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Tour Dates
08/11 Los Angeles, CA – The Hi-Hat
Read More10/12 - 10/15 Joshua Tree, CA - Desert Daze
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The Satellite in Silverlake, California has this wonderful moonlit glow in the summertime that can cause you to deviate from whatever casual night you’re currently in to slip inside this indistinct venue…only to be transported into a night of visions and (fingers-crossed) really dope music. This past Friday, Imaad Wasif along with Dommengang and Pink Mountaintops took us to new heights with stylized concepts and polished sounds…all with threads that were guaranteed to impress the likes of us Angelenos.
Currently LA based but formerly from Brooklyn, the trio that is Dommengang is a perfect mesh of 90’s grunge and heavy psych rock that form a sound so cosmic you’d swear the 70’s (or the 90’s, for that matter) have emerged. This does seem to be in the air nowadays with music…a hippie 90’s street wave. Frontman Sig Wilson (guitar, vocals) reminds me of the vocal style similar to Jason Simon of Dead Meadow, with a delightfully raspy twist. Adam Bulgasem slays on drums and Brian Markham is equally dope on the bass. Solid Pacific Northwest influence here, with a cool bluesy tone on their riffs. Brian and Adam were also members of Ancient Sky, and all three are in Holy Sons. Their album Everybody’s Boogie is about as gritty as it gets. Spooky, man.
The “trippy country meets stoner rock” of Vancouver’s Pink Mountaintops is the birthing baby of Stephen McBean. Stephen is also the singer, songwriter and guitarist for Black Mountain, a personal fav band of mine. He’s a metal head, progressive rock guru who makes you stare up at him like he’s Jim Baker waving us over to his cult to give up our lives…but in a really good way. He’s also proof that in these modern day, futuristic times we all reside in, you don’t need a bassist, drummer or backup vocalist…you can do everything yourself onstage with a little help from gnarly pedals, playback recordings and effects. It seems he’s perhaps mellowed out a bit since the sounds of his last LP Get Back, instilling more relaxed and cathartic melodies. His guitar solo in the track ‘I (f***) Mountains’, my god, he’s worth seeing just for that. It’s just beyond killer.
Titling his latest album after the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Imaad Wasif came to the stage decked out in a boho tunic with a white furry vest and rad leather boots. In the middle of Out In The Black I believe they were having technical difficulties because some guy came up and started messing with the mic…only to grab it off the stand and quickly replace it. Imaad laughed after the song and asked, “Where’s the guy who stole my microphone? Super vibe killer, that guy.” Imaad can go from soothing canyon vibes to rocking out like a madman in a matter of seconds…it can be somewhat jarring as he has such a vast plethora of sounds. He goes into ‘Carry That Scar’ next, in which he wails on the guitar like a Hendrix reincarnate. His voice is like Kurt Vile and Bowie with a sprinkling of something like Roger Waters or Justin Hayward. He’s dark, edgy and fierce, and the music speaks for itself without him having to convince anyone it means anything. You just feel it.
Bobb Bruno, best known for his band Best Coast, gave us that wicked bass sound in ‘The Beautician’, maybe the most bluesy track on Dzi. Imaad wrote a track for the movie Where the Wild Things Are, which I found adorable and fitting…while also wishing he could play it for us as the movie ran silently in the background. Mirror Image is my song of choice for the evening…it has this ethereal, 80’s punk vibe with the line “If I could kiss your lips again…do what the voices tell me…”Are we in an underground club in London or in the lobby of a sleazy Brooklyn hotel? I just don’t know anymore.
Imaad certainly has a signature picking style, as shown in Out In The Black and Spark off his ’06 self-titled album. His distortions and riffs on the tracks from Dzi, however…holy smokes. I’d like to believe this is the closest to his real sound he’s ever been. He has this otherworldly sacredness onstage that a ton of artists wanna emulate but many times seems contrived. This guy is all genuine, raw talent. He ended the night with a couple solo acoustics, ‘Coil’ and ‘Underlight’. “I….love…you…I draw the curtain…there’s no innocence left…”
When you see him live, take a bunch of photos. This guy is magic.
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Dommengang
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Pink Mountaintops
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Titling his latest album after the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Imaad Wasif came to the stage decked out in a boho tunic with a white furry vest and rad leather boots. In the middle of Out In The Black I believe they were having technical difficulties because some guy came up and started messing with the mic…only to grab it off the stand and quickly replace it. Imaad laughed after the song and asked, “Where’s the guy who stole my microphone? Super vibe killer, that guy.” Imaad can go from soothing canyon vibes to rocking out like a madman in a matter of seconds…it can be somewhat jarring as he has such a vast plethora of sounds. He goes into ‘Carry That Scar’ next, in which he wails on the guitar like a Hendrix reincarnate. His voice is like Kurt Vile and Bowie with a sprinkling of something like Roger Waters or Justin Hayward. He’s dark, edgy and fierce, and the music speaks for itself without him having to convince anyone it means anything. You just feel it.
Bobb Bruno, best known for his band Best Coast, gave us that wicked bass sound in ‘The Beautician’, maybe the most bluesy track on Dzi. Imaad wrote a track for the movie Where the Wild Things Are, which I found adorable and fitting…while also wishing he could play it for us as the movie ran silently in the background. Mirror Image is my song of choice for the evening…it has this ethereal, 80’s punk vibe with the line “If I could kiss your lips again…do what the voices tell me…”Are we in an underground club in London or in the lobby of a sleazy Brooklyn hotel? I just don’t know anymore.
Imaad certainly has a signature picking style, as shown in Out In The Black and Spark off his ’06 self-titled album. His distortions and riffs on the tracks from Dzi, however…holy smokes. I’d like to believe this is the closest to his real sound he’s ever been. He has this otherworldly sacredness onstage that a ton of artists wanna emulate but many times seems contrived. This guy is all genuine, raw talent. He ended the night with a couple solo acoustics, ‘Coil’ and ‘Underlight’. “I….love…you…I draw the curtain…there’s no innocence left…”
When you see him live, take a bunch of photos. This guy is magic.
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Imaad Wasif at the Satellite, Los Angeles (04 August 2017) |
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