Video Hippos

They did not sound it, to their credit, but Video Hippos were only two fellows, one with a drumkit, Kevin O’Meare, and one with a guitar, Jim Triplett. Of the band’s show at Boulder Cafe in Rochester, New York, it would be too easy to comment that they played the same song a dozen times though too apropos to not mention that it was considered. But to discuss the Hippos’ show without considering the visual aspect of it, the collage of images projected onto a screen behind the band, is off topic.

The film reels played on a makeshift screen behind Triplett, who faced the audience, though in direct view of O’meare, so that I wondered how he could not become distracted from keeping time on the grueling tempos of a Hippos’ tune. The films, which appeared a vast and all-inclusive collage of self-constructed and stolen images, the mundane to the infamous,

ran impressively in time to the band, as I and several fellow concert goers commented afterwards. This was particularly impressive because of the homogeneity of the band. That is, they weren’t playing densely structured songs but songs which sounded as though they began and ended at the will of the participants, featuring little deviation, and one could be doubly impressed by the tight structure (married to the movement and changes on the film screen) hidden in the raving meandering of the Hippos’ sound.

(To accuse the Hippos of being the opposite of “densely structured” is not what I have in mind in my description. Rather, the structure in a dense song like “Bohemian Rhapsody” is obvious, however pleasing, but the structure in a Hippos’ song is apparent only to the band and to the attentive listener watching band-constructed images.

A dense, sometimes impenetrable sound it is, sure, but it is not careless.)

The vocal mics reverbed to the sky, each melody bounced around the tall windows of the cafe/bar without sticking to anyone’s lips. Instead, the maniacal consistency of a relentless pace chasing a faster pace and the strange, warm, synthetic sounds emanating from the guitar (and pedals) made everyone giddily anxious, even those of us standing on chairs in the back, as though, like cigarettes, the Hippos might not help out later but for the present there was no complaint.

No related posts.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.