Brian Slattery Photo
Oyola.
Chad Browne-Springer of Phat A$tronaut held the mic close as his band rode an R&B groove beneath him. He looked out at the growing audience at Pacific Standard, the people most into the music making a close arc around the stage as the back filled in with people laughing and socializing.
“Do you believe in magic?” he crooned. “I believe in you.”
There was a sold-out show at College Street Music Hall for Young the Giant on Saturday night, and a packed house at Best Video in Hamden for a protest music show featuring 12 New Haven-area acts. But people kept coming through the door all evening at Pacific Standard Tavern for the second Astrophest, a three-night musical extravaganza organized by José Oyola, following the first Astrophest he threw in 2015.
The night of Feb. 23 had featured Ports of Spain, Roz & the Rice Cakes, Keepers of the Vibe, and Broca’s Area. Feb. 24 saw Bella’s Bartok, Political Animals, Fernandito Ferrer, and José Oyola’s own Astronauts take the stage. The final night tilted the balance toward hip hop, as José Oyola and the Astronauts shared the bill with Phat A$tronaut, Ceschi and Anonymous, Inc., Weerd Science, UZOO, and Mister.
After a solid set of rap from Mister, Phat A$tronaut showed the crowd that it really could do live what it promised on its debut release, as the band ranged from R&B and hip hop to rock, ending its set with some straight-up shredding from guitarist Mark Lyon. The middle of its set, with the “Motherland,” found vocalist Chad Browne-Springer connecting fully with the audience, delivering effortless calls that the crowd shouted back right on time, while the band dug into a supple African-inflected rhythm that kept heads and feet moving.
As people kept filing in, Phat A$tronaut made way for UZOO, a hip hop collective organized around MC Joey Batts that made an art of being joyously rowdy. They traded rhymes, took turns roving out into the crowd, backed each other up with a wall of support onstage, and now and again, commanded the crowd to do their bidding, whether that meant making them crowd the stage or hop into the air, so that all the feet around and on the stage were off the floor at once.
If UZOO achieved its entertaining ends through irresistible force, the hip hop group Weerd Science — the hip hop project of Coheed and Cambria drummer Joshua Eppard and teammates Dirty Ern and CJB — found its connection with the audience through intricate rhymes within rhymes and a healthy dose of humor, whether talking about personal relationships or disdain for the music industry.
“This is a new song,” Eppard announced toward the end of Weerd Science’s set. “We’ll probably fuck it up.” Guess what: They didn’t.
Ceschi with full band Anonymous, Inc. smoked out a set that veered from hip hop to pop to full-on progressive rock, drawing from the band’s long history as well as taking a couple numbers from Ceschi’s 2015 release, Broken Bone Ballads. The switch-ups saw brother Ceschi’s brother David Ramos leap out from behind the drum kit to take a mic and join Ceschi at the front of the stage, then leap back behind the kit as Ceschi picked up a guitar. Musicians jumped on and off stage to grow and shrink the band as the songs required (in full disclosure, this reporter was one of them). The band finished with a squall of prog rock as driving as it was complicated.
And at last, as midnight came and went and the audience was holding steady, José Oyola and the Astronauts took the stage to deliver songs that fans had been waiting for. The Astronauts themselves were as tight an outfit as ever and the set gained momentum as it went on, with Oyola dropping his guitar to work the crowd while singing. By the time the band got to “Struve (Born in the City)” — a song fans of Oyola know well — the people toward the front of the stage shouted the lyrics back to him without prompting. And when the band moved into the running beat of “I’m The Cloud” and Oyola sang the line — “I’m the cloud that lifts you up” — he really was, even as Saturday was a thing of the past, and Sunday already hours old.
