nothin Nous Makes Noise At Lyric Hall | New Haven Independent

Nous Makes Noise At Lyric Hall

Allison Hadley Photos

DaDA Mr.

The night started later than billed, allowing a small but attentive crowd to filter into the Lyric Hall, and then opener DaDA Mr. — Christopher Cavaliere on guitar with painter Marcella Kurowski, of Bridgeport — glided silently onto the stage. Cavaliere sat down, center stage, without a spotlight. The projector behind him showed the quick work of Kurowski, paint splattered and smocked, shadowy hands and brushes streaking the white screen in blue or purple.

Listening to the intricately layered guitar and synth loops Cavaliere evoked Thursday night, one felt like they were traveling in a river, submerging to cooler depths of sound but occasionally surfacing to almost bubbly melodic notes, accented by sprightly painting above him. There was motion and flow to the loops, pleasantly entrancing a head-bobbing audience and setting the mental stage for the next act.

With its gilded accents and Corinthian architecture, Lyric Hall can feel like a temple to a different kind of era and a different kind of theater than the acts it books might indicate. For a venue so baroque in decor, it is surprisingly versatile — like the show that Nous brought to melt its very structured stage.

Nous.

Like a forgotten soundtrack narrating a sunrise in Jodorowsky’s Dune, Nous — Christopher Bono, Christopher Pravdica, Mike Pride, and Matt Nelson — evoked sound from another planet, sonically expanding and oozing like a primordial answer to the prior act’s flowing river. Nous conjured sounds that seemed to foretell of something urgent yet never quite discernible. Bono spoke words into the microphone, but they mixed into the bog of sound so that form overrode content. Nous — pronounced as if it rhymed with mouse, according to some stage announcing on Bono’s part — had the appearance of any rock band, but delivered sound ranging from ambient to almost kraut rock in its beats. Always playing in and around the groove, the musicians were tight and added voice to the chaos. Nelson shoved an entire microphone into the bell of his tenor sax, producing sounds heretofore unwitnessed via a veritable bicycle shop of pedals, and Pravdica made the bass throb its way through songs. The audience was rapt, the relative discomfort of the provided folding chairs proving no match for a two-hour set of sonic meditations. Bono, the creative frontman of the project, mentioned that the rest of the collaborators change. So evolution goes. Nous makes a hell of an ooze.

Small shows like this are special, and a delightful addition to the sonic map of New Haven, which seems to have more and more room for the avant garde — from locals Tongue Depressor to touring acts like Nathan Bowles and even, to an extent, the sonic narratives put forward by soon-to-be-returning guitar wizard Mdou Moctar, making space for drone and fractal music, recurring in beautiful symmetry.

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