((Prism House)) Band Profile and Upcoming New York City Concerts - Oh My Rockness

Written by Patrick McNamara

Brooklyn’s Prism House is Brian Wenner (music + live electronics + the occasional smooth body gyration) + Matt O’Hare (live visuals). Any band with a dude dedicated to visuals is a band I’m going to seek out with a grateful heart. So let’s go to Mars, man.

This band mashes together scattered beats, disconnected glitches, soulful clicks made by levers and and buttons and knobs and pulleys and wheels (ok maybe not pulleys) to create carefully crafted patternless songs that are a delightful journey for your head (but before you enjoy this soundscape trip, you first have to remember to forget in order to remember once more). Oh yeah, throw in a bunch of randomly found human talking sounds over all that action too. Just to keep things interesting.

Perhaps Prism House’s greatest feat is that even with all the weirdo composition and song construction going on, you still could almost get away with dancing to this. Almost. Although it would be one strange dance indeed. I’d imagine whiplash would be your greatest threat. But really, though this is music with beats made by electronics, this isn’t dance music. I think what this is was once believed to be called oh what was it called oh that’s right it was called ART. You don’t always need to be club thumping to the big time bangers to get your transcendence, son! Free your mind and your body will follow.

Get Prism House’s debut EP on Ceremony Recordings. And perhaps more importantly, go see them play. Because your high end stereo speakers never gave you visuals, man (unless you count the “ghetto blasters” from the ‘80s that had the red equalizer thing always running up and down when you were really “blasting” it.)

Published August 13, 2013