Triangle Forest: Mind-to-ass blowin' beats

This weekend I went to Providence to judge the final round of the 2007 WBRU Rock Hunt. The winners, a three-piece electronic group called Triangle Forest, completely blew me away. I'll stop just short of saying it felt like my "mind being pushed through [my] ass with a triangle wave," though. Which is a good thing, because the bathroom situation at The Living Room leaves much to be desired in the privacy department.

I'll admit feeling a little skepticism when they didn't set up any drums. Or sound check any guitars. And although I was put at east a bit when I saw a keytar make its way onto the stage, nothing prepared me for what was to come when the lights went down.

Brendan Britton (vox, keys, MIDI guitar), his brother Ben (drums, kinda), and Alexandra Kleeman (keytar, other less exciting key-based instruments) are each immensely watchable in their own way; the combination of the three is mesmerizing. Their sound, pop-sensible electronic dance rock with the occasional vocoder appearance, brought members of the audience who didn't know what to expect from WTF to OMG in about half a song. A straight-up rocker crowd began to dance. I moved in for a closer look. I took my earplugs out. I kept trying to make eye contact with people I knew, to shoot them "can-you-believe-this?" looks. And before I was able to fully wrap my head around what I was witnessing, their 30 minute set was over.

So today I do an elbo.ws search for Triangle Forest to see what everyone else is saying. And I find...nothing. One quick mention from the Boston Phoenix. How can a band this good be under everyone's radar? It's not that they're too new; when I asked them at the afterparty how long they'd been together the answer was two years.

A quick mental review of the NYC area bloggers I think would do backflips for these guys yields...well all of them. I don't know why nobody's talking about these guys yet (maybe they need a manager to beat on some doors for them) but here's me doing my part to get the buzz rolling. Remember where you read about them first.

Their record is streaming at triangleforest.com but to get a better idea of what I fell in love with, listen to these two live cuts (1, 2)from WBRU before the show. And check out the video below for "An Empty Love."