- Hollywood Forever Cemetery in the 1990s was grim and decrepit—cracked crypts from earthquake damage, wanton prostitution along Santa Monica Boulevard, and shady internal dealings. Little surprise it nearly went bankrupt before being unloaded to a family of even shadier funeral executives in '98, who poured money into renovations before eventually pleading guilty in a $600 million lawsuit accusing them of running a Ponzi scheme. All of which feeds the institution's sleazy and morbid atmosphere when hosting picnic movie nights and indie rock concerts, or, as was the case last month, a bill of moody ambient electronic music curated by Highland Park record shop Mount Analog.
Saturday's show was held in the Masonic Lodge along the north edge of the property, on the second floor in a high-ceilinged room with wooden rafters and vintage gothic chandeliers. The darkly-clad crowd filed in quietly and soberly (only sodas and water were for sale on the grounds), lining the benches along the wall or sitting on the carpet while Josh Eustis, AKA Sons Of Magdalene, DJ'ed ominous textures at a modest volume from a laptop. Opening act Tropic Of Cancer maintained the sleepy, serious vibe, with Eustis guesting on electronics alongside singer Camella Lobo and guitarist Taylor Burch. Most of their songs consist of two dour notes plodding back and forth over an unchanging metronome accompanied by reverbed vocals and primitive single-string guitar patterns. No one smiled or moved during their half-hour set, although the second it ended someone rushed up to bestow Lobo with a bouquet of roses so the fans seemed to approve.
Blackest Ever Black alumni Alexander Lewis played next, appropriately dressed in a black t-shirt with black-and-white projections of smoke, water, and men climbing ladders looping behind him. His set was a focused journey of throbs, screeching, arrhythmic drones and whooshing waves of static. The best moments were also the densest, when he pushed the compositions towards their breaking points, though much of it was diffuse and textural, with slow arcs of disintegration filtering across the stereo field. Like all of the performers this evening, at a certain point he simply faded his rig into silence, stood up, and left without a word or wave.
The room became noticeably more packed when Liz Harris, AKA Grouper, entered. Expressionless, she sat Indian style towards the back of the stage, triggering a wash of refracted piano through her chain of pedals before slowly fingerpicking a fragile haze of electric guitar. Her projections were a series of zooms into water droplets on leaves and sunlight reflecting off rivers, which suited the sadness of her heartbroken, meditative abstractions. People sweated and stared silently, phones held aloft, shooting blurry footage no one will ever watch.
Finally Lustmord took to the stage, looking a bit like Breaking Bad's Walter White if he worked at a German tech firm—severe, with a shorn head, and solely absorbed in his laptop. In fact he never once moved or looked up for the entirety of his set, which relied on volume and slow-motion visuals of solar flares and supernovas to achieve a theatrical sort of heaviness. As an originator of the form, his purist take on dark ambience felt professional and thoughtfully sculpted but also a little straightforward. History moves quickly; yesterday's achievement is tomorrow's yawn. Moodiness is eternal but its expression must evolve to resonate with power.
Photo credit: Zane Landreth