Last Night: Garotas Suecas, Greg Ashley, & Lumerians at Rickshaw Stop

​Garotas Suecas, Greg Ashley, Lumerians
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Rickshaw Stop

Better than: out of season pineapple and Bebel Gilberto's new cd.

The Rickshaw was filled with its usual overwhelming amount of cigarette smoke last night. But instead of causing coughing attacks and irritating eyes, the smoke added to the mysterious and otherworldly music being played.

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Greg Ashley opened the evening with a set of downbeat ballads. He introduced his songs with such nonchalant, self-deprecating comments as "this next song is a bad one." Who could blame him for those judgments when his refrains had lyrics that proclaimed, "Love is a government" over and over? His set turned out to be the only downer in the bunch, though.

The first blast of the first song in the Lumerians set came from the bass guitar. It reverberated so strong it felt like a seizure. The intoxicating beat from the band's congo drums, combined with the over-saturated synth-drone, created a trance-like lull that demanded a mass shuffle on the dance floor. The area around the stage was packed with people swaying back and forth on their feet as if hypnotized by the music. 

The band had a projector set up that contributed to the tripped out atmosphere by displaying floor to ceiling shots of spinning spirals and moving patterns. Their set was tantamount to listening to the soundtrack from an epic science fiction movie about a jungle on another planet.