We had no idea that it would be the last time.

Con­sid­er this a eulo­gy for an arts space and a venue, right in the bar­ren waste of Cen­ter City, with no neigh­bor­hood sup­port for the arts, no colon­nade of crap shops and bars lin­ing the street as you approach; on the con­trary, noth­ing but an emp­ty park­ing lot greets vis­i­tors as they approach the Gilbert Build­ing’s loom­ing facade. It’s stark appear­ance and spar­tan inte­ri­or made it ide­al for any num­ber of out, free acts that came to the City, and in a town where L & I either makes you or breaks you, it was no mean feat. After all, the talk about the con­ven­tion cen­ter expan­sion has been going on since the Ren­dell admin­is­tra­tion, and was a key ele­ment in the ongo­ing “revival” of down­town in the NTI. It goes with­out say­ing that when one oppos­es “urban renew­al” it means that you stand in the way of progress. In so many ways, it’s an absurd coun­ter­point and an even more bizarre achieve­ment: if the com­plaints [about the exist­ing con­ven­tion cen­ter] are about union work rules, then why don’t we just make it bigger…That’ll work, right? It’s Field of Dreams, as told by Philly’s busi­ness class and polit­i­cal elites, the main dif­fer­ence being that the Black Sox were less crooked.

So when Japan­ese psych rock trio LSD March were joined by Bar­do Pond side project Alase­hir, LSD off­shoot New Rock Syn­di­cate and local ston­er rock­ers Birds of Maya for an impromp­tu show orga­nized by ArchiveCD guru Scott Slimm, it was a can’t miss proposition.

Birds of Maya [pic­tured above], a Philly boo­gie trio, eas­i­ly out­shine their more self-con­scious peers. Unlike indie met­al fakirs Dead Mead­ow, or fel­low local hesh-sesh­ers Pearls & Brass, they groove with impro­vised ease and avoid dip­ping into the dry styl­is­tic well that has been vis­it­ed once too often. Often­times, the harsh ’70’s real­i­ty boo­gie rock bands strive for as both an apoc­a­lyp­tic apex of pes­simism and para­noia and the foun­da­tion of thump ‘n’ bump rhythm feels so emp­ty. Birds of Maya come off as unas­sum­ing rock­ers with a keen under­stand­ing — and will­ing­ness — to tune out the signs and sig­ni­fiers to just delve into heaviness.

New Rock Syn­di­cate [pic­tured] played a spas­tic set of surf-ori­ent­ed garage, before Alase­hir unleashed a rever­ber­at­ing set of drone and retro riff­ing to rival drone du jour faves Sunn 0))) and Om.

Head­lin­er LSD March remains some­thing of an enig­ma: lead gui­tarist and vocal­ist Shin­suke Michishi­ta freely ranges from straight-up psych garage freak­out to haunt­ing freeform music to wail­ing ban­shee noise, defy­ing easy char­ac­ter­i­za­tion as yet anoth­er entry to be filed under Japan­ese psy­che­delia. The smat­ter­ing of rare releas­es avail­able State­side demon­strate Michishi­ta’s oeu­vre from the frag­ile “I Have Been Sav­ing My Love for You” to the spa­cious, fear­ful sounds of Shin­dara Jigoku. It was Fri­day the 13th, after all.

The per­for­mance betrayed their reach how­ev­er as they chose a con­ser­v­a­tive set of their more con­ven­tion­al mate­r­i­al, which show­cased Michishi­ta’s intense style of heart attack gui­tar, his right hand flash­ing across the strings in a blur, wah wah scream­ing into the beau­ti­ful, cav­ernous dark­ness. Once the set end­ed and every­one qui­et­ly shuf­fled out, the gig itself proved a fit­ting trib­ute to an under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed venue so per­fect­ly suit­ed for artists who fall out­side pop­u­lar trends, the very ele­ment that made Vox Pop­uli a rar­efied clois­ters for the vital unknown.

[See also: LSD March @ Vox Pop­uli video]