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Montpelier
- Singer, songwriter
and flutist Margot Day of Craftsbury has formed
a new band this year called mOss, which had its
debut concert Friday at the Lamb Abbey. She previously
had a career with such cutting edge musicians as
Adam Yauch(Beatie Boys) and Jim Thirwell (NIN),
having three CDs to her name.
MOSS features her husband Kurtis Knight, on synthesizer,
Cyrus Bridwell on guitar, Kevin Lumbert on bass,
Dov Schiller on drums, and William Bridwell as Bard,
speaker/vocalist and Melodica player(electric horn),
along with appearance of Day's daughter, Morgana
Rose, as dancer and singer.
William Bridwell began the show with a spoken invocation
to the spirits of the earth in a kind of New Age
retropaganism, which is part of the band's public
persona, and with the quasi-Halloween theme of the
evening (most of the people in the audience were
in costumes). Day joined in the mix with lyrical
improvisations on her flute, a strong element in
these performances. Her voice has considerable flexibility
combined with a refreshing purity of tone. Dov Schiller
made excellent use of the potential percussive range
of his drum set without losing balance in the sounds
of the other instruments and vocal line.
Next in a kind of musical non sequitur, mOss took
up with a polka like rhythm in fast tempo, with
Morgana dancing quite gracefully among the players.
Smoke and Mirrors began with a voice recording (sounding
like Nixon) decrying the public protests of the
young, the music and lyrics having something of
the mock declamation of the B-52's of David Byrnes'
Talking Heads, though with a more harsh edge to
it. Other songs continued this combination of sung
(Day) and spoken (Bridwell) parts, such as Some
Day, with its resolved dissonances in the vocal
lines, and No Place for Love, a apocalyptic vision
in music.
mOss gives
a good show in its visual as well as with its sounds,
with a definite appeal to a generation familiar
with the magical mythologies of Tolkein's Lord Of
The Rings and even Harry Potter.
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