Shaunt Avakian at The Roxy – Review and Live Photos

Shaunt Avakian, The Roxy, September 13, 2018

The world of The Roxy can be bigger than the world itself. Rising stars flying until they shoot into guiding principles of a new generation of music. New sounds erect new directions for flocks to flood into. My ears might have heard the peak of music’s new amalgamative consequences.

Shaunt Avakian, without hesitation, slid his fingers through the silence and down his strings. Smiling shoulders rocked to smooth grooves like “Are You Here” and “Hard To Focus.” Leaning into our ears, Avakian beckoned us to lean into his setlist. Sincere intimacy from a place of comfort. Shaunt basked in the spotlight like a natural. Ready for his rise, Shaunt Avakian is definitely a name to look out for if you’re seeking a balance between steady and unfastened rhythm.

To enjoy the experience was to experience the carefully crafted layers of sonic strata. Very prevalent was the precise nature of Avakian’s musical arrangements. Meticulous punk can disguise itself as chaos. And Shaunt seems to throw thought far into his tunes. “Rats In The Attic” begins with steady drums that push and pull the song’s main rhythm down into the depths of Shaunt’s electric fluctuating debauchery. What seems like combat blends into biting beats that steadily swerve through ear canals and into the part of your brain that thinks, “Wow, this is catchy.”

There seems to be a temporal wave crashing onto the edges of our epoch. An accumulation of past genres mixing into melted pools of residual rhythms. Melted pools that young musicians, like Shaunt Avakian, will invite us into. We should be grateful for these new seas.

(Review and Photo by Chris Vinan)

Shaunt Avakian on Facebook