May I have this dance?
It’s no secret that I love the otherworldly. Homemade séances, Ouija boards, psychics; I can’t get enough of it. The Khyber’s Paranormal Formal on Friday the 13th (10pm, $5) is like a lucid dream come true. With promises of palmistry, tea reading, games, prizes and solid jams from DJ Innez Da Future and Room Doom, it will be an enchanted evening. Room Doom’s drummer Adam O’Reilly predicts the future, “I imagine costumes from the longest of walk-in closets, the type of unbelievable bass tone that happens every so often and of course falling in love with darkness. Unlike Macaulay Culkin, no one goes home alone.” O’Reilly, Stacy Lloyd Brown (synths) and Pat Ryan (bass) make up the brand new group, who currently have a criminally catchy song up on their myspace. “We've been a band for a couple weeks and have only played one show at a NSCAD dance, but people were dancing like frisbees in heat so we kept with it and gathered a bass player,” says O’Reilly. For a handy point of reference, they take a lot of influence from the following, “Phillip Glass, Devo, Brian Eno, Studio 1 Dub Reggae,” says O’Reilly. “Non-musical influences I think play a big role in our music as well. Living in the north end community, food, and things that are going on around in the city. Not long ago my friend got his head slammed on the hood of car by the angry driver for riding his bike on the same road as the car. That sort of thing is awful, we wrote a song about him.” The group would prefer that their audience not focus on such horrible transportation crimes while they are dancing, however. “I hope they are thinking about nothing at all, hopefully losing themselves in the music and loosening up enough to let their bodies shake ‘n' bake all night,” says O’Reilly. “Make the whole place stink like armpits. A bass, drum and synth all separately soloing at the same time will make anything possible, maybe even dark Valentine's-day romance.”