Tonight: Omotai, Co-Pilot, Sleep Envy, & DSGNS at Fitz

Hey, all — been awful quiet of late, I know… The holidays quite literally stopped SCR in its tracks, but fret not, because we’re slowly staggering back to life/consciousness, and our New Year’s resolution is to more fully get our (er, Jeremy’s, since it’s mostly his fault) shit back together once again.

In the meantime, though, there’s tonight, Saturday, January 3rd, and yes, there’re some cool, cool things happening, like {Bun B} playing with Too Short(!) over at the Arena Theater, or a nice-looking bill up at Rudyard’s with Justin Nava from {the last place you look} and neat Austinites Fire in the Kitchen.

At the absolute top of my personal list is a cool-ass show that’s likely already underway up at Fitzgerald’s. Organized by the crafty geniuses at The Treaty Oak Collective, the show combines two of my absolute-freaking-favorite bands ever, {Omotai} and {Co-Pilot}, with a couple of new names, {Sleep Envy} and DSGNS. I have yet to hear the latter two, I’m afraid, but I’ve heard great things about DSGNS, who hail from Austin, and I know that Sleep Envy is a side project of Sam Waters from Omotai, The Ronin King‘s Evan Jones, and Steve Smith of {motion turns it on}, which pretty much makes it a bona-fide supergroup of Houston music.

As for those first two, they’re each an absolute titan of a band, to my mind. Omotai play thundering, epic-sized, doom-y, sludgy, yet somehow still technical and prog-y metal/rock (more on the “rock” side than the “metal” as of their most recent release, last year’s Fresh Hell), coming off like an amalgam of Neurosis and Don Caballero on the best day possible. They lost original drummer Anthony Vallejo a while back, but picked up stellar drummer (and stellar human) Danny Mee, formerly of {The Jonx}, as a result, and if you’re going to switch it up like that, you couldn’t do it better.

Then there’s Co-Pilot, whose members are split between Austin and Houston and who therefore don’t play all that often down here. They’re spacey and massive and gorgeous, the best damn spacerock band you’re likely to hear, even when they turn their sights on more earthly pursuits like they did on their 2010 release, The Course of Empire. “Land Empires” remains one of the best instrumental-rock tracks I’ve ever heard, no lie.

And hey, I’m psyched to hear that the Co-Pilot dudes finally have something new out — their first new song since their 2012 split with ALASKAN, which, yes, was pretty awesome. It’s called “More Weight”, and it’ll apparently be a split-10″ with none other than Omotai; check it out here:

I’ve listened to it a fair bit already, and I’m happy to report it picks up right where Course of Empire left off, combining the band’s spacier side with some nicely heavy bits and sounding sorta-kinda like a much better Pelican or Russian Circles. Go see ’em right now, alright?