Oneida, Market Hotel, Brooklyn

Rumor has it that Oneida are a staple of the Brooklyn DIY scene; they’ve been around for years, started their own music, and for some reason their drummer goes by the moniker Kid Millions. As a band they keep one foot firmly planted in the psychedelia and hippy-dom of our parents’ generation while the other foot pokes around in the electronic skitterings and pop of contemporaries like Black Dice.

Before the show even begins Oneida have a light show fit to induce mild seizures and yet there is more than one fur coat (the kind favored by a certain brand of hip-kids and east Brooklyn Polish Enclaves) in the audience. It is easy to expect the pixilated fireworks project on the walls to be the perfect visual representation of the musician’s simultaneously fractured and spacey sound.

Oddly, the band begin with a simple 4/4 count off that breaks into a haze of electronics and yelps that seemed calculated to negate any concept of a real time signature. The beat-less cascade of noise resembles something akin to remixing the sound effect of crashing planes from old Bugs Bunny cartoons with Danse Manatee era Animal Collective. Honestly, Oneida’s recordings far surpass their opening song.

Ten minutes later, and the guitarist introduces an AC/DC style rock riff, while the vocals change from yelps to drone-like chants. Though this makes an interesting stylistic change, the band lack any sense of song craft beneath the drone tapestry they’d developed. The music seems firmly lodged between the good solid drone of Blues Control and their past musical influences.

Yet there is a surprisingly seamless transition twenty minutes later when Kid Millions abandons the microphone and plants himself behind the previously unused drum kit. Almost instantly his, and by gravitational pull the rest of the band’s, talent becomes apparent, against a slightly more recognizable rock song structure. Their manipulation of squeals and squalls when pitted against the dead lock drumming creates both a more palatable and intriguing sonic tapestry.

All in all Oneida is a band that can only exist in the here and now. Awash in influences that include experimental noise acts, classic rock chart toppers, and everything in between, they’re at their best when flirting with the recognizable. If your curiosity is piqued, investigate the trappings of ‘Rated O’, their most recent album.