HEALTH, Cleared, Matchess

The gentlemen of HEALTH are back for the first time in what feels like forever and they want you to know:YOU WILL LOVE EACHOTHER. HEALTH is a five-piece hailing from Seattle, San Diego, and their current home base, Los Angeles. Though often lumped into the noise-rock genre, the trio stands apart from their contemporaries by mixing in elements of dance, electronica and experimental rock. We like this about them. They have several releases to date, including one self-titled full length, a split with good friends CRYSTAL CASTLES, another split with art punk band ELPHABA, two tour CD-R’s, and one Tape release of them performing live at The Smell. Droney synths and atmospheric noise will be reverberating throughout the early part of the show tonight, with supporting acts CLEARED and MATCHESS countering HEALTH with their interpretations on experimental drone. CLEARED released their debut LP in 2011 – an effort created through experiments with percussion, electronics, and field recordings – in addition to another LP Breaking Day via Immune Recordings. In the words of Boomkat, “It is hard right now to add anything new to the so-called drone scene, but CLEARED are fathoms deeper than the current crop of pseudo ambient non-releases.” Starting the sonic conjuring is minimal synthstress, violist and singer WHITNEY JOHNSON, returning with her solo project MATCHESS for the first time since last November. On record and in a live setting, JOHNSON bewitches listeners with a set of sparse rhythms, synthetic melodies, squealing guitar lines and heavily-affected vocals that combine to create an alien, futuristic sound. Be sure to snatch a copy of her excellent 2016 record, The Rafters, which was released on Austin’s Monofonus Press this past June.