You’re sweating, you’re feeling hot. Not a searing or a blistering heat, more like a sweltering heat. One that ebbs and flows through your body leaving a strange chilled sensation as it momentarily leaves you. You’re aren’t in a desert though, you’re at a festival and this cycle of heat and chill has taken hold of you since your arrival. Small paper lanterns gently float though the canal below, each one harboring a small candle that briefly illuminates the small space of water it travels though. Snake oil peddlers and jewelry salesman line the streets’ fringes begging you over to “just take one look” and as you wander hopelessly lost. The murky dusk of the ending day are lit only by colorful fireworks booming in the sky. Filling up the space in the streets between the vendors are people as far as you can see, every which way and direction this festival is choked with people, and each one of them dancing. It’s a different dancing than you’ve seen before however, it looks almost coordinated (and more than little what you can only describe as tribal). The heat doesn’t let up as you squeeze your way through the crowd and you see that everyone you pass is sweating just as much as you. Only as you feel prone to passing out, the festival and the dancing continues its ebb and flow, just like this sweltering heat. In the distance you see man-made dragons inching their way through the crowd. Their movements however are not the graceful, flowing sort you see in movies but aggressive and jagged. And that’s when you hear it, the rhythm of stomping of the feet, the abrasive chants wailing one moment and dropping to a low buzzing hum the next. The stomping shakes the ground and sends vibrations smashing off the faces of the narrow alleys which, now that you hear it, make the entire cacophony even louder. You feel your mind about to finally give into the heat when you feel your own feet jerk out of your control and under the spell of the percussion on the ground and the chants in the air. You think to yourself, “Oh….”
You snap back into your body at the exit of the festival, your watch tells you four hours have gone by and your legs are aching. You turn around and see the festival roaring, the ocean of people jumping and bouncing like waves. In front of you, just outside the exit lies a single immolated police car. A group of people silently watching as the flames quietly do their work. You look back again, turn around, and disappear into the crowd once more.
This is kind of what it feels like to listen to King Tears Bat Trip’s debut.
