Raw Fabrics Perform At The Viper Room

By Andrew Bansal

June 22nd 2014, The Viper Room, West Hollywood CA: Based out of Los Angeles, Raw Fabrics is a rock trio comprising youngsters Jack B. Franco (guitar/vocals), Justus Dixon (bass/keyboards/samples) and Jon Fredrik (drums), who came together in 2012 and began their journey. They recently self-released a new single and have been cutting their teeth into the LA rock scene with live gigs on a regular basis. Last night they played as one of the opening acts for a show at the Viper Room. I was asked to come check out this band, which I did despite being completely unfamiliar with them, and as it turned out, I didn’t regret it.

Raw Fabrics took the Viper Room stage at around 9:25 on a typically subdued Sunday evening on the Sunset Strip and livened up the atmosphere with their brand of high-energy punk-infused stripped-down modern rock. They built up momentum and grew in confidence through the first couple of songs they played in this set, but in the middle of this 30-minute performance, they did a song with Jack B. Franco putting down his guitar and playing bass instead while Justus Dixon temporarily discarded his bass to delve into keyboard and samples, and this guitar-less song was the turning point of the set in my opinion as their excellent layering of the instruments to go with the usage of reverb interestingly substituted the guitar and caught my attention.

Following that, they switched back to their regular choice of instruments as Jack stepped off the stage and set up his mic stand on the floor in front of it to expand his territory and interact even more closely with the crowd. In the initial phase of their set, i.e. the first two songs, I somehow felt that the band was easing into the performance and shifting through gears. I was waiting for them to explode, and they sure did during the last two songs, specially the final one wherein Jack snatched a drum from Jon Fredrik’s kit and started beating on it with unbridled fury even as he continued singing and playing guitar, attracting more and more people nearer to the stage in the process. With this display of boundless youthful energy, Raw Fabrics ended the set on a high and left the crowd not only impressed but wanting more.

All three members gave an excellent account of their individual and collective talents as musicians and brought forth an intriguing approach which came across as minimalist on the surface but over a 30-minute period made the listener realize that it successfully blends the heavy, the mellow, the fast and the slow passages that constitute any form of well-written, compellingly worthwhile music. With that being said, I must also point out that while this was the kind of performance that garnered attention and appreciation from first-timers in the crowd, I undoubtedly feel that this band has it in them to reach higher peaks, specially in front of bigger crowds to feed energy off of. But, Raw Fabrics did succeed in proving that they’re a band to watch out for in the near and distant future.

Raw Fabrics links:
RawFabricsMusic.com
facebook.com/RawFabrics
twitter.com/RawFabrics
instagram.com/RawFabrics 

The Viper Room links:
ViperRoom.com
facebook.com/theViperRoom
twitter.com/theViperRoom
instagram.com/theViperRoom 

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