TAGABOW electrifies Baltimore audience in their first stop on U.S. tour

By Molly Szymanski

Their backs are all turned to the audience while they make fleeting eye contact with one another as some of the most egregious beats you’ve ever heard in your life blare out of the SP-404 sampling board precariously balanced on a high-top chair at center stage.

Equipped with only his Korn hockey jersey, dual-wielded rat tails and guitar attached with a spiked, grommeted strap, the man in the center fades the sampler down. The otherwise-unsuspecting looking drummer takes his little wireframe glasses off. It’s about to get serious.

They Are Gutting a Body of Water is making up for lost time. Due to health reasons, the band canceled all of their shows in September. In October, the Philadelphia quartet fronted by Doug Dulgarian played a limited run of shows on the east coast and released a visual album, Expansion Pak. Now, they’re back on the road for a United States tour, stopping first in Baltimore at Metro Gallery Nov. 26.

Their brain-itchingly grainy and heavily weightless sound is slowly becoming the blueprint for Philly and inspiring other freaky shoegaze acts like Pinky Lemon and Bleary Eyed. Their musical connections span from University of Maryland alumna and trance superstar purity://filter to the folksy stylings of Greg Mendez, but joining them on tour, paired like fine wine, are TAGABOW’s Philadelphian allies Full Body 2, as well as Austin countrygaze act alexalone and Baltimore’s Polarview.

Polarview opened the show, enticing the concertgoers who were filing into Metro Baltimore with their melodic hardcore. Coming fresh off of an east coast tour with fellow Baltimore native Roxy 2, Polarview played songs off of their EP, Inventory, released last July.

alexalone’s performance was the sleeper pick of the night. Boldly choosing only four songs to fill their 30-minute set time, Alex Peterson and their touring band gave a sound that was heavy, immersive and even a little gothic.

The third song in alexalone’s setlist, “Full Body Learning” off of their September release ALEXALONE TECHNICAL RESEARCH encapsulated an entire life’s worth of sonic experiences into 12 minutes. Playing a song this long as an opening act is a brave choice, but it worked.

The track was encyclopedic — taking eight minutes to get to its one short verse between two slow-burn build ups. It’s so easy to lose the attention of an audience when doing atmospheric soundscapes like this, but “Full Body Learning” was enthralling. Time was not real in the room while this song was playing; it held onto me for the entirety of its however-long runtime. When it was over, I felt like I’d gained some omniscient knowledge of the universe.

Even from the back of the crowd by the bar where I was unfortunate enough to be standing for this set, I could tell there was something weird about this band’s setup.

The bassist was wielding a Bass VI Fender guitar, which sits somewhere between a bass and baritone guitar in its tuning, hooked up to a modular synthesizer pedal which was used as a ring modulator. Technical terms aside, this unique rig tied alexalone’s performance into a disorienting, hypnotizing little package. Very similar to — but much more pleasant than — a car accident, I was freaked out, confused, a little intrigued and by God, I could not look away. Had the show ended after the second band, perhaps I would have been totally content.

But damn, I’m glad it didn’t. Full Body 2’s set began rather inconspicuously with a strong beat from a hidden sampling board, building gradually as the band prepared to start. Lo and behold, the drummer, Jack Chaffer, was creating breakcore before our very eyes, timing a beat over a backing track. Chaffer would continue cooking between tracks throughout Full Body 2’s set, which allowed the other band members to tune out without breaking the focus of this immersive set. Not only this, but the tempo of whatever breakbeat masterpiece was coming out of the sampler matched the song next to come, a very subtle, but genius, way to keep the band unified.

Each song swung between traditional shoegaze and things that were more experimental, including “blue trio,” a song off of their brand-new EP infinity signature, released Nov. 20, which had a peculiar glitch sample running throughout.

Other tenets of Full Body 2’s live sound include heavy, all-encompassing bass, as well as guitar line with ample warbling courtesy of guitarist Dylan Vaisey and his love for the whammy bar. One effect used made their music seem foreboding, distant and even vintage, in an ‘80s-VHS way.

Whatever they were doing, whatever was going on inside their collective mind, was working. It could be summed up perfectly by the probably-stoned person stationed next to me in the crowd, who nodded knowingly at the conclusion of the set and simply said: “that was… really fascinating.”

After allotting a mere 15 minutes for TAGABOW’s setup, the audience was transported to Dulgarian’s basement rave as the sound of about 30 seconds straight of air horns filled the room. Once tuned, the titans of Phillygaze began their set with the droning intro of “63 skies” off of Destiny XL.

“texas instruments” followed with delicious fuzz hanging off of each note played from Dulgarian and lead guitarist PJ Carroll, who carried a solo that has to be in the running for World’s Nastiest Riffs. This track is a top contender in TAGABOW’s discography, contributing to the band’s skyrocket to shoegaze stardom, along with fellow Destiny XL track “eightball.”

Like Full Body 2, Dulgarian played upbeat club tunes from the SP-404 between each song, jumping up and down as if he were mixing at the hottest club in New York rather than a little stage in Baltimore. The sudden switch in vibe, however, was largely welcomed by the crowd.

The four-piece stuck to the more experimental, louder side of their repertoire rather than their more melodic tracks — very fitting for Metro Gallery, which usually hosts more hardcore shows. Included in their setlist was the long-awaited live debut of “double apple,” released in 2019.

Surprisingly, most of the songs TAGABOW played in this performance were from this claim-to-fame album released in 2019. Only the final two — “delta p” and “behind the waterfall”— came off of their 2022 album s.

As they finished their last song, one could peer into the crowd to a cluster in the front row at stage right, each and every one mouths agape, hands on their face in disbelief, at the monumental alchemy they’d just witnessed.

Technical research was contributed by Oliver Foley, WMUC Chief Engineer.