Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER
Bathed in blood-red hot lamps at PhilaMOCA on Thursday night, art-rock co-conspirators Kim Gordon and Bill Nace sculpted the dystopic psychedelia of their now seven-year-old project Body/Head: a twin complement of electric guitar distortion, at turns cauterizing, captivating, cacophonous. For roughly forty minutes, Gordon writhed with her low-slung stratocaster, occasionally chanting unintelligible mantras into her mic, and hurling fuzz and feedback at Nace to reshape and return. Where Steve Gunn’s instrumental opening set was a sprawling release of scale meditations and soaring solos, Body/Head was the sonic obverse, with noisy chord-warps, urgent incantations and a dark, unsettling dissonance that managed to offer a sense of catharsis without ever careening out of their control. — JOSH PELTA-HELLER