At Moogfest 2017, the band I fell for hard, pining after a long-distance crush hard, was New York’s Kill Alters. Bonnie Baxter, Hisham A. Bharoocha and Nicos Kennedy were completely raw and the experience was rare and rapturous. Their sound strikes deep and fully immersed Motorco Music Hall in vibrant, chaotic flow.
You know those shows you find yourself having to transition from? Some don’t just end when the music stops.
Craving more, I visited the second EP, No Self Helps, and the accompanying visuals for “Sensory” and “Ego Swim“, and what I found is a dose of refreshing, though disorienting, truth.
That truth is in the elements one may find familiar but inaccessible, begging whether we can see ourselves in their collage compositions, the poetry, the dark and open tenderness of her story. Take “tell“, a captivating piece from the debut as Kill Alters, on the self-titled EP before the band assembled to emote and experiment and work together.
That truth is in tricks of the eye and ear revealing the warmth and deception and distortion that courses throughout each of our lives, carefully crafted by the band mates and boldly worn by digitally masked Bonnie Baxter peering into the camera and allowing us into bits of her childhood through the neutral, indiscriminate witness of family footage found after years long past.
Given the ever-growing alteration in our presen and future, at our fingertips, it’s hard not to appreciate the complex honesty intertwined in their stage performance, and creative projects as individuals. It’s comforting, concerning, eye-opening, and I’m ready to have my eyes opened even wider at this year’s Moogfest – they know how to pick ’em. See and feel for yourself.
Moogfest is coming up quickly for Durham, NC, so get your tickets ASAP! Single day passes are available and there’s even limited free programming – installations, the stage dedicated to local collective Raund Haus, and more.
Photography and footage captured by Cameron Spann of Deadfly Films.
