Last night was a little different for me. Last Thursday, I received the email from The Grey Eagle, my main live local venue. As usual, I scanned the wealth of Americana/Jam Band listings to stop on photos of artists who looked like they could be my sort of thing. The bill for September 29th was Sextile and Automatic, from Los Angeles. I’m not exactly hungry for live music in this particularly fecund wave of concerts this season for me, but this was a local show I could arrive at in just 15 minutes. So the thought was to strike while the iron was hot, even though we just saw Judas Priest the last weekend…but that was a 2:30 drive each way. Just saying.

I first investigated each band’s Wikipedia pages; both were described as Post-Punk. So… case virtually closed. A jaunt to Automatic’s Bandcamp page to sample their new album released the next day [last Friday and I was in. I felt that Automatic were good enough to buy a ticket for even if they were opening for Tina Turner [a private joke]. As for Sextile, they were described as Electroclash influenced and I marveled at that trend finally hitting Asheville after 28 years. I had not bought heavily into Electroclash at the time but certainly approved of it on principle. They were also signed to the excellent Sacred Bones Records label. I’d seen a few of the acts on their roster in Asheville over the years: Boy Harsher, Soft Moon [R.I.P.], Zola Jesus and that suggests a very high standard, so they were in good company. So I bought my ticket on Sunday. eTix platform; minimal charges, thanks!

Both bands were from Los Angeles, but I won’t hold that against them. Since they were friendly and adjacent there was cross pollination between them on disc. The new Sextile album, “Yes, Please” [possibly the most Pet Shop Boys title imaginable] featured Izzy Glaudin of Automatic co-writing three of the tracks and even singing lead on one of them; “Hospital.” This tour seemed like a natural for the pair as they were venturing out with each other for company and mutual support. After dinner last night I drove over to the club and secured nearby free parking. One of the perks of Grey Eagle shows. I ventured in, scanned the flyers for anything else that might be interesting [there may be a few] and popped the plugs in to partake.

AUTOMATIC PLEASURES

The show was very well attended. Not the sometimes typical Asheville pearls before swine. A healthy crowd were there for Automatic and I even spotted what seemed like a T-shirt or two in evidence. Automatic are a trio of women but for the tour their usual drummer, Lola Dompé [daughter of Kevin Haskins, PPM fact fans] was sitting out and had been replaced by another; a man, in fact. Halle Saxon played bass and singing and playing synths was Izzy Glaudini. Her racks held one of the Moog Phatty series [unsure which one] and what was definitely a Sequential Circuits Prophet Rev 2. Excellent choices for a minimal rig with maximum reach. They began their with a beguiling sound that was heavy on the live bass and drums with zesty synth seasoning where necessary. Ms. Glaudini was singing with a tone that I really enjoyed; striking close to the Tina Weymouth zone while the moody, at times dreamy music sounded nothing like Tom Tom Club. Instead the vibe was much closer to Joy Division, with motorik drumming and sustained synth patches filling in the space in the sound the rhythm left.

The mix was excellent this evening as I could understand everything she was singing with clarity despite the Earasers® firmly embedded. All of the constituent parts of the music were there to enjoy. No bass fracking was happening either. Were I not partially deaf, I might have taken the plugs out entirely as this was a joyful and non-aggressive sound. The songs tumbled richly into the appreciative crowd one after another as they were all succinct little gems well under the four minute mark in every case. Brevity being the soul of wit as The Poet proffered [and The Monk agrees]. I was so pleased that I had learned about this show with a few days to spare. At one point Ms. Glaudini told the crowd that she would be joining Sextile onstage afterward as I had hoped! Then as their set reached its end, Ms. Saxon abandoned her bass and moved stage right for the Phatty as they played their last few numbers. Leaving this listener with a warm afterglow.

TACTILE SEXTILE

The musicians and crew broke down the set and the synth rig at the back of the stage was obviously for Sextile’s gig. As were the guitars at the rear of the stage. The between set music actually included, be still my beating heart, Cabaret Voltaire! I think the first time I’ve ever heard that band outside of my own home! [was it “Kickback” I had heard?] Proof positive, as if I needed it, that I lived in the Southeast of the United States. A pair of e-drums were brought on stage for some organic beats. After about 15 minutes the duo of Brady Keehn and Melissa Scaduto walked onstage and got down to business. At first with Ms. Scaduto on synths and Keehn on vocals and guitar but they would be trading off all evening to keep things stimulating.

Did I say stimulating? There would be no shortage of that factor during their high energy set, which contrasted with the laidback vibe of their friends Automatic most capably. No, this was a set where the entire audience would be pogoing along as they dipped into a melange of “Punk Techno” as it’s been described along with frissons of hard minimal EBM by way of DAF [and by extension, Nitzer Ebb]. In fact, the vibe in their set was strongly redolent of Nitzer Ebb concerts I’d seen 35 years ago! The biggest difference being the infectious joy that Ms. Scaduto brought to the stage. The hammering beats were not a downer or any kind of punishment. They were a tribal gateway to euphoria instead.

Mr. Keehn would at times inject berserk rhythm guitar, played pick-meltingly fast into the largely programmed beats and bass bombs for some necessary undercurrents of chaos into their tightly gridded, techno-adjacent music. But this was Club music being performed in a club. One packed with bouncing bodies and it soon became apparent that I would be having a shower before bed this evening! The two times that Brady sprayed the audience with a cup of cold ice water from the stage was less an affront than a thoughtful gesture. And yes, it looked cool, too.

I had seen up front when perusing the band’s Bandcamp page that their new album had a cover of Renegade Soundwave’s “Women Respond To Bass” but in fact, Sextile have written a radically different song using the title alone as a jumping off spot! The Francophile Deep House of RSW being traded off for a much higher BPM, booming sub-bass, and machine gun bursts of frantic cowbell instead. The mix also pushed large portions of the set [including vocals] into a Dubspace that only aided the vibe in reaching towards nirvana.

As the set pulsated like a piston throughout its run time, the appearance of Izzy Glaudini for her turn at the mic added a necessary pause in the set of short, sharp, salvos of intense dance floor dynamite for a breather before the final leg. The song she wrote with the band, “Hospital,” met Automatic more than halfway. It had none of the hard clubbing intensity of the Sextile set thus far and functioned fully as an Automatic song. Then afterward, Brady and Melissa took turns in pushing the envelope a little bit further towards ecstatic overdrive in its final leg. The new song “Resist” climaxed the set and seemed to be cut from the cloth that the suit of 2025 requires. Ms. Scaduto brought a flag onstage with the motto “no one is free until everyone is free.” A plea for the solidarity we’ll need if we’re ever to extricate ourselves from the mess we’re in. Then the set ended with a bang followed by the lights within a minute because this was not Rock Music. At that point a traditional encore would have been untenable.

I do find it refreshing to see new [to me] acts with little or no deep diving for a bracing taste of something fresh. As the show was very well-attended, obviously the audience don’t share my penchant for a secure firewall to keep out bad art. While it protects me from some things [Ed Sheeran, Tayor Swift, et. al.] I sometimes wonder if I should have a more permeable membrane so as not to miss out of delightful phenomena like Automatic and Sextile. Who knows. Maybe these bands were using Tik Tok to reach the packed house? That would leave me out. I did notice that the show was promoted by Worthwhile Sounds; an agency I recognize from shows I’ve attended locally in the past, so maybe they have a mailing list I can sign up for to make sure that I don’t miss out moving forward?

Anyone reading this won’t necessarily have to miss out either. While their tour together has been on the road for eight dates thus far crossing across America’s top half, there’s still ten more dates ahead of them. Tonight they are playing at Third Man Records in The Blue Room for any Nashvillians with this evening free. And next month Automatic cross the pond for their European tour with all dates below. I bought both bands’ new albums at the merch table and have already revisited both bands already this morning on the commute to work. Sextile were a high energy throwback to EBM intensity filtered through subsequent club styles and not a typical part of the Monastic music diet, but sometimes I just need those hard beats. Automatic are a bus I hope to be riding for some time.

SEXTILE | AUTOMATIC US TOUR 2025

• Tue, SEP 30 | The Blue Room | Nashville, TN
• Wed, OCT 1 | The Masquerade | Atlanta, GA
• Fri, OCT 3 | The Studio at the Factory | Dallas, TX
• Sat, OCT 4 | White Oak Music Hall | Houston, TX
• Sun, OCT 5 | Mohawk Austin | Austin, TX
• Mon, OCT 6 | Lowbrow Palace | El Paso, TX
• Wed, OCT 8 | Crescent Ballroom | Phoenix, AZ
• Thu, OCT 9 | Swan Dive | Las Vegas, NV
• Fri, OCT 10 | The Observatory North Park | San Diego, CA
• Sat, OCT 11 | The Novo | Los Angeles, CA

AUTOMATIC EUROPEAN TOUR 2025

• Wed, NOV 12 | Daltons | Brighton, United Kingdom
• Thu, NOV 13 | The Lexington | London, United Kingdom
• Sat, NOV 15 | Puschenfest 2025 | Berlin, Germany
• Mon, NOV 17 | Bumann & SOHN | Köln, Germany
• Tue, NOV 18 | Paradisio | Amsterdam, Netherlands
• Wed, NOV 19 | BAM | Metz, France
• Thu, NOV 20 | Petit Bain | Paris, France
• Fri, NOV 21 | La Sirene | La Rochelle, France
• Mon, NOV 24 | ARCI Bellezza | Milano, Italy
• Tue, NOV 25 | Bike Jesus | Hlavní Město Praha, Czechia
• Thu, NOV 27 | Milla Club | Munich, Germany

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