Before the humiliation could get underway Friday night, however, there was a set by The Demix, a project thatconsists of one guy, a laptop and a couple of samplers. The sound is somethinglike industrial-tinged trip-hop, with detours into noisy drill ’n’ bass andsci-fi atmospherics. Although he seemed to be taking his knob-twiddling very,very seriously, the man behind The Demix had difficulty connecting with themostly disinterested audience, many of who used the time to patronize the bar.
The robots loomed at the back of thestage covered by blankets, and by the time they were unveiled people hadcrammed themselves into the club’s back room. The mechanical musicians lookedmore like something built out of parts scavenged from a dumpster behind ChuckE. Cheese than the sleek creations of postwar fantasiesbut robots are robots,and until we reach that glorious day when shiny automatons attend to our everywhim, seeing a bunch of them clanging away at instruments will remain somethingto marvel at.
Alas, watching them play is much morefun than listening to them play. Most of the set consisted of jokey thrashmetal numbersrobots, unsurprisingly, excel at double bassabout such things asgetting stoned, Star Trek and how Glenn Beck is an asshole. There were also ahandful of goofy covers like “Melt With You,” “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and“Hot, Hot, Hot.” Captured! By Robots couldn’t sustain its high conceptorindeed the audience’s full attentionfor very long, but the novelty factor, andthe expertly timed comedic banter between Vance and the foul-mouthed robots,made it well worth the price of admission.
