SHOWS author and punisher, ebm, edm, electronic, featured, industrial, perturbator, The Regent Theater, whiteqube Rob Shepyer September 19, 2017 0 Comments

Perturbator, Author & Punisher: Using Devices To Debase Regent Theater

Electronic music allows a single artist to take on all the working parts of a band because those parts become synthesized in their machines. The electronic revolution has opened up new opportunities and avenues for artists who might not have ever been interested in picking up a guitar- and that’s no slight against EDM artists (up until this night I was under the impression that EDM was the Pop style of electronic music, at large). The point of music isn’t just to wow you and me with virtuosic and technical playing- it’s to express ones soul and if electronics help an artist do that more purely and directly then it’s a good thing. In this sense, Jim Morrison was right when he predicted the future of music would consist largely of one person and an arsenal of components. So if in Morrison’s mind’s eye he had an image of what that future would actually LOOK like, I doubt it would’ve differed too much from what I saw at The Regent Theater when Perturbator, Author & Punisher and Whiteqube were booked to showcase a different kind of electronic music than what you might imagine when you see the letters E D & M bunched together in an acronym.

( I wonder if they had to go out and buy more power strips and extension chords for this show?)

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Whiteqube took the stage first and stood behind a desk with two synthesizers and a Mac laptop and projections behind them on a small screen. Despite their name, the duo were both dressed in black from head to toe, even wearing shades. Their intense style of dark club music was the perfect soundtrack for a cocaine filled night in Berlin but perhaps an 8:30pm set in L.A. just wasn’t the most dance conducive setting. Their songs have a manic pulse as both members, T. Ryan Arnold and Jason Bractune shout at the audience. Their lyrics try to wake people out of their sleeping consciousness. Using electronics to convince people to unplug might be the only way out of this trance, after all, “fight fire with fire”, as they say. One insane moment of the group’s set was when they projected stock footage of political unrest, riots, and suffering from around the world, perfectly edited to their fast paced electronic attack. I caught the band’s latest single “The Return” on video, check it out:

I have been trying to get Danny B to listen to Author & Punisher for the longest time but Riot Fest had summoned him to Chicago. By building his own machines, Author & Punisher has made himself a maverick in the industrial scene with both originality in sound and performance. I’m surprised it took me this long to see him in concert but as a reward for my patience, I was gifted a musical experience so visceral that it was downright draconian.

perturbation: noun

plural noun: perturbations

per·tur·ba·tion

ˌpərdərˈbāSH(ə)n

1. anxiety; mental uneasiness

“she sensed her friend’s perturbation”

“Frank’s atheism was more than a perturbation to Michael”

There had been eight tall lights set up in the back of the stage all night and I was wondering just how they would be used and what they would look like once Perturbator’s set started. Before even a note was played though, I knew this shit would be completely insane. Two keyboards were brought on stage then a cyber-goth-looking podium was placed around the keyboards for Perturbator to stand behind.