El Ten Eleven/Factories/The Whisperlights at the Rhythm Room 1/11/11

This was my first time seeing El Ten Eleven and I was quite impressed. I'm still floored that it's just two guys making such great music. Their sound is dominantly post-rock, but they're a bit more danceable than someone like Sigur Ros or Explosions in the Sky. I couldn't help but think of Holy Fuck, since both artists seem like they use synthesizers, but the sound is 100% organic.

I talked to Kristian Dunn, the man behind the double guitar/bass and fretless bass. He said he's received a few reviews where critics praise the synthesizer and bass, "which cracks us up because we’ve literally never used a synthesizer, ever"

The sound comes from him using a violin bow, 13 pedals and "me doing shit with my fingers, that makes it sound really unlike a bass. With two guys I kinda need to do it." For all you guitar geeks, here's his explanation of the pedals-

There's three loopers that we do that whole thing live where I play something and it's playing back. Some of the main ones are a distortion pedal, that’s sort of a light distortion that I like to play on the bass when the bass is kind of grinding. Another main one is the whammy pedal which takes a note I play and adds another note an octave higher. Another setting is a note two octaves higher, it’s a rocking pedal like a wah-wah pedal, so you’re rocking back and forth and that changes the intervals, so for example, if it rocks back- this might be too technical- it rocks back it’s adding a note a 5th above, and when I push it down, it bends it up to a note that’s an octave above what I’m playing. So, a lot of that keyboard sounding woo-ooo-ooo that’s the whammy pedal, that’s the way I can explain it.

Dunn is a pilot; the name El Ten Eleven was inspired by a plane.
This was their 4th show in Phoenix, which Dunn said was by far the best.








Factories, a Tempe electronica band, took the middle spot.
The interplay between the two keyboardists made them loud in the best possible way. Two of them also played guitar, which created an interesting sound. They reminded me a bit of Phantogram without the trip-hop influence. They list The Postal Service as a similar artist, which can definitely be heard in their sound.

The Whisperlights took the opening spot. This was
the second time I had seen them in one week, and they lived up to my expectations, except the crowd wasn't quite as into it as they were at the Yucca.

To quote Dave Gironda, Jr., the madman who jumped in the crowd during "Death"- "We headlined the Yucca." A headlining show makes all the difference, especially when the Yucca draws big, rowdy crowds, and the Rhythm Room brought about a mostly calm audience until they bobbed along to their favorite El Ten Eleven songs.

Read my review on Examiner here.