If you descend into the rowhouse basement where the members of Taciturn regularly jam new songs into existence and ask them how they do it, the D.C. noise-punk trio will instinctively jam toward a collective answer. “It’s meditative,” bassist-singer Natasha Janfaza says. “A song can be really chaotic, but it’s still meditative.”
So the idea is to sink into the depths of your own head until everyone merges into some kind of rock-and-roll group mind? Maybe something like that. “We’re each beating paths, and then something just works,” drummer Kevin Ralph says. “You have to lose yourself in the intricacies of it.”
That approach might sound paradoxical, but there are plenty of precise editorial decisions being made in the back of that autopilot-band-brain — because even when these three can’t seem to figure out what a song should sound like, they at least know what it shouldn’t sound like. “We’re all individually jaded about different kinds of music,” guitarist-singer Nyle Hamidi says. “So everything goes through at least three filters of jadedness.”
Good formula, great joke, everybody laughs, then everybody sighs, which feels right. “For me, music was always on a sort of [emotional] spectrum,” Hamidi says. “I felt like everything in the middle was where the artistry was. . . . I like songs that are more ambiguous where you can’t really make up your mind on how it’s supposed to make you feel.” Janfaza and Ralph nod in agreement. That explanation feels about right, too.
Shows: Oct. 5 at 9 p.m. at Songbyrd, 2477 18th St. NW. songbyrddc.com. $8.
Oct. 10 at 7 p.m. at Rhizome, 6950 Maple Street NW. rhizomedc.org. $10.
Oct. 24 at 9 p.m. at Comet Ping Pong, 5037 Connecticut Ave. NW. cometpingpong.com. $12.
