♫♪  Platinum Vision - COCO’s66^^2.8.2014

“I’m just a smelly, smelly giraffe.”

“What troubles could have befallen this giraffe? This poor freak of nature, shaped like a construction crane… he feels that he’s no more than a smelly, smelly giraffe. The sort of giraffe that wanders around the edge of the watering hole, looking for a companion — another Serengetite — who might be able to tolerate his smelliness for long enough to listen to the long list of things he hates. Having observed this particular giraffe from the safety of my Jeep Wrangler (decked out with four-dimensional vector prairie camouflage and a winch with a big fucking hook on the front), I can only determine that this misanthropic creature will be driven to starvation soon. The other giraffes will exile him, beating him mercilessly with their necks when he comes near, for lack of a better style of combat. Soon, though, the other giraffes will accept him back into the tower, but only because they know he is the weakest, and when the lions come they can offer him as a sacrifice by beating him with their necks and then galloping away….”

The preceding anecdote was adapted from the unintelligible in-the-margin scribblings of the lyric sheets of Matt Mottel. In addition to his memberships in Talibam! and NYMPH, he is the singer of the band Platinum Vision. The group recorded a live set on February 8, with Mottel leading a tight group of musicians — Drew Sayers (saxophone), Alex Asher (trombone), Rick Parker (trombone), Dave Treut (soprano saxophone), Jim McHugh (guitar), Adam Caine (guitar), Nick Lesley (drums), and William Flynn (bass) — through his bloated fantasies of instinctual, carnal passion and expensive wine. Inside his head, a small metal ball — the diameter of a nickel and the weight of a large orange — rolls back and forth, keeping tempo, which Mottel transmits to his bandmates via telekinesis (he explains his distaste for wires during the set). This is the only conceivable explanation for how the band manages to execute their fiercely tight set, with saxophone and guitar playing licks thicker than the three-foot tongue of a smelly giraffe tearing leaves off a large shrub.

Witness all of this yourself: Platinum Vision are playing two gigs this month in New York. The first is on Sunday (3/23) at Brooklyn’s Littlefield with Tuareg group Imarhan Timbuktu. The second show is next Thursday (3/27) at Trans-Pecos with Eidetic Seeing, Martin Bisi, and Nola Gras.

• Platinum Vision: http://platinumvision.bandcamp.com

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