Through The Fog: Pretty Lights

Pretty Lights is the brainchild of Derek Vincent Smith, who hits the stage armed with an Ableton Live 7 machine, a Monome 128 and a bevy of musical improvisations. He also hits the stage with Cory Eberhard, smacking the skins of a full drum kit in improvisational accompaniment.

Then there’s the lights. Pretty? Sure. But full on, light the night like the day, LED color towers throbbing and pulsing with the beat and adding an intense, occasional blast of heat from behind the two musicians kind of lights usually reserved for larger venues.

Let’s get back to the music, shall we? I have to admit, the opener, Eliot Lipp, didn’t get me (or the crowd) too excited. The Brooklyn DJ/producer started pretty slickly, with some ska influenced riffs, but his presentation seemed erratic and didn’t have any flow. While parts of his set really shone, overall I found myself checking out the crowd and their reaction to the music rather than the music itself. By the time his set had ended, I had made my way to the back of the room where several imaginative audience members were unloading the glow sticks and head lamps they had snuck past security. I am not close enough to management at this club to be in the loop about the dangers of glow sticks at concerts, but apparently they are a large enough threat to prompt confiscation at the door. Damned Homeland Security is everywhere.

By the time Pretty Lights hit the stage shortly after ten the room had crowded at the front. As I made my way through the throngs, I noticed the dividing line between those who needed space to dance and those who lifted their feet and shuffled along with the tightly packed crowd toward the front. I got to my spot up front just as they got the bugs worked out and started the show in earnest.

I remember going to a disco in 1977 just outside of Syracuse, N.Y. whose name escapes me. As was the fashion in the seventies, this disco had several rooms besides the main dance floor. The main room was massive, resplendent with video screens, lasers, light banks and speaker towers that spread floor to ceiling. And next to the DJ booth was a drum kit. I was young and less than sober so I don’t remember a lot of the specifics. But I do remember how much more fun the dancing was with a live drummer.

he dynamic between the DJ and the drummer in Pretty Lights was too tight to squeeze through. These guys were on! From the get go Eberhard’s drumming never lagged or pushed. Not an easy task when the rest of the band (the other guy) is at the controls of literally thousands of beats, mixes and samples he has grouped via the filing system only found between his ears.

Derek Vincent Smith works without a set list and shifts between the tracks that can be found (and downloaded for free from) his website on four well thought out compilations. Tonight was no exception as he started and spun the dance floor into a frenzy within minutes. About a half hour into his set I recognized one of my favorites, called Make You Feel. That’s what it was about. It made me feel the music. The drums, the ambient flow of non-stop beats and rhythms, it all blended with the drumming that Eberhard varied to match.

Smith, in his dark hoodie, baseball cap and glasses bent over his keyboards like a computer geek next to Eberhard’s athletic drumming and bald head swinging beads of sweat into the third row made quite a pair on stage. Their combined energy and emotion had the crowd, myself included, crossing the line of demarcation frequently: shuffling and head bobbing one minute, arms swaying and twirling like an acid head at a Dead show the next.

These guys went on like this for almost three hours. With little banter between songs (was there even a ‘between song’ break at all?) it flew by. And it was very emotional. Pretty Lights’ talent not only lies in the addition of a live percussionist, but in Smith’s ability to hold the room. He led us on a journey where we followed the music through moments of grandeur, momentous and ominous, past others so delicate and precise that Eberhard’s slight tap of a cymbal could be heard in the back of the sold out theater. The music wanted us to hop up and down, we hopped. The music wanted us to dance wildly, wildly we danced. The music wanted us to cry, we wept buckets.

During the Star Wars bass scene inspired I Can See It In Your Face, the crowd at the front of the stage got to bouncing in unison so well they almost tumbled the barricades keeping the front aisle separate. The barricades held and by the time the house lights came up a shade after one am they looked like a clothesline. Sweaty sweaters, coats, and the like were hanging on the short black fence, waiting for a drying breeze that will never come.

On the way out I ran into the guy who didn’t think he was going to see musicians tonight. He was waiting for the train with his buddies, all of which had obviously spent more time in the bar upstairs than on the dance floor. As I was parked nearby and it was a nice evening, I asked him If he had changed his mind about what he had seen tonight. He said he wasn’t sure. I asked him if he had danced, Hell yeah he replied. I asked him if he shouted and hopped when we all shouted and hopped and he said Hell yeah, he did. Seizing the opportunity, I quickly ran through Mr. Shields’ definition. Was it sound? Hell yeah, he said. Did it have rhythm? Melody? Harmony? Hell yeah they did came his reply.

I admit I was having too much fun as I grabbed him solemnly with a hand on each shoulder and looked him square in the eye and said, “By Mr. Shields’ definition, that’s music. It was made by MUSICIANS.” He grabbed the wrist of my left arm and looked deep into my eyes and I could see the light bulb go off. He got it. Whether he’d remember it the next morning, who knows? He thanked me, told me he’d never thought of it that way. His friend interrupted and pointed at a train across the street and asked if that wasn’t going toward Beaverton, which it was, which meant that these three had missed the last train out of town for a while.

Rock on through the fog,

AJ Crandall