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(Report from the pre-show party at Music Saves record store right next to the Beachland)

It was only about 8pm, but there were already enough people milling around in the Music Saves record store to fill the place.  As far as I could tell, all were regular visitors to the Experimental Behavior website.  This was, after all, a party for the one year anniversary of ExBe.  And what's a birthday without cake? Even better than cake, there was a set by area poet/musician J. Scott Franklin. 

Although J. Scott's music is fairly straightforward acoustic rock, he uses looping to make one man sound like a full band.  He'll get a beat going by hitting his guitar, strum a little bit, and maybe play a few notes on his trumpet.  Once all this is going, he then starts singing and laying down additional guitar parts.  Quite interesting, and once you get over the novelty of it all, you realize this guy has some pretty good songs. 

I headed over to the Beachland Tavern after J.'s set and stuck around long enough to see the first two performers, but I'll let Eddie Fleisher take it from here. (Bob Ignizio)

I came into the show during the last half of Zone Music Inc's set.  For those of you who know the legend of Jerry Miller, you were probably quite interested in seeing his performance. Zone Music Inc. is a one man show, but is broken into different personalities, such as Dj Fatbrain and Humachine.  It's a mix of club style electronic music and some weird space hip-hop.  Zone Music Inc. claims to have the highest technology music, and he comes through with the music sounding very clear and crisp. Some would say his songs sound too much like "presets", but you have to give it to him, he pulls off one interesting show, that's for sure. Many of us will forever be creeped out by the whole “opening and closing hands” thing from the video that runs during his set.   

Next up was Aphrodesiatics. Wow, are they good. A 7 piece jazz outfit, they rocked the Beachland silly. Their grooves were on 100%. If this performance is any indication, I'd expect pretty big things from this group in the future. Absolutely great. This group features EXBE member, BNICE, who recently took some heat on the board over a discussion on DJ's. I felt the heat too, agreeing with him. These things are what make EXBE so fun.  

Beautiful Loser then took the stage for some very interesting music.  It was a cool blend of world music, jazz, and rock. The bassist is Jeremy Bleich, who is a member of the band Birth. His bass playing is amazing, and he and the other 2 musicians that night really brought the house down. Bleich's bass playing and presence is definitely strong, and he's an awesome asset to Cleveland.   

In between all the sets was DJ'ing by Stallio. He basically is a collage artist, who takes words and noises and destroys them into new things. He also makes some commentary through his samples. It's kind of cool, he speaks through his DJ'ing. Sometimes, it can get kind of noisy, but hey, what's experimental music without noise?   

The last set was by EXBE's head honcho Brent's band, Infinite Number of Sounds. I unfortunately only was able to catch 4 songs, but they were really good. I was quite surprised. Why aren't these guys huge yet? The whole video thing was sweet too. The musicianship was tight, and the samples with the live playing was a very cool vibe. I enjoyed these guys a lot. 

It's easy to see that all the acts this night were interesting and enjoyable. Happy Birthday EXBE! (Eddie Fleisher)

Click here for pictures.