Ethoscope

Ethoscope

The next band overtook the floor and threw down right on it–Ethoscope, a local favorite group of Rockaway, NY’s music scene. Touching everything from heavy rock to soul to ambient indie, this group rocked out in genre-shaping style.

Opening with “Last Dance” brought they heavy down fast, but then “Attack Of The Fireflies,” actually brought just as quickly a sense of mature songwriting. The band features two guitar players, one whose playing sits more up front and handles the main riffs, while the other colors the backgrounds and atmospheres of tunes with subtle yet incredibly interesting picking. This latter guitarwork popped in at various moments and danced around the fringes of the jams with these really neat licks, such as in their track named “Alive.” These bits were brief and fleeting, unfortunately, but that makes them little gems to deinitely try and listen for if you see this band play. Other areas covered by the sharp, snappy drumming and rounded put bass combined with these guitar parts to make for quite a textured, but also grungy, wholesome sound. The band rocked through more original material, continuing with “Sweet Mother Mary” and “Sound By Chance.”

At the core of this full-on rock assault burns the sweet yet edgy voice of female lead singer Jessie May. In such a situation as Ethoscope’s, in which the music is propelled equally by all four musicians in what is often raging, sonic richness, vocals could easily face the danger of being overpowered, and thus being also just in a nuisance. But Jessie stomps on this danger, as her vocals actually ride the tops of the most raging moments with bright, passionate resonance, making them an awesome and even important musical focal point.

Their last tune before the encore, “Without Your Love,” was an easy favorite. For, not knowing they were to be cheered on by a bowled over crowd for one more extre tune, they jammed out their set ender through several spaces of rising and falling musical punch to bid farwell on a bang. The lead guitarist took a solo that, while a bit hard to hear, was a real scorcher.
From what I learned in my social rambles this weekend, Far Rockaway has quite the growing music scene. I believe honestly that such a scene couldn’t do with much better representation that these artists. - Miles Hurley of Live Music news and Review