Droney Island

Creating enrapturing soundscapes that penetrate the brain just so, an ambient noise band have a hard task ahead of them in playing a giant music hall filled with thousands of chattering Saturday–nighters. Rising to the challenge, Kevin Doria and Joe DeNardo of Brooklyn’s Growing casually entered the stage and delivered their set with precision as Terminal 5’s enormous, glittering disco ball threatened above the audience. Captivating in the way they pulse through the blood of any soul nearby, Growing’s tunes mellow out the mind with their trippy smoothness while at the same time peaking the most intense curiosity with myriad tools, effects, and bits of “what was that?!” sound. The second challenge, then, of this evening was the translation of their signature mash effectively in a live setting, and this was unarguably accomplished to maximum result. The pair left not a break for clapping or such signs of life, barreling straight through with their particular brand of hypnosis to deliver a carefully calculated whole.

To be sure, watching Growing play engages not only with unavoidable bolts of energy, but the fun game of attempting to figure out who and what is making which sound. Doria bumped around with a sweet crystal blue clear guitar while DeNardo played Hendrix-style on another restrung for his left-handedness, and both rocked gently to their own creations. Their newest material off the recently released All The Way contains more hooks than previous work, and an almost whimsical flow was achieved as these numbers showed their stuff. Like adding a lump of sugar to the mixture of pulsating hum and loopy madness, Growing’s latest work adds hints of melody to already dense clouds of sound, and to hear it live rather than headphoned seems to be the most potentially riveting. Appropriately, the dance-happy revelers there to see electro-popters Hot Chip clutched their beers tighter for security, moved to gape in awe at the gentlemen before them with their gadget-filled briefcases.

Photos by Colin Colfer