8:30 – After walking two blocks from the Downtown Inn to Hookah Joe’s and securing our tickets from will call we headed into the venue. Nashwa’s staff was still setting up the main stage as the line of people from outside piled into Hookah Joe’s to wait. The lounge was sprinkled with people smoking on couches and checking out the wares of the local glass workers, while others created their own mixes of songs on various Moog synths set up in a corner behind the bar. After grabbing a Red Bull and perusing the scene for a few minutes, an excited concert goer informed us that the staff had opened the doors to Nashwa’s.
Making our way through the hallway connecting Hookah Joe’s to Nashwa’s we entered the venue to find the guy-gal duo of Free Peoples Frequency was already warming the crowd with their version of spaced out psychedelic techno. The staff continued to set up as Free Peoples cranked out ‘Crab Dancer’, ‘The Big Pill’ and various other songs to the crowd of less than 50. For the people that showed early Free Peoples set seemed to serve as background noise while taking in the venue and getting ready for the rest of the nights festivities. As Free Peoples set came to a close, ticket holders continued to file in, in groups of three to five in anticipation of Kap 10 and Pnuma Trio‘s sets.

10:30 Kap 10 took over where Free Peoples left off, building the energy as the crowd converged toward the main stage in anticipation of Pnuma Trio’s headlining set. Controlling the crowd with ease, Kap ensured that his set was more than a sound check for Pnuma Trio. Kap kept the crowd moving for an hour, blending psychedelic techno with well known versus from various rappers. Instead of anxious anticipation of the main attraction, Kap garnered attention until the end of his set, allowing Pnuma to enter to a crowd ready to continue the party as opposed to start it.

11:30 The at capacity crowd was well oiled and ready for the nights main attraction as 3 figures made their way onstage from stage left. Pnuma Trio wasted no time feeding the crowd what they craved, running through their first album with the intensity that could hardly be contained to the 500 capacity venue. As Pnuma entered the second half of the hour and a half set it seemed as if each person was either enjoying their own version of the concert, Either completely oblivious to the people around them or gripped in an emotional orgy with the their fellow festival goers. Rolling through songs for more than an hour and half Pnuma‘s exit was greeted with applause that lead to the inevitable encore, extending their play time closer to the 2 hour range.

1:00 4 hours into the show DJ Ginza took the stage to try his hand at the thinning crowd. At the beginning of his set the crowd dispersed to about half capacity, but quickly filled in again after Ginza proved to be more than able to hold the weight of having to follow Pnuma. Switching between a Star Trek’s console worth of keyboards and a apple laptop, Ginza kept the crowd in motion with remixes of old school as well as new school rap interspersed with Ginza‘s own instrumentals. Ginza‘s hour long set finished strong leaving the crowd satisfied with their decision stick around and keep the party going.

2:00 Sci Fi took the stage to bless the crowd with the jazz infused psychedelic sounds. The North Carolina trio stirred the crowd with renditions of ‘Sleazy Rider’, ‘Tiny Molecule Detector’ and ‘Mid Tide’ as artist Roxanna Shohadaee painted at stage right.

3:00 The closing act for the first night’s festivites was Nashville native group Two Fresh. Twin brothers Sherwyn and Kendrick manned the electronic wheels of steel as Colby supported the duo, giving the drums a workout. The crowd maintained the energy up until the end of the performances with few leaving before the end of the set. When the lights came up people exited the venue making their way to rest up for another intense day of performances.

Photos by: Alex Person

Concert Review - Tron A Thon-Day110.0103

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