We love music and want to share the music we love.” Uno Momentum’s MySpace message—not to mention its heart-shaped logo—can only accurately be described as, well, kinda mushy. Until you see the Las Vegas sound collective in action, at which point the huggy stuff seems perfectly appropriate.
At least, it does tonight inside Beauty Bar, where a crowd of 120—no small potatoes for a Thursday and an all-local bill—are vigorously butt-shaking to the music of Ex-Dinosaur, Love Pentagon and Pan de Sal, three of 20 acts featured on compilation Uno Momentum Presents: Vol. 1, the release of which is the subject of tonight’s celebration.
The congregation includes members of many of the other acts on the CD—Brett Bolton from Jr. Anti-Sex League, Jesse Fitts from Action Cat, Jackson Wilcox, Mike Weller and Joe Wright from A Crowd of Small Adventures—some of whom take up maracas and tambourines to bolster Pan de Sal’s manic closing set.
Uno Momentum isn’t a label, though it intends to release follow-up compilations throughout 2008. Nor is it a promotions company, though it does group handfuls of its acts for every-third-Sunday gigs at the Bunkhouse. It’s really more a family of musicians, connected by a mutual fondness for experimental-leaning sounds and a desire to nurture the growing indie scene by supporting one another.
“We’re tired of the competition and hate that it goes on in the scene here, so we wanted to put something together that was nothing like that,” says Uno Momentum founder Jesse Sampson-Usatenko, aka electronic wizard Ex-Dinosaur. “We’re all musicians, and we all have to deal with the same stuff, so we’re all more than happy to help each other out.”
The close-knit nature of Uno Momentum reflects beyond attendance at performances, most clearly in the interconnections between many of its artists. Sampson-Usatenko and Uno Momentum co-organizer Jeff Madlambayan play together in Werd to the Mothership. Madlambayan, who records solo as The Doodler, serves as one-third of Pan de Sal, along with fiancé Judi Brown, who also plays bass in Love Pentagon. Weller, who performs live as Hungry Cloud with Wilcox and Wyatt McKenzie, drums for McKenzie’s project, Mother McKenzie, which also features Max Supera, aka Uno Momentum act Red Sparrow. Wilcox, Weller and Supera have also all performed with The Corlene Machine, whose leader, Corlene Byrd, is preparing to become a full-time member of A Crowd of Small Adventures.
“Initially our goal was to get artists out of the bedroom and into the public, but we realized it was bigger than that,” Madlambayan explains. “We wanted to create a real musical community, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Though loaded with electronic music—much of it (Chimo 25, Ex-Dinosaur, Skribe 1, The Doodler, Seven d’Six and Noise From the Underground) contributed by one-man acts—Vol. 1 manages to paint a diverse picture of Vegas’ (non-heavy) underground, from the danceable pop-rock of A Crowd of Small Adventures’ “The Hungry Dead” to the fetching folk-rock of Mother McKenzie’s “No Direction No. 2” to the motivational worldbeat of Pan de Sal’s “The Boom and the Bees” to the all-out weirdness of Anamorphosis’ “Link vs. Ganon.”
Tonight, Pan de Sal’s visually stimulating act (the trio perform in matching black-and-white striped uniforms, with politically charged projections in the background) caps off an eclectic slate of sound that began with Ex-Dinosaur’s thumpy Powerbook-meets-Kaoss touchpad effects ride and carried through Love Pentagon’s tight and fun rock show. By the end of Pan de Sal’s final song, Madlambayan is break-dancing, encircled by a crowd justifying not only the heart that serves as Uno Momentum’s online symbol, but also the ones handed out on stickers as folks head out the door. (myspace.com/unomomentum)