Pounding Beats and Raw Emotion: The Soft Moon Performs at Teragram Ballroom

With the steady pounding of beats rumbling thorugh the Teragram Ballroom on Friday night, we entered into a vacuum filled to the brim with emotion as Luiz Vasquez, under the moniker of The Soft Moon, completed the Los Angeles leg of his Spring 2018 tour. Accompanied by eerie electronic duo Boy Harsher and industrial artist Liebestod, Vasquez performed selections from his highly cinematic and confessional production of his newly released album Criminal (Sacred Bones).

Under the current of rugged aggression, Vasquez’s sharp-edged beats are seeping with deep-seated feelings of shame and guilt. Providing an added grittiness, Boy Harsher—fronted by vocalist Jae Matthews and beat-maker August Miller—rounded out the show with an added essence of gloomy and at times lurid intensity with their repetitious cold wave inspired tracks.

As cohesive as it was enrapturing, the amalgam of mechanical sounds mixed with raw human emotion made for a show that will not be forgotten.

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written by Libby Hsieh
photographed by Isaac von Hallberg