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Apr 13, 2025 Web Exclusive By Matthew Berlyant

Part of the venue’s multi-day Outline festival, Michael Rother, Thurston Moore, HTRK, and Eiko Ishibashi played the first of two festival shows at Knockdown Center (with the second one slated for April 12 featuring Explosions in the Sky and Mum), and boy, was it amazing. Unfortunately, Knockdown Center’s location in Maspeth, though just a short bus ride or walk from Bushwick, made it so that getting there was a trek, and I missed Ishibashi’s set.

That said, I did get there right in time for HTRK, who I’d wanted to see for over a decade due to singer Jonnine “Johnny” Standish’s collaboration with the late, great Rowland S. Howard on his second and last studio album, 2009’s Pop Crimes. While, at least viewed from a distance, they weren’t especially exciting visual (furthermore, they were mostly obscured by the lighting or lack thereof), their hypnotic, ethereal compositions wafted over the large venue and turned it in a cold, wet evening in late March into what felt like a hazy, lazy, summer day in their native Melbourne.

Thurston Moore followed and instead of playing a set of pop/rock songs, this was a set with his trio (specifically William Winant and Tom Surgal) similar to what they had performed the previous few nights at the jazz-oriented club Solar Myth in Philadelphia. All instrumental, the set was hard to describe but transcendent, as it featured elements of genres he’s loved and played for many years, specifically free improvisation, painful noise, and quieter interludes as well. While I’m sure fans who were looking forward to hearing more straightforward Sonic Youth songs were perhaps disappointed, those who came in expecting the unexpected were fully rewarded.

Last but not least, Rother and his band (featuring keyboardist/vocalist Vittoria Maccaburni, drummer Hans Lampe (drums) and guitarist Franz Bargmann (guitar) played a shorter than expected but amazing hour-long headlining set that exclusively featured his seventies work with Neu! and Harmonia. It was incredible to hear these songs live again fifteen years after his last visit to the U.S. (when he was backed by Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley and Tall Firs bassist Aaron Mullan under the Hallogallo 2010 name for a set of Neu! material). And to further cement the long-time connection between Rother and Sonic Youth’s former members, Thurston came out to jam (as is his custom) on the closing track, a rousing rendition of the Neu! composition “E-Musik.”