MEMBRANES play Slidebar Oct. 29 and The Echo Nov. 1
Membranes, with their release of Dark Matter/Dark Energy, have truly developed into one of the most unique musical and scientific experiments in the music industry. The mystifying contrast of a choir, introduction of the Higgs Boson particle research and talks about the universe are only a few of the captivating parts of a Membranes concert experience — and it truly is an experience of a lifetime.
John Robb, Keith Curtis, Nick Brown, Peter Byrchmore (Goldblade and former Nightingales) and Rob Haynes (Goldblade) rekindled the group in 2009, an experiment (pun intended) of music and the universe. They will be hitting up the The Slidebar Oct. 29 and The Echo Nov. 1.
Membranes came out of the 80’s post-punk era and developed a unique underground DIY sound that has only become a stronger vision for the industrial punk era. Unlike most of the punk scene, however, they’ve created a psychedelic twist to match the ideas of Dark Matter/Dark Energy.
Using the universe as a muse provides endless possibilities, but Robb felt the topic was just the inspiration the band needed. They held events over the past three years called “The Universe Explained” that uses research scientists, art experiments, poetry, etc. to invite the audience into the universe through a variety of mediums.
Three years ago Robb attended a lecture by Joe Incandel, who is one of the leading people at the CERN project. Following the lecture, while at dinner, Robb asked them to tell him about the universe. “And so the CERN people told me everything they knew about the universe in an hour conversation over dinner–about the Big Bang, about the edge of the universe, about the mystery of dark matter and dark energy!”
Following this conversation, Robb decided to follow the ideas and create what would be their most extraordinary album.
“At this point we’d started writing only a couple songs for the album, but this conversation was so fascinating. The idea of the words ‘dark matter/dark energy’ are so poetic and so melancholic, they just give you direction for a record,” Robb said. “The idea that the universe is so bizarre and so weird and what he (Joe Incandela) was talking about was so mind-boggling that it’s almost like a psychedelic, weird record. I thought, ‘If you can make music that matches the ideas that he’s talking about, that would make an amazing record.'”
Dark Matter/Dark Energy isn’t recognized solely for content, but also for the performances that are following along with it. The weekend of Sep. 26-27 Membranes performed in Estonia with the all-female Estonian Chamber Choir Sireen at one of the “Universe Explained” events. The band also collaborated with the choir for their singles “The Universe Explodes Into A Billion Photons Of Pure White Light” and “(5776) The Breathing Song.”
“It was probably the greatest gig I’ve ever played actually,” Robb said. “I think with music, the more opposite your disciplines are, the more likely they are to work together and also, the idea with Membranes is we like to take chances. It’s not a rock-n-roll band where you do the same old thing. It’s not the six tricks that work in rock-n-roll that you do forever.”
Although this unique event isn’t able to make it to the U.S. due to budget constraints, Membranes insist that the performances will still stand strong, with or without a choir background or a group of renowned scientists to narrate the event.
“For this tour, it’ll just be the stripped down sound,” Robb said. “That’s how we recorded the album and songs, and it works very well like that as well with just four people. But we also like collaboration. Quite often at gigs, because we’ve been around a long time and we know quite a lot of people, we just bring people in to do collaborations with us. So we can’t promise a whole choir, but we can promise a pretty diverse, quite exciting gig!”