sirshannon.com

Captured! By Robots is one of the most amazing bands/performances/art pieces I have seen in my life. One man and a band of robots on stage performing something that is somewhere between a concept album (if they’d record the damn things) and a musical or opera. Except that the same cast come back each year with a totally different show. And by “totally different” I mean Olivia Newton John’s Atkins disorders are taking the stage this year while 2003’s tour was an homage/reinactment/dress-up & play-a-long with Moses’ triumph during the escape from Ramses as told by Charlton Heston’s “The Ten Commandments” (literally. on the wall.)

The Captured! By Robots website is so bad. It pisses me off because the band is so great and I want to show people why and how. The pics I took when they played the Fat City Deli last year were pretty lame. As we were getting into his car after the show, Lee said “my face hurts from smiling so much.” That tells you how good it is, but not “why”. Unfortunately, neither does their site. I’ll attempt to now:
Captured! By Robots is a guy and the robots he has created and programmed to play music with him. The original idea/show was based on him being captured(!) by the robots and forced to play. I guess his infinite creative genuis refused to be confined to such a concept and thus each year the man, a sound guy, and a crew of robots and stuffed animals travel the country with a new concept.

A robotic, headless horn section playing with air forced from machines. Stuffed monkeys with cymbals. A head on a throne with a stick for each drum and no sense of “tired” and no ego demanding adoration, strippers, or lawsuits over sex tapes. A Guitarbot that plays guitar and bass guitar at the same time and even freaking strums the thing. Fingers? Hands? Guitarbot knows not of your limitations.

Sometimes the music is piercing death metal. Sometimes it is screaming punk noise. Sometimes it is joyous reggae. Sometimes the human is onstage singing and playing guitar with his band. Sometimes he is in the crowd dancing and singing with/for us. The entire performance is almost overwhelming as you watch and almost impossible to grasp once you start thinking about the hours and days and weeks and years that have gone into the evolution of machines and music and sculpture and drama and what labor that must have required before the tour started and each day setting up and each night tearing down. But that sweaty past and that sweaty future both pale in importance compared to the sweaty present, the joyful noise filling the air as man and machine combine their strengths to destroy what you had previously thought was “the best show ever” and replace that memory with something that you will never adequately explain to your friends.
Captured! By Robots is currently on tour and if you can get to a show, you should. If not, you’ll regret it eventually unless you somehow manage to never find out what you missed. Here in Charlotte, Captured! By Robots will play at The Steeple Nov 13.

UPDATE Nov 10: The show has been cancelled.

UPDATE Nov 11: The show has been un-cancelled and moved to the Milestone

Tags: Music

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 6th, 2004 at 10:22 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.