Concert Review: The Octopus Project's 'Hexadecagon' live at East Side Drive-In

Concert Review: The Octopus Project's 'Hexadecagon' live at East Side Drive-In

Review by Annar Veröld. Photos by Karen Scott.

The entire Hexadecagon experience is a panned-out and stretched version of the way death is portrayed-- a flashing of images, a mind-blowing and distorted choir of angels, and a rush through various dimensions into outer-space—absolutely euphoria and spiritual release.

Approaching the Hexadecagon tent, The Octopus Project fans could instantly see they were in for a celestial experience. Excitement filled the venue as people counted the eight speakers, and whispered about the digital artist’s, Wiley Wiggins, much-talked-about projections. Constellation rhinos, pigs, and owls with hundreds of stars coated the ceilings, and a center stage full of fascinating instruments and vibrant colors simply stirred a curiosity, which only The Octopus Project could satisfy.
 
The band introduced themselves, stating they will be performing their new album, Hexadecagon. Upon the first chord, they managed to hypnotize and round up the entire audience. Starting with Hexadecagon’s album single, “Fuguefat”, The Octopus Project performed with tremendous energy with flashing lights, images, and organ-vibrating magic.
    

To support the spacey synthesized chords, guitar riffs, and the mind-blowing theremin, the flashing lights and videos induced a psychedelic trip with hooded space-forest people dancing in bubbles and projectile-vomiting tinsel. There were even clips of animal eyes or city skylines. During “Catalog”, the video being projected appeared to be a Bill-Nye scoop of mitosis and meiosis, in which cells divide and divide, leaving you to question the validity of your existence. Unbelievably, regardless of what was flashing on the ceilings, the image was always compatible and made complete and total sense with what The Octopus Project orchestrated.
 

With the sensory overload, certain songs like the slower “Korakrit” and “Toneloop”, left you feeling incredibly tripped up and vulnerable, but with a curious craving for more. Flashing lights, and abstract videos that are coordinated with the frantic syncopated rhythms of “The Phantasy” and “Hallucinists”, makes you feel as though you are no longer a physical being, but a series of vibrations clashing with light.
 
After performing the entire album, The Octopus Project decided to spoil the audience with never-before heard music that wrapped the night up in an upbeat clap and Yvonne spinning around the Hexadecagon stage, blowing four sweet kisses to all sixteen sides.
 
The Octopus Project’s Hexadecagon concert successfully managed to take hundreds of fans from The East Side Drive-In’s fenced in, dusty concrete slab and patchy-grass arena to every world, absolutely any world, but here.

(The Octopus Project performed at Eastside Drive-In in Austin on December 3, 2010.)