Sextile & N8NOFACE
Tuesday, October 17
Sextile & N8NOFACE
$20 Adv. / $25 Day of / 18 & Over / Doors: 7pm / Show: 8pm
Since emerging in 2015, Sextile have been a party-provoking force on the LA underground, capable of kicking up a riot with the raw-edged squall of a synth or the sharp-elbowed jerk of a guitar. Originally formed by Brady Keehn and Melissa Scaduto after the pair relocated from New York to LA, Sextile released their debut album A Thousand Hands in 2015, with its Grand Canyon-sized echoes, haunted screams, and post-punk invocations, before pushing synths further down the front with 2017 effort Albeit Living.
Now they return refreshed, renewed, and ready to rage with a serotonin-boosting new album, a new group dynamic, faster BPMs, and an even wilder new direction. Recorded in Yucca Valley, Push bounces and bops at the fringes of hardcore dance music, with the hallmarks of drum & bass, gabber and trance illuminating the record like glowsticks at a ‘90s Fantazia rave.
Nate, or N8, NOFACE has been described as a Chicano Flannery O’Connor playing chiptune Ministry, the Sleaford Mods of the American Southwest, Suicide for the 21st Century and Ghostmane meets darkwave synthpunk dashed with early Ween’s glue-huffing pop. Lyrically, his sometimes romantic, oftentimes violent storytelling tunes lean toward Narcocorrido, the bloody ballads of Mexican drug cartels. It sounds dark on the surface, but really N8NOFACE’s music is a lot of fun, and as exciting and cathartic as the birth of punk rock and hiphop.
N8NOFACE is animated and all over the map when he speaks. But, he always gets straight to the point, just like his music. His songs often clock in around 1-minute long, typically abruptly ending before even repeating a chorus. The songs are built around a few stark, evocative mantra-like lines about life’s struggles over a simple, hummable hook. That he’s so prolific with these 50-60 second dark pop masterpieces is astonishing. “If you can’t explain it simply you don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
