The evening started unexpectedly early: the Mortiis show was pushed up from a typical eight o’clock start time to five-thirty at Kungfu Necktie, a well-established sore-thumb in the embarrassingly “up-and-coming” Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. My heart went out to the archaic ghoul – all of us performers know how annoying a last-minute schedule change can be – as I received my second surprise of the night. Sitting down for pre-show cocktails at an attractive new bar less than a block away, my girlfriend and I realized, after ordering our drinks, that the entire cocktail menu was crafted from non-alcoholic spirits. Whoops! A full list of cocktails under fifteen bucks should’ve been the giveaway in this part of town, no matter that the descriptions still featured words like “gin” and “bourbon”. A modest suggestion: they should cutely modify the names of fake spirits the same way they do it for vegan meat substitutes. Had I seen V’dka and not-tequi-LAH listed, I swear I would’ve figured it out sooner.

After quickly departing and meeting friends for (boozed-up) cocktails at a different spot across the street from Kungfu Necktie, we sauntered under the El and into the corner club, evading the final raindrops of the day for an evening of dark electronics. Already on stage were Sombre Arcane, a staunchly medieval synth duo from Worcester, MA. Presenting two sizable racks of synths, they firmly established the evening’s vibe, what with somber-marching, fantasy-gaming instrumentals that ebbed and flowed like a horse-led caravan over a craggy war-torn mountainside. They reminded me of Carrot Top in the way that they made sure to give every prop in their trunk a whirl: glowing orb, check; triumphant animal horn, check; replica 1600s-era lyre, check; wizard and barbarian costumes, double check. A friend remarked that the wizard’s cloak was wrinkled in a manner ill-befitting the medieval era (“the creases looked like a picnic tablecloth!”) but the wiz’s spirited thumping of a large staff in time with the occasional synthesized bass-drum thumps proved an entertaining distraction from any period-appropriate wardrobe inaccuracies.

The jovial atmosphere established by Sombre Arcane was roundly shushed by the presence of the next artist, seminal Swedish power-electronics artist Brighter Death Now. Wearing the typical elder noise-guy uniform of matching black short-sleeve button-up / train-conductor cap and hunched over the typical “noise table” array of effects pedals with digital and analog hardware elements, he whisked the crowd away from any sort of friendly cosplay atmosphere into something far more elemental and crushing. Considering Brighter Death Now’s dead-serious demeanor and physical appearance matching any given member of Genocide Organ or Grey Wolves, I had to wonder if he was aware of how soothing his set was; there was a lulling comfort to his mechanical rhythms, long-tailed static pulses and monk-like vocals distorted into oblivion. Many pretenders have run this style into the ground over the past few decades, but his concise set was artful yet unpretentious, a distillation of the best elements of death-industrial from one of its heralded originators. I doubt he’ll be back around here anytime soon, so I felt extra lucky to catch him while I had the chance. You don’t get into making this kind of music because you want to greet strangers around the globe and sell them t-shirts.

It wasn’t even 9:00 PM – was it even fully dark outside yet? – as we maintained our solid crowd position for the arrival of Mortiis. Kungfu Necktie is decorated like a Hollywood set designer’s idea of a wild rock club – part The Bronze from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and part PCU common area, with Halloween masks repurposed as glowing orange lights and a punk rocker’s take on TGI Friday’s-esque bric-a-brac, all coated in a thin layer of stickers of terrible bands no one has ever heard of, not even me. Could’ve used a few more cobwebs (real or fake) or splatters of corn-syrup blood on the walls for Mortiis, but the well-worn rock-club atmosphere didn’t necessarily clash with his brutalist rig. It appeared to be a rusted-out steam-punk engine shell on a table, not unlike something Bob Bert would bang on alongside Jon Spencer. It surely concealed some modern technology within – an electronic keyboard, at the very least – but I appreciated the strict attention to visual and sonic detail, no half-assing, not even for this motley Kungfu Necktie audience. Mortiis sported his trademark prosthetic nose and cheeks, and his skin was painted a distressing shade of grey to match, from his forearms up over his ears and across the shaved sides of his head. As advertised, he played two of his 1994 albums back to back, long suites of repeating medieval motifs that relied on sullen, forlorn melody over rhythm or heaviness. A projected slideshow cycled through black-and-grey etchings of ancient depressive landscapes behind him, images you might expect to float through J.R.R. Tolkien’s dreams during a fitful night of sleep. Occasional shots of low-end consistently reverberated in an unnatural cadence, a nice trick that had me wondering if any ancient spirits might have had a small hand in the proceedings. It’s undeniable that Mortiis more or less created what eventually became categorized as “dungeon synth”, and from his shirt designs brandishing the slogan “dark dungeon music”, he appears fully aware of the legacy he fostered and interested in ensuring that he receives the respect he’s due. If anyone’s expectations remained unsatisfied at the end of his extensive set, there was simply nothing to be done to please them.

The Kungfu Necktie show’s unexpected early arrival proved to be fortuitous, as I quickly snaked my way through the crowd without anyone’s eyeshadow smudging my shirt while Mortiis plucked his final somber notes. Mary Jane Dunphe was set to headline her own show a couple miles down the road at Foto Club, a veritable island of punk rock ill repute far from the city’s more favored social enclaves. It’s an indoor-outdoor “private” club well equipped for all bacchanalian purposes, from drum n’ bass DJ nights to egg-punk fests to anything that starts with the term “after hours”. Punk bands record their seven-inches there now, too! I’m not saying with certainty that you could find a poorly lit corner of the compound around 4:00 AM, pass out and wake up the next morning to discover that you’re the new DJ or janitor, but I’m not ruling it out, either.

My crew made it to Foto Club with enough time for me to buy and consume a home-made tofu pupusa from the punk with a fully tattooed skull that was vending them inside the club before finding our way upstairs to the flashing disco dance-floor from where the crowd would watch Mary Jane Dunphe perform. Singing along to backing tracks, she played guitar on the opening song, the calmest MJ Dunphe live moment I’ve ever witnessed. Had she finally mellowed out, her inner lightning bolt reduced to a manageable pulse? The answer is resoundingly no, as the guitar only lasted a song before she was stomping, dancing, posing and thrusting while running through numerous bangers from her fantastic debut full-length, last year’s Stage Of Love. I don’t think she was wearing tap shoes, but her dancing was so undeniably physical that the stomp of her shoes acted as a sonic percussive element, spinning circles within circles as her legs shook the rhythm to life. The PA system was shaky but not unexpectedly so, and while Dunphe’s body frequently moved around and beyond the active range of her microphone, I didn’t need to hear her voice perfectly to process the vivid emotions she was communicating. I have the album (and the Sub Pop single, and the CC Dust records, and the Vexx records…), so I know she sounds half like Björk going through a terrible breakup, half like Kate Bush giving birth to twins when properly amplified. It was a quick set, too quick if I’m feeling greedy, but the energy expended was greater than the sum total of what I witnessed at Kungfu Necktie, and the bar, and the non-alcoholic bar. Just a couple of miles apart, Mortiis was the wet, fertile soil birthing ancient strains of lichens and Mary Jane Dunphe was the laser light-show ripping a hole in the sky.