Levitation Live Shot: Survive

Hey, Nicholas Winding Refn, have I got a soundtrack band for you.

After an hour stuck in the vehicular Hades of the 183/71 interchange on the way to psych-adoring Levitation, my patience for incipient peace and love was short and steaming. Thank god for glacial, cerebral, menacing Survive. While a dog pile of easy feedback will dominate the weekend, the Austin keyboard quartet create an angular clarity.

There’s an Eighties influence, but it’s grimy neon, not floppy shirts or spandex giddiness. This is krautrock meets post-rock, a Tangerine Dream in a sea of mud and fetid mulch. If Vangelis got heavily into drone, he’d make these sounds, stirring and soaring, but with an earthbound sense of menace and weight.

While most synth bands inevitably and cravenly aim for danceability, Survive creates cerebral urgency. So, points to the people trying to blow bubbles and at least sway to the beat, but that’s just for effort. Survive’s studio transmissions, including this year’s EP MFO64, demonstrates a complexity that might be tough to recreate live, but the sheer disciplined musicianship, summoning the spirits of Ghosts-era Nine Inch Nails, reveals a deft power.

There’s the same kind of anti-showmanship that their spiritual forebears like Faust and Kraftwerk relished, as the musicians themselves tended their instruments like engineers. Crowd interaction would be an affectation, so after one finger point to the audience, they loaded out to Suicide’s “Ghost Rider.” Perfect.

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