When Of Montreal played an uncharacteristically intimate show on July 4, 2011, at the Luminary Center for the Arts, the band's auxiliary member Kishi Bashi was the evening's de facto tone-setter. Armed with a violin, Bashi unassumingly opened the concert with a brief set of elegant psych-folk tunes built from patterns looped on top of each other in a melodic dog pile. By the end of the night, Bashi was hootenanny-ing around the room playing "Turkey in the Straw" and wearing a red, white and blue leotard. And, not coincidentally, he had sold out of copies of his excellent Room for Dream EP.
The Trifecta: While Kishi Bashi does not sound much like Andrew Bird or Owen Pallett, he has become the third notable artist to perform music with only a violin and a looping pedal.
