Words + Photos By Clarissa Villondo
Dear The Vinyl District and The Fillmore,
Understand that I love both of you. Please understand that I do, but I really wish that The Vinyl District’s show wasn’t at The Fillmore.
The local band show consisting of Technophobia, Honest Haloway, and Drop Electric sounded and looked fantastic at The Fillmore, but the venue was too big to hold this crowd. A good amount of people showed up for this event, but the venue holds 650 in the main music hall, causing the show to look a bit empty. I know how hard it is to present an event and have the show feel empty, so I feel your pain, The Vinyl District. Despite the doors opening early and Technophobia supposed to take the stage at 7:45 pm, not many people were there, so the show was delayed for a few minutes.
Technophobia started off with strong synthesizers and Denman Anderson’s powerful vocals. Denman joked in-between songs that it was “early for vampires like [them].” The dark synth-wave band reminded me a little bit of AFI meets EDM. Technophobia, especially Denman, also had great stage presence on stage. Many of their songs sounded like a continuation of the same song, but I liked what I heard.
Honest Haloway was the complete opposite of Technophobia. Tim Kratzer does feature synthesizers on every song, but they’re an indie pop synth band. Their stage presence was as good as Technophobia’s, mostly because they stood mainly in the same place throughout the entire set. What they lacked in movement was made up in the music. Honest Haloway’s usual bass player Fico Lazzaro-Colon was out of town, so Greg Balleza filled in with only having one practice before the show. I couldn’t tell that he only had one practice in; I thought he was actually in Honest Haloway.
Drop Electric, the band I was most excited to see, started their set with “Brooklyn’s Nightmare.” I knew before the show that Navid Marvi of Technicians joined the band, but I was still surprised to see him on stage. Despite the lineup change, the band’s sound was as great as past performances, with many of the same videos projected behind them. Cheers for Kristina Reznikov were shouted out by the crowd, which is very appropriate as I thought her vocals were the best for the evening. Their set continued with “Empire Trashed,” “Carl Pagan,” “Bakuhatsu” and their new song “Blue Dream,” which will be featured on their upcoming album Waking Up to the Fire. The night wouldn’t be complete without Neel Singh destroying a bow with his guitar. The set ended with a personal favorite, “Out of the Dark.” I was expecting their usual encore at the end, so I was a little disappointed when they didn’t have one last song. At least the show ended on time.
You should have been at this show. Go next time and be on time, people. Punk time isn’t real.
Technophobia
