Visions of a Deadly, Rainy Friday Night This December, In and Out of Focus

This is not a dream.

The gleep struts and waltzes in from the shadows, licking his lips. Is that blood? Maybe. Whatever it is, there’s a lot of it, and it’s energized him. He makes a mad dash at your face, only to swerve away at the last second as his foot catches something on the rain-slicked cobblestones  – no pavement down here in what’s left of the old city. Better leave him in his rubber raincoat to slink away now that he’s made an impression. Damn, it’s cold out here, and it’s wet. Global warming be damned. Where is that umbrella?

The funeral procession wears sombreros. Black ones to match their vests and bolo ties, which are only visible in a trick of the light from the lamppost, at the top of its arc as the flickers oscilllate downward to blackness. Suddenly the parade scampers off and in a second it’s clear why, as an ancient if immaculately preserved, jet-black 1956 Nash Ambassador police cruiser enters the picture in a rush of oxygen and exhaust and then is gone in a split second. Where did that come from, and was there any police department anywhere in the union that actually used that make and model in 1956?

This isn’t a dream.

Pan in on that warehouse a block away. Who’s that going up the fire escape, how did he get there and why is it taking him so long? Suddenly he sprints up the wrought iron and vanishes. Is it the gleep from the first few frames? Probably not, considering how fast he moved. Everything is moving too fast now to focus for very long anyway, even if everything is also simultaneously moving very slowly. Will daylight ever come? At this point, that’s doubtful.

[What if Nino Rota had a secret life beyond the erudite, irrepressibly witty Italian intelllectual cinemaphile composer that everyone took him for? What if he was a serial killer? Just asking.]

Timothy MacVeigh and Suspect #2 (remember him?) are cruising cross-country in their loaded rental van, headed blithely for Junction City, Kansas. It’s a comfortable, big-sky afternoon, but one that feels inevitable, heavy despite the wide-open expanse above them. Remember, this is not a dream. MacVeigh floors the loaded-down vehicle to get past an eighteen-wheeler and the big V8 delivers an unexpected roar to get the job done.

These are just a few of the kind of images that might come to mind at a Big Lazy concert. New York’s creepiest, most cinematic noir soundtrack instrumental band has a monthly Friday night residency at Barbes. Their next gig is at 10 PM on December 4 – and if you’re coming, get there on time because the last time they played here, they gave away their second set to another band (the awesome Mercury Radio Theater – more on them here a little later).

Bassist Andrew Hall slinks and bows his lines, drawing on a tarpit of lethal low-register sonics. Guitarist Steve Ulrich is a surgeon, or a coroner, awash in reverb, armed with a sharp scalpel.

Drummer Yuval Lion rides the traps, very subtly. For the record, it’s hard to remember anyone playing the rims with as much nuance as he did at this particular show, whenever it was – October’s, most likely (the cassette isn’t labeled for reasons that will soon be obvious).

Listening back to the room mix, it swirls, as if through a flange. One second the sound’s distinct, front and center in the frame, the next it pans left and then makes its way to the middle again. Maybe because the recorder’s owner might have been swaying in front of it, obscuring the sonic picture, adrift in a haze of whiskey and PBR? That’s a possibility. Barbes is a place to drink. They take good care of you there. It’s up to you to take care after you head uphill through the shadows to the F train, or to the Donut Diner on 7th Ave. if you don’t have to rush home to file your story.