Live At The El Rey $3.10

About Live At The El Rey

Live At The El Rey

Their music is made at the point where cool precision, passion and mechanical frenzy intersect. They synthesize elements of gothic, industrial, edgy electronica, darkwave, ethereal pop, modern rock, and trip-hop into a style that is uniquely theirs, soothing yet powerful, smooth yet dangerous. They are Collide: a Los Angeles duo with a knack for intriguing arrangements and compelling performances. Principals Statik and kaRIN, have over their decade together written some of the catchiest songs that will ever haunt you to distraction.
Since forming Collide in 1995, the group has released five albums of top-drawer electronica, experimental compositions, and some astonishing reworkings of pop and rock standards. The duo’s labors have won them a stable of admirers, and have led to collaborations with members of Tool, Nine Inch Nails, and Skinny Puppy. They’ve done it by constantly kicking at the boundaries of the form- their name refers to the ceaseless collision of apparent influences on their music.
Although Collide has won thousands of appreciators, and established a reputation for recording excellence, they’d never performed their music in concert until 2004. Like many electronic acts, Collide was a studio entity. They’d used their machinery, their voices, and their mixing board to generate a sound that’s best described as extra-personal: suggestive not of a band playing in the back of a room, but of a dream playing in the back of your head. Transposing an experience this hallucinatory to the stage felt daunting to Statik and kaRIN. Could a group so dependent on electronics for their ferocity â€" even one this accomplished â€" manage to replicate the passion, the menace, and the magic of their music live?
This CD is proof that they can. Live At The El Rey, released on the groups’ own Noiseplus Music imprint, is documentation of the concert tour that brought Collide’s dreams alive. Expanded to a six-piece, the live iteration of the electronica powerhouse brings new dimensions to familiar songs. Guitarists Scott Landes and Rogerio Silva weave alternately processed and raw riffs around Kai Kurosawa’s percussive bass and Chaz Pease’s thunderous drumming. Statik stands omnipresent behind his electronics, as the virtual sound controller. The band sounds terrific: the five instrumentalists attack their instruments with authority, and kaRIN leads the band with sultry charisma.