Cryptacize channel quietude in noisy Manhattan

March 22, 2008, at Knitting Factory

By Katy Henriksen
Published: March 24th, 2008 | 9:50pm

Cryptacize, whose debut recording Dig That Treasure (Asthmatic Kitty) was released earlier this month, revel in the silence between notes. Their experimental hybrid style — spanning musicals,1960s garage rock, noise bands, and an extended list too numerous to name — may be chaotic, but there’s also the constant presence of quietude.

Sandwiched between the more danceable, beat-driven sets by Son Lux and Panther, the Knitting Factory crowd, who’d most likely purchased tickets to see closing act Why?, wasn’t really paying enough attention. Although Nedelle Torrisi (vocals, guitar, autoharp), Chris Cohen (vocals, guitar), and Michael Carreira (percussion), took the stage at about 9:45 p.m., the small venue was already jam-packed.

They started their short set out with “Say You Will,” coincidentally the last track of Treasure. Torrisi’s vocals shone clear, high, and bright as she strummed the autoharp in her lap. A breezy song of just more than two-and-a-half minutes with time shifts and key changes — both of which Cryptacize revel in — there were moments of jangle and whimsy. When Torrisi chimed, “Don’t be shy, look to the sky” in a cappella, the club should have been silenced. Instead, crowd chatter continued.

That’s definitely a shame, because the band performed much of its idiosyncratic album seamlessly. The three were completely in sync and performed their musical acrobatics effortlessly. Whenever they brought out the fermata, which happened to be quite often, there was no hesitation as to when to suddenly pause or jump back into the sounds. The spellbinding song “Stop Watch” — which begins with a little low, rumbling, Velvet Underground–sounding guitar fading in and out against a shimmering autoharp, rapid triangle chiming, and guitar strumming slow bass notes — builds toward a simple upward mini-duet sung between Torrisi and Cohen.

Cryptacize closed the seven-song set with “Heaven is Human,” which began with a Deerhoof-like jangle (Cohen was a member of the band for a while). This cacophony dropped out to let Torrisi’s melodic vocals linger. But the noisy guitar never quite disappeared and instead punctured the song throughout, creating a catchy and boppy space-age ditty punctuated by artful percussion.

I could’ve listened to them play all 11 tracks of Treasure, but they had to leave the stage to keep on schedule for the over-billed evening. Besides, the not-always-listening crowd cut in to the band’s masterful command of silence.