Coaxial has Blade Runner on the brain

PHOTO by JOHN GILHOOLEY

Coaxial came to California one by one, leaving bands and hometowns and clear skies in Virginia and DC—vocalist/bassist/lyricist Beegs Alchemy took the longest way out, abandoning the East Coast after a summer pinching Florida mosquitoes in the Chevy Blazer he then slept in, deciding one night, as he says, that “fuck it, I’m going to California.” Already in Long Beach was David Krepinevich, a self-described punk kid who switched to making beats on a Dr. Rhythm and a tape deck; and Jesse Carzello, who was going to CSULB and later playing guitar in Lukewarm Quartet. They found a house downtown about the size of a Chevy Blazer—they have one story about unknown gunmen that goes with the back view, and one story about unknown gunmen that goes with the front view—and until just last week, that was where they lived and slept and made Coaxial into one of Long Beach’s most powerfully iconoclastic bands. Just last week, Carzello finally moved out.

Coaxial was a different band when they first started—they had Blade Runner on the brain, it seems, as David remembers how California seemed like an endless city and how all the machinery at the port was one of the most intense things he’d ever seen. They picked up on that wired-in South Bay nihilism—they rehearsed out in Wilmington, says Jesse, and “driving through there probably helped that bleak vibe”—but the music didn’t sound like Black Flag. The first California show was with two turntables and an eight-track and Beegs rapping in front; now they field Beegs’s bass, Jesse’s guitar, and David’s synth, and they’re experimenting with a drummer, too, and Beegs says the shows where they fit best are the shows where none of the bands fit at all: “I wish people wouldn’t compare it to hip-hop,” he says. “I don’t know what hip-hop is, what rock & roll is. . . .“

They laugh about a show where the bar made them wait ’til a Beastie Boys song finished on the jukebox before they could play and where the owner shut them down after minutes of windmilling atmosphere. “I prefer a cordial reaction,” smiles Beegs, though Coaxial does not promise a particularly cordial experience. Their new home on leader label GSL—home of Mars Volta, whose Ikey Owens and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez both guested on Coaxial’s first EP, and sometime home of Free Moral Agents, where Jesse also plays guitar—instead grants them the weird freedom to make their post-Blade Runner band any particular way they want.

Coaxial reinforces the manic grimness of Suicide and Mobb Deep (or Company Flow, up with Herbie Hancock and Can as Coaxial bedrock artists, they say) with Beegs’s wounded lyrics—“I’m a pretty bitter person,” he says. “Just seeing the world crumble before your eyes—that always keeps me going. It’s an endless source of bitterness! I really agree with Vonnegut when he said he gave up”—matched by David’s panicked synth noise and a cut/explode dynamic that gives the Coaxial trio a titanic sound. It’s distress transmission demanding response: “Musicians, smash your instruments,” as a man once wrote. “Blind men take the stage.” Or says Jesse: “Creating music is a provocation—even if people don’t like it, whether they think, ‘This is cool’ or ‘This isn’t cool,’ maybe they’ll have their own ideas and create something. That’s one of the most important things you can do as an artist.”

COAXIAL WITH ANAVAN, BIPOLAR BEAR, AND KILL ME TOMORROW THE PROSPECTOR | 2400 E SEVENTH ST | LONG BEACH 90804 MYSPACE.COM/PROSPECTORLONGBEACH | THURS 10PM | $5 | 21+

Tags: blade runner, coaxial, prospector