Simon Says

Sleep That Burns

At the Channel

February 29

FOR new bands, playing in Boston for the first time can be intimidating, particularly if your band takes part in one of the "Nu Musik Nights" at the Channel, a place which last Monday night had more speakers and amplifiers than people watching the show.

Nonetheless, Sleep That Burns, a Providence "new music" band, sang confidently about a variety of subjects: communists, conspiracies, cruel girlfriends, prisoners and American materialism, among others.

The five-member band combines disjointed, provocative lyrics with a strong backing of jazzy rhythm. The band's two lead singers, Simon Magus and Dawn Dinda, improvise wildly amidst a flood of colored lights while bassist John Voorhes does Pete Townshend leaps in the background.

While some of the band's songs are more danceable than others, the abrupt changes in style within each song would definitely lead to interesting dance interpretation by any audience. Sleep That Burns is at its best when Dinda sings high against Magus' deep, haunting voice.

Dinda, a Brown University student, says the band is an attempt to discard old formulas and to perform music different from the "old slop you hear from every other band." Magus and drummer Brian Carpenter discovered Dinda, Voorhes and guitarist Steve Allegretto through a series of ads in a Providence newspaper in early 1987.

Band members define their "new music" as the type of music heard on underground or college radio stations, "where music is not set to the eighth grade level, as most top 40 music is."

According to Magus, "the best music being written in this country right now is being written in the basements and attics." He says he feels that the pop scene is so impoverished artistically because "economic laws are ruling the market. People are more cautious because they remember being ripped off." As a result, a lot of great music goes unheard, he says.

Magus is a former performance artist, and he resembles David Byrne in his spontaneous, sharp movements onstage, as he combines speaking with the singing of his highly personal lyrics.

In describing the effect he hopes his lyrics will have on the band's audience, Magus discusses Plato's theory on the esoteric and the exoteric, saying that the hidden meaning of his songs will become apparent after repeated listenings. "I like my songs to be sort of like a window to look through; you can see anything however you want to," Magus has said.

The band says its following is growing steadily. "It's kind of like the Prell commercial, where two friends came to watch, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on," Magus says.

The band says it would like to begin playing at more colleges in the near future. The band already has a strong following at Brown, and members would like to find similar success here at Harvard. Soon, Sleep That Burns could be here on campus, burning down the Houses.