Mirror Mirror & Omega Jardens @ Glasslands | 1.26.10

Around the coldest January corner in Williamsburg nests Glasslands, a barn full of glitter and darkwave music. On January 26th, 2010,  local arts impresario Todd Pendu brought DJs from Chicago and two local bands, Omega Jarden and Mirror Mirror, to Glasslands.

On this evening, the stage at Glasslands looked like the underside of a prom dress, or like a snug womb, depending on your life outlook. Ladies with cokebottle glasses boogied and waify boys sashayed across basslines played by DJ Harrison as the party warmed up.

Omega Jarden, (pronounced “Jar-den,” not with a Spanish j), blanketed the stage with their Korg synths and guitar pedals. The drummer, in tiny black shorts and a scalene triangle haircut, decorated the face of his bass drum with colored duct tapes to look like an Asian sunburst. Green lasers emanated from behind the drummer, tracing the uterine lining of the ceiling, and then Omega Jarden began. The opening two minutes of their first song were hypnotic, with the lead female guitarist, who had contagious rhythm, singing into a vocal effects processor. However, after the vocals stopped, the music, which had been building artfully, seemed to plateau. The drums maintained a minimal disco beat while the rest of the group seemed to depart into different musical directions, a four minute jam, which seemed to exhaust the naked dancer on stage.

Did I forget to mention that there was a nearly naked male dancer on stage? On loan from Sugarland or pagan Rome, he was wearing a golden hood and tiny boi-shorts. His arms rolled like sine waves while he spun his golden hoola hoop. The Omegas would’ve had Cirque de Soleil on stage, could they have fit it, but this effect overall was distracting, and I was having a hard enough time understanding the chemistry of the band, which seemed disparate at best.

Next, on stage, two-piece Mirror Mirror set up a small army of light boxes and a ladder, which looked like it was stricken with cholera. Guitarist Ryan Lucero wore a lacy hoodie and singer David Riley donned a Burt Reynolds bathrobe with his own band’s t-shirt beneath. MM played prerecorded backtracks from a Mac Book and accompanied it with an inaudible Microkorg. Mirror Mirror hit play on the music from their new full length album, “Society for the Advancement of Inflammatory Consciousness,” and I found myself swimming in some Frankie Goes to Hollywood stadium-sized beats and thick rivers of automated synths.

MM’s performance seemed to peak in the first song when Lucero abandoned his guitar; he ascended the shabby ladder, extended his legs precariously towards the walls and ceiling, and stood on his head. If my grandmother had witnessed this, she would’ve had dripping palms and a triple heart attack. It was an effective stage maneuver though as it made the performers appear to leave the plane of the stage rise into another strange world available hovering just above. Overall, the new sound of Mirror Mirror communicates ecstasy, and leaves the realm of the mundane, but the live show could benefit from another live musician. Riley, although confident in his bathrobe, flitted around stage like a flamboyant daddy with no one to share a before-noon cocktail with. Maybe Mirror Mirror should put in a call to Omega Jarden to back them up?

by Thomas Wilk