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If you’re a regular reader of this column, you know that seeing live music is an unbeatable experience (and according to one recently released study, it may help prolong your life!). But when you go to as many gigs as I do, it takes a little something extra to pull a performance out of my clogged-up memory bank. Like, say, staging it at a planetarium and pairing the music with trippy visuals and a laser light show.
The good people at Sacred Bones Records, who have spent the past few years reissuing the work of Mort Garson, dreamed up an evening celebrating the work of that electronic pop artist and pioneer in the mold of midnight stoner mainstay Laser Pink Floyd. With help from Northwest promoter Night Howl Productions, the label made this manifest last week at OMSI, pairing an hourlong laser show soundtracked by favorites from Garson’s legendary album Plantasia and the music he wrote to accompany a TV broadcast of the Apollo moon landing with live performances by Portland artists Pulse Emitter and Elrond.
The Laser Mort Garson experience was not as engrossing as I had hoped, but I put that down to a poor choice of seating. The stream of abstract images and geometric designs were mostly happening right above my head, forcing me to strain my neck to get a good look. The pain was immediately soothed, however, by the appearance of a stegosaurus and a pair of dancing robots.
The best moments came early when Elrond, the duo of Vern Avola and Ian Gorman Weiland, performed an appropriately weightless set of cosmic sounds in tribute to Garson’s moon landing soundtrack. Above me, the dome was filled with images that melted together or zoomed into what looked like a close-up of a DNA strand. I found myself achieving something close to liftoff.