say it’s a pretty intense project, with a storyline and some serious forethought into the overall concept.

They definitely want you to feel it. Between the people I was hanging out with and myself, we compared Sorne’s vocal style and ability to Bjork, The Mars Volta, Michael Jackson and Steven Tyler, so yeah, I’d say he is pretty damn talented. It was a great performance and an extra sweet bonus on the night, considering they were the openers.

Up next were The Fungineers, and in this particular variation of their show, “Paragon, the one and only Cyber-Unicorn-Tron,” a large puppet-DJ, was the one representing the multi-media project that The Fungineers encompass. It was a loose beat box and rhymes over beats DJ set, with a couple of more dancey tracks folded in. Online they have tons of videos and other stuff going on, like live human singers, kids show–like episodes and more, so I think The Fungineers’ show varies, and you might not know what you’re gonna get when you see them on the bill!

Beats Antique finished off the night, kicking off their “Thousand Faces” tour, and I thought they were spectacular. I have always loved the two albums of theirs that I was already familiar with, and now I have been newly inspired to dig through their entire catalog and see what’s what.

Not only is the music so damn good, the live show is fantabulous, with a belly dance performance, epic costumes, and on this tour, a really awesome set including gorgeous projection imagery and a huge monster character blowup doll, among other sweet little tricks and treats. They totally deliver.

That’s probably how they were able to successfully raise $58,000 in a Kickstarter campaign to build a state-of-the-art stage production for this tour. There are clearly a ton of people who love Beats Antique, and while that is awesome, the packed show also made it a little tricky for me to see all the cool stuff going on and enjoy myself—I was all scrunched up in the crowd on the main floor of The Depot, and until I snuck away and up onto the steps I couldn’t see anything.

So it goes, I suppose. Apparently, if I had contributed to the Kickstarter campaign, I could have gotten a private performance in my home out of them, and while I can’t imagine that it comes with all the sweet props, it’s definitely something to consider. I can’t wait to see what these guys get up to next.