Asher Fulero plays McMenamins
Published 2:44 pm Thursday, June 4, 2015
- Submitted photoAsher Fulero Band
Bounce around Asher Fulero’s Bandcamp for a while — both under his own name and as Halo Refuser — and you can tell there’s a very fertile mind inside the guy’s noggin.
There’s an album there called “Liminal Rites,” and it’s a beautiful showcase for Fulero’s skills on the piano, at times jazzy, more often introspective and kind of New Age-y. (Think George Winston with more oomph.) It’s a document of a time when Fulero was transitioning from in-demand keyboardist/sideman into a frontman for his own projects. Each piece is completely improvised in one take. (If you think that sounds impressive now, wait till you hear the songs.)
And there’s an album called “Beyond the Visible,” a five-movement, 27-minute piece “created by layering unedited live performances using the Moog Sub 37 (synthesizer) and the Nord Piano along with bits of Lapsteel, Moog delay, and reverb.” The traditional sound of the piano floats through the album, but it is surrounded on all sides by the bleeps and bloops and hiss of electronic experimentation.
Over at the Halo Refuser Bandcamp, you’ll find a more focused outlet for Fulero’s electronic interests. The songs are tighter and catchier than on “Beyond the Visible,” with sung vocals complementing Fulero’s loping, glitchy Burning Man-buzz-bop.
Which brings us to Fulero’s namesake band, the Asher Fulero Band, a combo that allows him to explore avenues of jammy funk-rock. That’s the band that will play McMenamins Old St. Francis School Thursday, which means you’ve got a chance to watch a hyper-talented and sought-after keys wizard let his hair down and stretch for a bit. Don’t miss it.
Asher Fulero Band; 7 p.m. Thursday; free; McMenamins Old St. Francis School, 700 NW Bond St., Bend; www.mcmenamins.com.
—Ben Salmon, for The Bulletin