Endings and Beginnings

The Object at the End of History writes the past of music's future.

When the pictures of The Object at the End of History came in, something seemed amiss. In the shots, the band - a group of self-professed brainiacs whose backgrounds mirror the character outline for the next movie in the Revenge of the Nerds franchise - resembled 15-year-old girls. Upon further inspection, they were 15-year-old girls.

It turns out that when our photographer arrived at the shoot, the band decided to forego the staid rock 'n' roll pose down and opt for a more head-scratching prank. In earlier antics, the band, a candidate for the antithesis of rock stars if there ever was one, submitted a photo featuring their likeness distorted into visages of Dick Tracy villains that never made it to the funny pages.

However, anyone who has heard them knows Object is no joke. The band, whose music is a new form of science yet to be shared with the world, has carved a niche for itself among local fans who crave something different. When unleashed upon the world, like penicillin or the cotton gin, Object will change the future of music.

Object recently captured their unbelievable sound on a four-song, 40-minute EP. The demo puts their fluid, instrumental music - an ever-evolving blend of very astral math rock, rooted in metal and jazz - into a concrete, linear form, although their music is anything but linear or concrete.

The band gravitated together when local group Star Dot Star spilt and members Byron Tatman and Ryan Gegenheimer holed up and began working on riffs. The two thought they had found a bassist in local visual and tattoo artist Terry Grow. Grow's busy schedule, however, had other plans. Dallas Griffith filled the spot, only after borrowing a bass from Tatman's girlfriend. His punk band alumnus, Greg Travasos, soon signed on as drummer. Object cast the final lineup about a year and a half later, when Grow returned to the fold.

With a gig looming on the horizon, the band realized it was time for a name. So, they hunkered down at Souper Salad and didn't leave until they had come up with a moniker as cerebral as their music.

Among the many names offered were tags like Catatonic, Ad Infinitum and Blueshift, but when Gegenheimer suggested a reference to a theory by acid philosopher Terence McKenna, the group bit. McKenna, in a layman's nutshell, theorized if you plot mankind's evolutionary events on a graph, the next big step - or complete downfall - will occur at 11:18 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, Dec. 21, 2012. McKenna dubbed this milestone the "transcendental object at the end of history." Oddly enough, two days later marks the restart of the Mayan calendar. Just from that moniker, you can guess there is something uncanny about this band. According to drummer Travasos, another factor is the lineup that includes a degree-holder in physics, a copy machine repairman, an artist and two former scholars in computer science and philosophy.

"That's what makes it the way it is, because there are so many diverse people in this band. We can all come into a common bond with the music. We all have totally different taste," says Travasos, citing influences as far-flung and unique as metal band Mastadon, Frank Zappa, Ween, Tool, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. However, these artists serve merely as vehicles and not a prefabricated structure.

"We listen to all these bands and these different types of music. We don't try to emulate the bands," agrees Tatman. "We take the adjectives that we like about the bands and use them."

It's not often that describing a band involves throwing out terms like complexity, agile changes and precise timing. With Object, it's just the tip of the iceberg. But, their music involves immense and intense guitar layering set over a sporadic and meandering drum beat that ranges from snippets of drum 'n' bass to the thunderous down and dirty, rapid fire of rock 'n' roll.

The four guitars also don't behave as they should. As one splits off into an echo, another one screams into the forefront and another one riffs with the drums. A third might scamper quickly across the speakers as a spider would a linoleum floor. At other times, the instruments augment each other in a complicated quadruple helix imprint of the future of music's DNA. And that's all in the first track.

At their live shows, the music tends to gain a little weight, coming across slightly heavy, but not static- and speed-driven like metal. It is then likely to shift to an ambient tone. Next, it might explode to a heady, strong and slightly robotic, yet cosmic, rhythm. Some segments evoke peace. Some anger. Some sorrow. Others, evoke all three and more.

Although some bands attempting this schizophrenia would come across tried and trite, Object executes it with amazing precision and intelligent construction. Before you realize it, the track you thought you were listening to has seamlessly rippled into another and then another. Given a little imagination, the end of the last track might even be the start of the first one.



When Dave Hubbell of Toys Music Center heard Object, he pegged them as a highly trained unit of songwriters and musicians.

"It's brilliant. It's instrumental, but it's so musical. ... Rhythmically, and chord structure, and everything about it, they never take the easy way out," says Hubbell, host of Planet Radio's Now Hear This and a local rock authority. "They establish a pattern for the listener to grab on to, and then they deviate from that. Then, they come back to it, so you can always recognize when they come back to the part that rocks. When you watch them you are in turn banging your head and going, 'Wow these guys are great.'"

Although it might sound as if they hold doctorates in music theory, the members of Object possess slim formal musical training other than a handful of lessons and Griffith's days spent in high school band. As a result, the band developed its own musical terms to build its songs.

"So to people listening to us at practice, it probably sounds like gibberish, but we know what we're trying to say," says Tatman. "It's a lot of, 'OK, after the 5/4 part lets go to the six part, and after that we'll take out half a beat to flip the upbeats and downbeats.' Or, 'You play in five and I'll play in four and every 20 notes, we'll catch up with each other.' We have weird names for our parts like 'the numbers part' or 'the ambient thing.' It's kind of a hodge-podge of real music terminology and the language we've come up with."

Within discussing assembling the intricate circuitry of their music, there's talk of equilibrium and wrapping songs around number sequences. The band even splits into teams to balance their songs and avoid clutter by doing "counter-pointing."

"It's a big headache, and it takes us forever to write a song. We try to make it such that there is always (a) counterpoint, but things don't get too hectic to the point of not making sense," says Tatman. This possibly explains how and why some riffs and rhythms in songs suddenly halt, letting others chime in just before starting back again.

After such a tedious process of crafting songs, no one would think of criticizing Object for maintaining a rigid adherence to the final structure. However, at the band's gigs, songs could go through further tweaking. Some songs are faded together. Other songs get diced up and served as segues between other songs. Band members feed off each other and revamp and experiment with material mid-set.

As a result, seeing Object live defies all conventions of what a performance should be and remains perplexing and overwhelming. At one summer show at Caffé Cottage, the band took to the stage in less than flamboyant fashion, without even introducing themselves or heralding the start of the show. For an appetizer, the audience sampled what sounded like the inner swarming of a cosmic beehive. As Object's riffs formed and the band employed more effects than a summer blockbuster, the crowd began to nod along. Suddenly, Object yanked the rug out ... that was just merely them tuning up.

As they played, the only banter came from one eager fan professing her love between songs. The band members, never ones for stardom, paid no attention to her and kept their eyes fixed on their effects pedals. When it was all over, there was no 'Thank you!,' 'You rock!' or encore. The members simply shuffled off the stage, leaving a ring of effects orbiting the stage and a slack-jawed crowd in their wake.

Griffith confesses that their shows are a tad selfish, as they really enjoy playing and do it mostly for themselves.

"It amazes me how many people show up and understand it. Even if they didn't, we would still do it," he laughs.

Although fans have embraced their music, a few befuddled locals do, however, ask when a singer will join them. There's a slew of reasons you will probably never see someone slinking around their stage, stepping over the countless pedals. The most determinant roadblock is how it would affect the intended effect of their epic songs.

"I think people who listen to it like the feeling of the music," offers Griffith. "Having vocals interprets it a lot for people who don't get to interpret what they feel about it themselves."

Tatman agrees. "It's like watching a silent film or a movie in another language. You know what's going on, but you get to fill in the dialogue. Hopefully, it says a lot of very different things at the same time. We'd like you to go through a lot of different emotions and brain states at our shows. If we're doing our job, you'll be happy and sad and frustrated and relieved and pumped up and confused.

"It reflects life," Tatman adds. "Life is the most beautiful and tragic thing. So if the music reflects anything, it reflects the state of the universe in all its glory and heartbreak. Hopefully you leave drained and pensive, but feeling better for the experience."