 "Photo: Callie Richmond")
The twosome emerged from backstage amid clouds of fog and piercing green lasers. The triumphant sounds of the Robotique Mystique intro filled the room. Guitarist Aaron Behrens surveyed the crowd, full of cheering and hooting from the general admission all the way to the stands, and proceeded to kick out the jams for more than an hour straight.
The event was Ghostland Observatory's album release party for Robotique Mystique, an album that fans across the country are also celebrating - but not like this. Any fan who bought a ticket for the sold-out show got a free copy of the album and an intense night of sweaty dancing at the newly renovated Austin Music Hall.
The venue was a perfect fit for the show. Multiple will call ticket-windows keep the line flowing, and the spacious and well-lit atrium is perfect for meeting up with friends. The venue, with a capacity far beyond that of Stubb's, stands to become to premiere concert destination in downtown Austin. In addition to the spacial layout of the venue, the pyrotechnics were also amazing, an aspect that the Ghostland show took full advantage of.
After its entrance on the stage, Ghostland performed the next four songs with rapid-fire perfection - no extended jams, no talking breaks, no B.S. Ghostland live feels illicit: too raw to be legal. It is unbelievable to watch these two take control of this crowd of thousands, from the front row to the back of the balcony, with ease. The beats are industrial in strength. The music is engineered by dancers, for dancers.
Behrens is less of an emcee and more of a spiritual medium, bringing revolution to the people in the form of physical expression. In an interview with the Austinist in 2005, around the release of Ghostland's first album, Delete, Delete, I Eat Meat, Behrens said his role as a performer is somewhat selfless because he is simply there to give you, the audience, something to focus on in order to forget everything about your problems and just dance.
In that regard not much has changed, both in terms of live performance and recorded work. The new album is a masterwork of jams - some instrumental, some experimental, all of them for dancing. It is sure to draw comparisons from other electro acts making club music with soul in 2008, like Chromeo. However, the Ghostland album seems to pull more from early electronic music than from its peers.
The most noticeably retro aspect of Robotique Majestique is the old-school, hard core, industrial beats that are used in almost every track. Thomas Turner, the drummer and electro mastermind of Ghostland, has said the band is not based in the electronic scene and that the sound grew up independently of those influences. The goth-synth sound, however, prevalent in this album is so similar to that of '80s and '90s darkwave artists like Front 242 that comparisons are impossible to avoid.
Ghostland has proved themselves capable of taking this old genre into an entirely new space, with the help of Behrens' rocktastic vocals, which can also stray in a seriously The Mars Volta direction. It's hard to get bored with this album, because every track aims to accomplish something new, while the album itself remains cohesive.
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