Live Review: Om, Ghost Notes, Andrew Tuttle

The Hi-Fi is virtually empty when one-man noise outfit Andrew Tuttle starts into his set, thus launching Om's second ever Brisbane show. His set's certainly not for a wide audience, no sir/madam, this guy ain't no Flume, it's a quiet, occasionally glitchy unbroken half hour of eastern mystic psych drone that you'd probably need a PhD in musicology to appreciate properly. Fortunately though, the lure of tonight's headliners attracts the odd beard-stroking pseudo-intellectual, and in their eyes, Tuttle is worthy of praise for such a 'transcendental', even if they don't really know exactly what such an adjective means.

Somebody operating the house music has got a sense of humour, because after Tuttle leaves the stage laidback reggae pipes up over the P.A. It's like a mellowed out high five to the bleary eyed contingent of the crowd, telling them to 'come in, chill out' Ghost Notes fit right in with that vibe. A five piece instrumental trumpet-glockenspiel-keyboard band hit big, shoegaze-y crescendos before collapsing into delicately orchestrated passages. Ghost Notes venture across jazzy frontiers and lush post-rock soundscapes deftly, so that, baked to the gills or not, watching the five piece work through these jams is pretty damn engrossing.

There's a school of thought that Om haven't been Om since Chris Hakius left the drum stool back in 2008. That when a two piece lose one member, the remaining member cannot in good conscience continue playing as that band.

That's why when Om comes on, and their stage set up seems rudimentary, it almost seems as though the critics of latter-day Om could be right, maybe this is just a phone-in. After all, you think a band with such a deft mastery of atmospherics would light some candles or maybe burn some incense, but no, it's just the three dudes, no backdrop even, swathed in unwavering blue lights. Then Al Cisneros' plays a note on his bass, and that's all the crowd needs to be captivated. It's not that we hear the bassist's power, we literally feel it; the ground shudders beneath our sneakers. Our legs shake and our chests concave. Cisneros is Lemmy on a vision quest and with the assistance of Lychens' Robert Lowe on guitar/tambourine/keyboards, Om are killing it.

As the band's set veers through, primarily 2012's Advaitic Songs and 2009's God is Good the albums' meditative quietness is replaced by the heft of Cisneros' bass, and the crash of Emil Amos cymbals. Om' performance tonight is so much louder and a much more visceral experience than their records, yet maintains the wonderfully relaxing qualities of their recorded output. Feeling the vibrations from Cisneros' bass is like sitting in a massage chair. When it's over the crowd feels wonderfully loose and at peace.