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The Her-b “Best place to cure \(A.I what ails you” Explore our Oasis of Earthly Delights! extensive array of natural health and bodycare products comprehensive collection of herbs great gift ideas and much more! www.theherbbar.com . Mn.-Fi. 10-6:30 200 West Mary 444-6251 Sat. 10 r 5W.W. TORREY Attorney at Law 1105 N. Travis 254-697-3700 P.O. Drawer 752 Fax: 254-697-3702 Cameron, TX 76520 [email protected] A Good Lawyer for Good People WATCH a video of the performance at txlo.com/Hexadecagon early-adolescent everyman from Richard Linklater’s are projected on the ceiling. The project’s name, taken from the geometrical term for a 16-sided object, references the eight-channel sound and eight-channel video system built for the occasion. “A sixteen-sided audiovisual panorama!” the group’s website declares. “A sixteen-sided audiovisual panorama!” Despite the project’s novelty, the songs of Hexadecagon are classic Octopus Project, with insistent, unchanging drum loops, ambient synthesizers, optimistic glockenspiel melodies and the band’s trademark theremin, an instrument that gives songs the feel of a 1950s alien-invasion movie. What is new are repetitive piano arpeggios that form the foundations of the songs. Clearly the band had been listening to a lot of Steve Reich, the avant-garde composer whose experiments in rhythmic phasing helped usher in the minimalist era of classical music. Hexadecagon sounds like minimalism simplified, stripped of its theorizing and given a rock treatmentan emotional catharsis driven by explosive crescendos. It’s a formula that allows the band to sneak in more conceptual elements without alienating the audience. For the avant-garde composer, a dispassionate crowd isn’t cause for alarm, but a badge of honor. In the world of indie rockwhen you’re on stage with a guitar in your hand and 200 jaded 20-somethings waiting to be impressedyou’d better connect. The Octopus Project is adventurous, but it’s too devoted to the thrill of communal experience to risk being fearlessly experimental. To see a band precariously balanced between two opposing instincts, catch the Octopus Project performing Hexadecagon on Friday, Dec. 3, at Austin’s Eastside Drive-In. El BIRTHMARK by Gregg Barrios cloudy moon rises over white silver sands El Chuco hills smooth concrete loom like dunes awaiting some pachuco’s arrival to mark in ancient script name, neighborhood, street magic marker popul-voh a faded clue left to say a 100 years from today: Yo Soy, Yo Era, Yo Sigo. * El Paso, Tejas. * I am, I was, I continue to be. Gregg Barrios is a poet, playwright and author living in San Antonio. This poem is from his latest collection, La Causa, published this month by Hansen Publishing. THE TEXAS OBSERVER . Periodicals Postage paid in Austin, TX, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER Send address changes to: The Texas Observer, 307 W. 7th St., Austin TX 78701. Subscriptions: 1 yr $35, 2 yr $60, 3 yr $85. Students $20. Foreign, add $13 to domestic price. Back issues $5. Airmail, foreign, group, and bulk rates on request. Microfilm available from University Microfilms Intl., 300 N Zeeb Rd, Ann Arbor MI 48106. INDEXES The Texas Observer is indexed in Access: The Supplementary Index to Periodicals; Texas Index; and, for the years 1954 through 1981, The Texas Observer Index. INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING is supported in part by a grant from the Open Society Institute. BOOKS & THE CULTURE is funded in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts. s OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE MOli S. Soros Foundations Network 4 ‘Nicas Cultural Arts Commission Division on the Arts WWW.TEXASOBSERVER.ORG 261 THE TEXAS OBSERVER