An evening of trans-genre offerings with EOTO

EOTO, featuring two members of the popular jam band, String Cheese Incident, played to a small but enthusiastic crowd on Friday at the Rocket Club.

Jason Hann and Michael Travis are seasoned musicians who artfully allow the audience to feed into the progression of their live performance with each show because they improvise each show. Hann and Travis seem to communicate on a telepathic level with one another and the crowd during their shows, and that intuition allows them to effectively tailor their sound to that specific night or set.

They utilize varied analog and electronic elements, including a live drum kit, hand percussion, sampler, bass, guitar, keyboards and live mixing to achieve their unique sound. The dynamic aspects of this Dub-Step-Electro-House unification can only be fully appreciated at a live show, though the band does offer recordings of most live sets the next day via livedownloads.com, a pay-by-the-show music downloading site.

Both musicians come from varied musical backgrounds. Travis simultaneously plays hand-drums and kit, emulating the electronic beats of DJs and programmers, while Hann plays with a range of world and fusion influences due to his own international study, and played with everyone from Loreena McKinnet to Isaac Hayes.

Although some would say EOTO stood for "Elephants Only Talk Occasionally (2006)" or "Each One Teach One," when asked about the origins of the name EOTO in "The Madison Music Review," Hann replied, "It did actually did stand for End Of Time Observatory at one point. It was a lot to explain, and many thought we meant the End of the World Observatory - completely different philosophy, kind of dark sounding, and one that made interviews and casual questions complicated."

"At some point, we recognized the first letters spelled a kind of made-up word that meant nothing and everything at the same time, and the name cemented itself when Japanese fans said that our pronunciation of the word (Ee-oh-toe) means 'good sound' or 'good music' in Japanese. If that's not a sign..."

Unfortunately, despite the Eymarel opening, and then a solid two hours from EOTO, their show was not very well-attended, which always affects the ferocity of a band that exchanges so much energy with the audience. However, after a slightly slower first set with more of a house feel to it, EOTO came back in their second set a little dirtier, grittier, with more of a jungle feel through drums and bass.

The last song ended with an epic double bongo jam over an escalating key loop, all culminating in a rousing cymbals breakdown à la Goldie or LTJ Bukem, and then a statement from the band: "We have played up until the end, just so we wouldn't miss a minute of it, so thanks so much for coming out!" No messing around or wasting time with leaving the stage and waiting for an encore, these guys pushed it up until past last call in a solid presentation of musicianship.

As the constant evolution of the music genre progresses, bands who cross pollinate musical influences are emerging as the new fusion, whether it's live-electronic-analog house or alt-country-rock-indie. EOTO stands strong a forerunner in the fusion of live jam with electronic dance music, with a fun and movable result.

Lydia See is a freelance photographer and writer based in Asheville. More show, record and music reviews, as well as photography and local happenings in the music and art community can be found at www.lydiasee.com

Be the first to comment on this article!

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out