From the Dallas Observer, January 4th, 1990
The Acts to Watch in '90
by Clay McNear
Course of Empire: "Just personally, the idea of exploring the entire room,
leaping off the stage, grabbing someone, handing them a pair of sticks, and
getting them involved in creating the music that is going down right now in
the present tense is fascinating to me," Course of Empire guitarist Mike
Graff told the Observer last year. And this attitude of breaking down that
transparent boundary that separates band from audience - of muddling the
gray line between entertainment and art - is what makes this act so special.
A Course of Empire show is, literally, a hands-on-experience. "Anybody who
shows up has an opportunity to influence the work in progress, and the
experiences of everybody else in the room," said Graff. The dark/light
symmetry of the band's sound (reminiscent in some ways os U2 with a Bauhaus
hangover) may not lend itself to the immediacy of commercial-radio fodder,
but hell, you can to it - in a tribal sort of way.
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