Eraserheads

Two dudes bumped into each other at the School of Photographic Arts in Ottawa on Dalhousie Street one night and had a bit of a doppelgänger moment. Jamie Kronick, a graduate of the school, and Omar David Rivero, who was at SPAO with a friend, are roughly the same stature and have similar pompadours. The uncanny commonalities continued as the two started talking about music. They bonded over a discussion of the finer points of obscure bands such as Battles (Warp Records).

That first meeting led to the inevitable invitation to jam — the bromantic gesture of newly formed male relationships — which led down a path of musical obscurity known as Eraserheads.

That’s the name of the duo’s new experimental drum-and-bass project. It takes from the David Lynch film in that the songs are as non-linear as the movie’s plot.

And it’s a cheeky nod to the main character too, whose ‘do is much like Rivero’s and Kronick’s.

Perhaps the band will get to cult classic status as well. The hallmarks are certainly there: the band has quirky appeal (the drum kit is linked to a slide projector, so images rotate in time with the music), the music is dream-like (credit all those delay pedals that add a hazy effect), and the backstory has enough idiosyncrasies to keep people talking.

To wit: Kronick (drums) and Rivero (guitars, loops, vocals) take a strictly barrier-free approach to band practice. There is no repetition, no verse-chorus-verse structure, and no focus on results.

“We’re not working with songs, we’re working with concepts, ideas, and feelings,” Kronick says. “It’s about what feels right at the moment, rather than being locked into song structure. It’s not about result, it’s about experiment.”

Rivero talks about grabbing a sound — say, playing a single guitar string — but getting the most out of it through the way you play it, what effects you put on it, or whether you play it with your hand, a pick, or a violin bow.

That’s how they bring a Lynchian aspect to their music. “I find the soundtrack to Eraserhead extremely intriguing,” Rivero says. “When David Lynch does a soundtrack, he grasps small details and amplifies them. I’m very much attracted to subtleties.”

Eraserheads’ first public performance happens in a gallery where Rivero’s girlfriend, Jennifer Stewart, is exhibiting her photographic works under the banner Emotional Topologies. Topology is a mathematical term used to represent a certain substance or material that can change form, but still remain with the same properties. In both the art exhibit and the music, the term is being applied to feelings and emotions to show how one person goes through a series of changes, yet remains the same being.

Despite all the high-brow projecting about concepts, there’s still an appreciation for an identifiable beat and a sense of harmony, however basic, in the music of Eraserheads.

“We’re still playing music at the end of the day,” Rivero says. “We’re not doing performance art.”

At Wurm Gallery (inside Invisible Cinema), 319 Lisgar St. Friday, Feb. 24. 9-9:30 p.m.
Emotional Topologies, featuring the work of Jennifer Stewart, on view until March 28.
No cover. - Ottawa Magazine

Eraserheads @ SPAO on Friday at 7 p.m., $10
And now from bands making horror films to bands named after them. Eraserheads take their name from the David Lynch film, "Eraserhead:” a dystopian movie that walks the line between reality and hallucination. Like that film, the Eraserheads duo pushes boundaries with a combination of the visceral energy of drums and guitar, drenched in synthesizers and effects. Guitarist Omar Rivero seems to be a creative machine, whether it's making spaced-out sounds, intricate guitar jams or coming up with arresting visuals to accompany the music. The first time I saw Eraserheads they were behind a screen where projections were playing: you heard the music, saw the images being screened and could focus on the matching silhouettes of two similar-looking musicians performing and tossing their curly pompadours around. The band is playing on Friday at a space not normally devoted to music, but to photography: SPAO (the School of Photographic Arts Ottawa) on Dalhousie Street. The school is teaming up with Guerilla Magazine for a fundraiser to support its programs and promote the magazine's latest issue and the line-up is diverse. Besides Eraserheads, there'll be heavy punk, straight-ahead rock from four-piece The Haig, Absoluut (one half of international electronic duo Dialoog), and even a solo didgeridoo. It starts at 7 p.m. and $10 cover gets you access to the music, the cash bar and SPAO merchandise up for sale. - CBC My Region