Deelay Ceelay is an experience. As a collaboration between two enthusiastic (and enthusiastically geeky) Portlanders, percussionist Delaney Kelly and musician/video artist Chris Lael Larson, Deelay Ceelay is both more than and less than a band in concert. Sure, with most of their music coming pre-recorded and the only thing “live” about their shows being the absolutely manic rounds of pounding each of them do on their twin drum kits, it may not amount to much on paper. But through a combination of lighting and experimental film/animation (synched to the music and projected behind them), the high-strung, ADHD disco-funk blaring from their monitors, a hardcore cadre of dedicated fans and the sheer sweat they put into keeping pace on the drums, it can – and often does – make for a raucous time.
Looking a lot like carbon copies – with few exceptions (although both Kelly and Larson wear glasses, only Larson wore his onstage), or two rival drummers at a simultaneous-play battle-of-the-bands competition, Deelay Ceelay took to the Backspace stage after two impressive sets by openers Strength and Pegasus Dream. Coming on a brisk Saturday evening, the show didn’t exactly pack the house, but what space there was found itself filled with a generous mix, all grateful for the band doing a second, all-ages CD release party, with free copies of the band’s Sunset Drumsets on offer.
Tearing through both old and new material, Larson and Kelly’s drumming was a case study in laser-guided synchronization, each set so perfectly to the timing of the other that their arms rose and fell in military precision, like they were performing some kind of ritualized dance of flailing limbs, ringing ride cymbals and singing hi-hat. In stutters, fits and starts, irregular time and straight-laced rock-and-roll rhythms, they provided the faithful spine and locomotion for the interplayed elements comprising their set, segueing from disco-heavy beats to bass-drum grooves and machine gun bursts on snare. Married to funky synth melodies, chime flourishes, vibraphone, echoing guitar and tinkling piano, the drums occupy equal standing with the pre-recorded music in the eyes of Deelay Ceelay, although that fact was perhaps slightly lessened by the sheer thrust and momentum of their forceful percussion.
Visually speaking, Deelay Ceelay can’t help but be at its best. The psychedelic mania infused into each of the experimental playbacks projected above them both gave dual meaning to each track – the plodding, rounded synth unrolling relentlessly on “Out of Nothing Comes Light” found additional outlet through the unpacking, exploding and revolving patches of flowers accompanying it, refusing to be beat down. Sunset Drumsets’ companion “Laycee Laydee” received treatment from skipping drums and hi-hat before devolving to disco, as a bespectacled woman onscreen shook her head, sighed a few times and was then overwhelmed by giant looping letters unfurling themselves in front of her, the song exploding in sustained notes of extreme grace and insistence. In others, fireworks popped and fell like molten metal sparking off an arc-welder, all techno rhythm and Justice or Daft Punk danceability, and elsewhere the words “THANK YOU, PEGASUS DREAM AND STRENGTH” flashed onscreen as speckled, criss-crossed neon lights pierced through them.
Among the older tracks, the unconquerable “No Vex” featured the familiar hooded Deelay Ceelay subjects dancing in duplicative choreography, repeated in arcs like kaleidoscopic versions of themselves, cascading off one another like the percussion’s static insistences set against the rest of the ambient noise backing it, the drums and the Shivafied arms of the people onscreen mating furiously and always eager for a comeback. Meanwhile, the many layers of “Tea Drinker” were rendered in thick marker lines of mountains and waves overlaid onto pixilated clouds, and delivered in a state of overexcited rounding-off. On a plane of rapidly encroaching synth and percussion, every element was collapsed into the others while white balloons circulated among the crowd and a few brave souls up front made crude shadow puppets.
Stumbling out of Backspace immediately afterward, I had a hard time putting a finger on exactly what it was I had just experienced. It was all flashing lights, confused visuals and violent drumming. But what was perhaps most important was exactly that: it was an experience. Period.
by Joe Clinkenbeard
