Review: EOTO @ Sullivan Hall, NYC

I’m no great expert on groovy jamband electronica or the various strains of breakbeat, but what I like most about EOTO—the entrancing and quite versatile project from former String Cheese rhythm section Michael Travis and Jason Hann—is how both on disc and in the live setting they do what they do and deliver it uncluttered.

“Spare” isn’t the correct term; when your music relies on artfully improvised blips and sprawling layers, bendy tones, slippery beats and various flavors of rhythm, you inherently have a lot going on. But I listen to EOTO and get absorbed in an especially potent soundscape where there isn’t much waste at the margins—a soundscape that I can float in and out of at various levels of engagement without feeling like I’m merely getting beaty noise blasted into my cranium or, conversely, listening to something approximating a refrigerator hum because there’s just not enough to grab onto.

Hann and Travis held sway late into the night with two sets at Sullivan Hall—a nice spot to land post-Trey, or, in mine and a few other cases, Blues Traveler at the Highline—and used the place like a laboratory, complete with trippy lights and a live painting by artist Oliver Vernon. They didn’t pander to the roughly half-capacity crowd so much as draw them in—a we’re-here-and-sample-what-you-will style show where active engagement was sometimes coaxed, and sometimes a choice—but then when they sensed enough interest to start messing with various tension points, they broke out in body-shaking jams, lively rhythms and various sound layers that sprung out of a core groove and mutated proportionate to energy level.

Overall, Hann and Travis have Swiss Watch-exact chemistry—so crucial to a project like this—and that lends EOTO the one quality missing from most groups that rely on loops, layered electronica and sound manipulation: grace. Get a group of dudes or dudettes in a circle, throw in some fun beats, software and noisemakers, and maybe once in a while you’ll find something artistic by accident in a wall of cacophony and messy give-and-take. Get two refined rhythm devils who finish each other’s musical sentences and know when to complement, when to hang back and when to cut loose knowing the other will match him shot for shot, you’ll get futurist jazz.

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3 Responses

  1. Well said! This type of music is hard to express, what its all about and why it works, but you do an excellent job.

  2. I always have trouble explaining my taste in music and interest in eoto…That was a beautifully precise explanation of this genre….So well done. Sprawling tones and slippery beats: May the womps live on baby!

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