Maybe it was the fact that the crowd skewed young, or that the multiuse space at the 418 Project in downtown Santa Cruz has a little bit of a gymnasium feel, or maybe it was the older couple on the fringe of the crowd peering around like someone’s parents, but as the Bane Show was getting underway on Sunday night there was something awkward about the event, in a distinctly high-school-dance kind of way.
At 8pm the crowd, much of which had been smoking cigarettes outside the 418 or loitering across the street in the Metro station, shuffled into the room as if headed to an assembly, slowly and almost begrudgingly approaching a folding table stacked with gadgets and tangled wires. They’d come to see a line-up of laptop artists whose names are blithely thrown around the interweb by arbiters of taste like Pitchfork and Stereogum, artists known for cooing into a mic over samples and loops of heavy bass and gauzy synth.
Santa Cruz locals Old Arc (an odd couple outfitted in a mustard sweater/blue oxford ensemble and feathered headdress/skinny jeans get-up, respectively) began playing to the shoe-gazing crowd, but the show didn’t really get started until a couple minutes in, when one half of the duo signaled to cut the light. With that single gesture, the attendees were almost instantly transformed from ill at ease to self-possessed and pulsing in unison. The Bane Show party was on.
Old Arc played the rest of their set, with the exception of intermittent camera flashes, in pitch black. The local twosome was followed by San Francisco’s Blackbird Blackbird, Denver-based Pictureplane (who, just before taking the stage, tweeted, “Drinking in the car outside the all ages spot. Just like high school”) and Oberlin College pair Teengirl Fantasy. When the lights came up between sets, people temporarily regained their self-consciousness, clustered in cliques pulling at their clothing and peering around at everyone else. As soon as each act started up, the 418 turned once again into a throbbing warehouse party with flashing laser lights, everyone dancing in the dark.
