LIVE: Samara Lubelski @ the Saratoga Arts Center, 9/19/09

Singer-songwriter Samsara Lubelski and electronic sound generator Helen Rush rolled into the Saratoga Arts Center’s Dee Sarno Theater on Saturday, September 19, for a night of light and airy ambient music with a decidedly 1960’s twist.

Drifting over her gentle guitar chords and Rush’s sonic fills, Lubelski’s silky voice created a dreamy and nostalgic mood, resonating with echoes of Melanie, Judy Collins or Basia with the volume turned way down low. And under the influence of heavy hallucinogenics.

NYC-based Lubelski refers to her style of underground music as “future urban,” and the evening’s set list was drawn entirely from her most recent album, “Future Slip,” produced by Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore and released on his adventurous Ecstatic Peace label.

Opening the show was Joshua Burkett, picking light acoustic tone poems reminiscent of something Windam Hill Records would have released in its late 1980s and early 90s heyday.

Review and photographs by Andrzej Pilarczyk