Perturbator Health Street Sects
Photo Credit: O F Cieri

Perturbator and HEALTH Brought Noisy Medication to NYC - Win Tickets for Chicago 9/12 (Live Report)

Perturbator Health Street Sects
Photo Credit: O F Cieri

Read about the Perturbator/HEALTH/Street Sects show at Irving Plaza in NYC below and check out some photos – plus, keep reading to find out how to win tickets to the 9/12 Chicago date.

HEALTH and Perturbator‘s Heaven and Hell tour was put together to promote their new albums – DISCO4 :: PART II and Lustful Sacraments, respectively. The tour contrasts the headliners’ two aesthetics: HEALTH projects an internet poisoned, schizoposting brand full of Sonic the Hedgehog, anime, and angels, while Perturbator delves more closely to the traditional aesthetics of drugs, sex, and Satan.

The other act on the bill, Street Sects, sits comfortably in the gray zone between them with a brutalist sensibility filled in with 80s sleaze nostalgia. The cool, clean lines and bare representational imagery of their merchandise designs gives them a solid lexicon of symbols. HEALTH and Perturbator are close contenders for similar visual cohesion, but HEALTH mines internet memes to intentionally create tonal dissonance while Perturbator has recently been branching out into new visual imagery.

At Irving Plaza on Sunday, the crowd was mixed, but the largest represented group seemed straight and white. Ages ranged all over the place, from teenagers to guys in their fifties, but everyone was wearing some kind of official merch. There were no t-shirts with instagram artist designs, nothing homemade, and absolutely nothing thrifted. Fast fashion altwear clothing was also very common. Many people wore shirts for the Heaven and Hell tour, but other represented acts were Molchat Doma, Nine Inch Nails and one Rolling Stones shirt.

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Street Sects started the night with vocalist Leo Ashline standing in front of a wall of strobe lights in a long white wig with gauze wrapped around his mouth and chin. He stood in a rumpled black suit, waiting for his cue to start screaming—whipping and crouching, pacing in front of the flashing lights, then finally tearing off the wig and gauze. Street Sects is controlled electronic noise with a human conductor. The rough quality of a live human voice adds a depth that usually gets filed out in music production. Alongside the strong sense of presence that comes from being in the room with a performer, the analog elements of the sets helped ground an otherwise virtual experience.

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Health warmed up the crowd by playing Cruel Angel’s “Thesis” over the speakers, which got a small pit started in the middle of the crowd. For most of the show, the audience danced by bobbing and swaying, with a few people jumping for their favorite song. Pit etiquette was lacking. The largest members of the audience staked out space along the barriers, with one or two men blocking off space for their girlfriends. Several guests had to be prevented from battering through the crowd by security, whose main job for the night was feeding crowd surfers back into the audience.

The members of Health walked out on stage and changed the temperature in the room through volume alone. The speakers puffed out air with every beat. The band creates the same sound as an all electronic act with analog equipment. Jake Duszik did a sultry performance, caressing the mic while John Famigletti bounced between synth and guitar, whipping his hair. Duszik sounds like his voice comes already autotuned, and when Ashline came out to do guest vocals he matched the energy to fit Health’s profile.

Famigletti also grabbed the mic a few times to sing a couple bars, but the sound was turned too low to hear. He sat cross-legged on stage to play a guitar solo like a soundboard.

Producing a heavily digitized sound from traditional analog instruments brought attention to the actual work that goes into electronic music. Ashline and Duszik did the most obvious labor on stage, with Famigletti keeping his cues for two instruments.

In the past, electronic music was treated like a rival of traditional music. In the early days of synthesizers there was anxiety that the computer would destroy an industry of musicians. That conversation is still ongoing, but as more sound mixing software becomes more easily available it becomes more ubiquitous in the creation of new sounds. A generation of Soundcloud rappers have proven that digital rendering doesn’t undo innovation. Blending instruments with digital has become so ubiquitous that musicians play synthetic sounds on string and wood.

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Like Street Sects and HEALTH, Perturbator blends electronic and heavy, traditional music. The lead, James Kent, is a synthwave musician with traditional guitar skills. Like HEALTH, he switched between adjusting the levels on his sound board with chords from his guitar. His sound has a 90s edge to it, with the first song sounding like listening to Type O Negative underwater. The repeating bass in electronic dance, added to metal chord progressions, make the songs ripple.

The Perturbator music project is the brainchild of James Kent, but he was accompanied by Dylan Hyard on drums. Hyard works better than a machine, keeping up with both Kent and the backing track through complicated time signatures. Hyard is a strong drummer who is able to sound controlled or abandoned depending on the needs of the measure. Watching him work is satisfying, like gears in a clock.

In the merch room were more shirts for the Heaven and Hell tour, Perturbator pentacles, a couple Street Sect LPs and a Sonichu medallion next to an anime maid plushie. In a corner were flyers for an LA 501c-3 organization called End Overdose, which works with California based artists to promote judgment free distribution of fentanyl testing strips and narcan. There did not appear to be either preventative available at the location, but bringing awareness to all the options available to keeping users alive is important in nightlife. The city of New York distributes free narcan kits, which venues can keep without special stocking requirements for up to a year.

The focus on life and health fits with each act’s performance. HEALTH’s act of emotional self harm encourages holding on for dear life, while Perturbator’s music videos often illustrate the struggle with negative influence, be they earthly or spiritual. Street Sects’ music aligns as well, discussing the long term effects of constant, daily stress caused by thousands of inconveniences. Still, the act of coming together for music, with the reminder of possible relief, gives a little human care and consideration to the feeling of being ground up in a machine.

Want to win tickets to HEALTH, Perturbator, and Street Sects at Park West in Chicago on Monday, 9/12? Email the answer to this trivia question to [email protected] by 7:30 PM CT, Sunday 9/11:

In 2020, HEALTH released a collaboration track with a Relapse-signed grindcore band — how long is this single?
Hint: The band mentioned shares a name with an Entombed song.

Two tickets will be awarded to one winner.

Perturbator, HEALTH, & Street Sects – Remaining Tour Dates

Sep 9 – Toronto, ON, Canada @ The Danforth Music Hall
Sep 12 – Chicago, IL @ Park West
Sep 15 – Englewood, CO @ Gothic Theatre
Sep 17 – Los Angeles (LA), CA @ The Belasco
Sep 18 – San Francisco, CA @ August Hall

Keep scrolling for photos from the show.