Autolux at the Epicentre in San Diego

There was a plethora of concert options for a Thursday night in Los Angeles but I decided to travel to my unofficial second home of San Diego to experience the swirly feedback genius of Autolux. The last time I caught up with Autolux they nearly drowned the audience in a sonic tsunami at the Natural History Museum.



The Pity Party started off as a nice appetizer to the main course of Autolux. The Pity Party continues to improve their live show and are becoming an increasingly tighter live act. Heisenflei (Drums/Keyboards/Vocals) was her usual multitasking self utilizing a lot of black keys on her Yamaha DX7 for some nice dark basslines. M (Guitars/Vocals) was hiding in relative darkness getting Kraftwerk like guitar stabs from his Fender Stratocaster. One audience member at the end of the performance was baffled at Maurice's guitar sound and asked how he got that bass like guitar sound to which M pointed to his Boss Super Octave pedal. I did notice he had an Electro Harmonix HOG pedal which did some serious damage on this particular night.The crowd was receptive of their edgy schizophrenic attention deficit disorder indie rock that may include random guitar or vocal freakouts at any moment. I picked up their EP which has artwork constructed from recycled cereal boxes. They will be signed soon.








I have covered Autolux many times and the only topic I get tired mentioning is the fact that I have no new Autolux album to listen to. The new songs are fantastic and have Carla Azar (Drums/Vocals) singing vocals on more songs like "The Science Of Imaginary Solutions" and "Reappearing". The Epicentre is located off of Mira Mesa blvd discreetly nestled against an IHOP and is an all ages venue. It is basically like Chain Reaction of Anaheim but slightly larger. I was supposed to attend Asobi Seksu there but had a concert conflict. Carla opened the set providing airy vocals for "The Science of Imaginary Solutions" over the sampled looping feedback storm of guitars by Eugene Goreshter and Greg Edwards. During the intro of "Plantlife", I saw Greg use an E-Bow that he sampled with his Line 6 Delay pedal to create a buzzing bee like effect. It is interesting to reiterate that all his pedals on the floor were obscured by tape or paint to hide any manufacturer information. I did note that Greg tuned his guitar down one whole step to "DGCFAD". "SSW" was a new song that featured noisy guitar stops and a shrapnel storm of feedback accompanied by Eugene's vocals. "Finders Fee" was another new song that had some interesting guitar textures scattered amongst Eugene's vocals. I like Autolux so much that I plan on venturing out to the human cattle round up called Sunset Junction to see them.

Autolux setlist for the Epicentre in San Diego (8/16/07)
"The Science of Imaginary Solutions"
"Plantlife"
"Turnstile Blues"
"Blanket"
"SSW"
"SubZero Fun"
"Capital Kind Of Strain"
"Robots In The Garden"
"Here Comes Everybody"
"Reappearing"
"Finders Fee"