Zoom-in Online

This blog post was submitted by Max Willens, ZIO's Music Channel Assistant.

A larger version of this image and a complete gallery of photos from last night's event can be be found at Stereogum.

Part of the thrill of going to see a band is, well, what you see. Whether it's a virtuosic guitarist burning through a solo, or an arena full of people reveling in the pyro at a hair metal show, audiences expect some visual complement to the music they're listening to at an ear-splitting volume.

On Tuesday night, the audience at Stereogum's star-studded CMJ showcase saw both how much and how little a band can do.

The showcase's top two acts, the Golden Filter and Cold Cave, both face a hurdle that's becoming increasingly common for performers: generating audience excitement from behind a bank of synthesizers. Though their sounds have differences, their music is mostly produced electronically, a mysterious mix of vintage equipment (Moog synthesizers, Arp 2600s) and contemporary software (Clicktrax, Reason, Ableton).

The second-to-last band to play that night, the Golden Filter is the dancier outfit of the two. Their songs are simple, tied to bright, soft riffs and lead singer Penelope's breathy voice. On stage Tuesday night, they became bigger and more animated: lead programmer Stephen would periodically bash away at some toms positioned near his equipment, Penelope slapped away at a tambourine as she pranced across the stage, and their touring drummer Lisa colored the song's beats with plenty of extra percussion.

At times, they rolled and throbbed like a modern Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer. Other times, they sounded like a synth-pop version of the Kills (the band snarled their way through a cover of the White Stripes' "The Hardest Button to Button"). But throughout their set, the Golden Filter made pop music's synth-heavy future sound promising.

Cold Cave's set, by contrast, was far more precise than the Golden Filter's (all that extra percussion occasionally sounded sloppy), and also significantly louder. But the young, heavily-hyped band also seemed to rub a lot of the audience the wrong way. Their songs, whose hooks manage to make abrasive synthesizer textures strangely comforting, are heavily reliant on mood. And when each song ended, the reverie or dread the songs had built up vanished. Thanks to poor sequencing, it was hard to get a feel for where their set was going from song to song.

And aside from the band's members tapping their heels in time to the music, nobody on stage moved during the set. Each stared at a set of keyboards, hands occasionally moving, but nobody bothered to address an audience that got smaller and smaller as their set went on. The band's music is downcast, with elements of both cold wave and death metal surfacing occasionally, but without even a modicum of engagement or performative flair, the band's sullen look simply drained the music of its energy.

As synthesizers and electronic musical instruments continue to become more affordable and more widely available, they will become increasingly integral parts of popular music. But because watching somebody click a mouse will always lack the visceral appeal of watching somebody play the drums, bands are going to have to start figuring out how to breathe life into their machine music.