Halcyon Magazine

TEXT BY: SASHA LEE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY: JENNIFER ZILIOTTO 

Psychedelic sweethearts ENTRANCE recently played the Troubadour last Thursday, January 15th.

For those of you who have not heard or seen them, this Los Angeles based power trio deliver a seemingly otherworldly channeling of the blues through their uniquely fashioned rainbow-prismatic monocle. But not just blues in a watered down, regurgitated game of telephone way- Entrance harkens back to the early, Spiritualist roots of Blues music, when you still had your chance to sell your soul at the crossroads or deliver prophetic sermons with it. Think of Jimi Hendrix transcendentally meditating on the 1920’s mysticism of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Low Down Hoo Doo blues,” and you have something close to Entrance’s unearthly sound.

On this particular occassion, singer Guy Blakeslee appeared grandiose and magnanimous in an ontentatiously gold lame floor length kaftan fit for a modern-day Sun King. At times during the set, Guy’s guitar seemed almost a spirit possessed. During melodic peaks of Guy’s solos, his homage to– Voodoo Child from the Band of Gypsies himself– upside down strat would start to shake and quake, attempting to free itself from the seeming shamanistic divination of Guy’s grasps. Guy would twirl not unlike a whirling dirvish attempting to reclaim his escaping guitar, in a crazy, freaked out dance that rang of otherworldly mediums jumping in and out of his instrument.

The one puzzling addition to The Entrance Band’s normal trio was a DJ(?) Sound guy(?) Dancer (?) to the far right of the stage, wildly gyrating and turning a couple mysterious knobs. This bearded cheerleader of sorts seemed to be more for the purpose of demonstrating heavy-handed and non energy-efficient examples of how to dance to Entrance– though if that was the case, it worked, as everyone in the crowd kicked up their boots and caused a dust storm to Entrance’s otherworldly sounds.

Watch: “Grim Reaper Blues”

Akin to a moving Edwardian or Victorian Spirit photo, updated with morphing mirrored visages of 1960’s psychedelia, to the ethereally haunting riff that could, well…entrance the dead.

Tags: Entrance, Gold Kaftan, January 15th, Psychedelic, The Entrance Band, the Troubadour

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Show Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.