Mutaytor Coming To Harlow's

Mutaytor looks like a really interesting group - a durable child of Burning Man.

I don't know precisely what Mutaytor is. A latter-day Grateful Dead perhaps? Or an Everyman's Cirque du Soleil? But whatever it is, it's very countercultural, and filled with performance art, and will be at Harlow's on Thursday. (If it wasn't for rehearsal, I'd be there.)

Here is more from the Sacramento Bee:

Forged at Burning Man in the same collective spirit that fuels that annual gathering in the northern Nevada desert, the Mutaytor wants to erase the line between performer and audience.

"Just because you are not playing an instrument doesn't make you any less important in the process of experiencing music," said Buck Down, ringmaster and one of two principal songwriters for the Mutaytor, a group of musicians, dancers and circus-style visual artists performing Thursday night at Harlow's nightclub in Sacramento. "(The audience) dancing is just as important to the experience. … At the risk of sounding hippie-ish, it is all energy."

A communal vibe should be easy to achieve at Harlow's, the modest size of which is likely to inspire a Mutaytor spillover into the crowd. Though trimmed for the road from its 30-person roster, the group still will boast 15 or 16 members.

"The Mutaytor is very modular – it is like a goldfish in that it can fill up whatever venue it is in," Down, a veteran indie musician who writes the group's songs with fellow member Atom Smith, said by telephone from Los Angeles.

Formed more than a decade ago, the techno- and drum-based group showed adaptability early in producing elaborate shows at Burning Man sites lacking in electricity or any other measure of infrastructure. At Harlow's, the Mutaytor will feature a nine-piece band, a tribal belly dancer and a fire performer who will wow via glow-stick effect instead of real flames.