We only caught the last two songs of Collaborateur, but what we heard was quite different than your normal "opening" act. A 2 piece group hailing from St.Louis, consisting of Larissa Dalle on vocals and Tim Gregory as the "band" (machines and arrangements, according to their website), they filled the bottleneck with dancelike and transcendental grooves over which the vocals layered and filtered through, dreamlike and very ethereal. They were very professional and it was surprising to us that they filled the room with textures and layers of sound that seemed to come from a much larger number of musicians. You can check them out for yourselves at their website: http://www.anet-stl.com/music/Collaborateur/.

Next up was Shallow, whom we'd seen at the '97 Spirit Fest in August. There seemed to be a big difference from that performance compared to this one; for one, the atmosphere was far more suiting here tonight - a dimly lit Bottleneck stage, cast in cool blues and warm reds, offset with strange atmospheric sculptures courtesy of (i think) architecture students from KU....a very dreamlike setting for the lilting vocals and phantasmic guitar work. At the Spirit Fest, the heat was a factor as well as the enormous amount of annoying, drunken people scurrying around the stage area. Needless to say, Danielle and I were very impressed with Shallow's performance. For me the music was a therapy, capable of inducing drug free hallucinations and dreamstates while i listened. Very much a compliment to the aural patchwork induced by the other two bands.

Last up was the Black Water, personal favorites of all here at the Zone, out in support of "train,man,drunk" their masterpiece disc released in August. The Black Water are architects of mood and mental suffering, and their sets are explorations in man's embattlement with the human condition. Existence is pain, and TBW surely bring about their own catharsis with each performance, exorcising sonic demons on black wings, pulling off sonic experimentation on stage usually reserved for studio crafting. Each performance is a chapter in the story of unwritten anguish of someone not unlike ourselves, struggling for true love, acceptance, or even understanding both within and from others in our lives. I can best desribe the Black Water as a soundtrack to everyday existence as a human being, upbeat in spots, dreary in others, ultimately beautiful.