Awe for your Ears and Eyes: Animal Collective Side Quest ‘Croz Boyce’ Delivers Live Ambient Magic in DC

Where are all the coolest people you know on a Monday night? They’re here, sitting in the oldest running movie theatre in Washington DC, engulfed in Javanese gamelan music - no wait, now it’s some sort of mining song - then a Neapolitan folk track? I’m transported across borders and the show hasn’t even started yet. 

The Miracle Theatre is draped in regality. Thick red curtains with golden tassels, high ceilings, and sconces that shine illuminate the crown moulding to make the space feel bigger and brighter. I’m delightfully surprised when I go to the concession stand to get a drink and everything still feels priced like the golden days of entertainment. Sodas, popcorn, candy, all just a few bucks with a solid variety and kind faces behind the counter. This is the sort of event you see 9 days after the fact on tiktok and kick yourself for missing for just how inconceivably cool it truly is. 

Jeremy Hyman performing at Miracle Theatre in Washington, DC. Photographs by Jonathan Nevius.

The lights drop suddenly, and DMV native Jeremy Hyman takes the stage with a swell of ambient synths, a low frequency - gentle, calming, and washing. The screen takes shape with gorgeous art, that I won’t even attempt to do justice by describing it in words. My immediate thought is, I would pay good money to walk through an exhibition of this art, but it's somehow paired with the perfect aural accompaniment. I wish I had the opportunity to ask Jeremy if the songs were written for the art or vice-versa, but somehow I don't think it would have mattered much because they both fit so perfectly together.

The art's subtle movements complemented the slow rise to the track's crescendos. It felt like movement in several dimensions past our own. I am completely cocooned in the art, and surrounded by the tracks Jeremy is assembling in front of us. I am stunned and sit, like a trout - unable to close my mouth as I'm cloaked by awe. 

The different sounds produced are consistently exactly what feel necessary for the moment, both as an extension of the last note or percussive instant, but also as a means of elevating what’s on the screen. Jeremy’s art twists, folds in on itself, reverberates, and otherwise almost imperceptibly moves to reel you deeper within it. Timestretched and flowing with rubato, I don’t want the balearic sounds to end - though I also couldn’t tell you how long we’d be within their presence. When they finally do, I feel rocked to my core, like a cartoon character after a rollercoaster with their hair flared and their face wide. That- was a real treat. 

Croz Boyce perform at Miracle Theatre in Washington, DC. Photographs by Jonathan Nevius.

Croz Boyce are up next. Experimental instrumentalists, Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Geologist (Brian Weitz) on a side quest from their decades-old act Animal Collective. They are joined by Adam McDaniel, and together they plunge us deep into their perception of time, sound, sight, and presence. 

Throughout their set they travel far and wide, what begins as rock turns experimental, and then ambient, then psych - no folk, but electric yet somehow still grounded… I understand now why we started where we did, traversing borders through song. Croz Boyce is not here to take you where you’ve been before, and certainly not by any means of transit you may have experienced before. 

Croz Boyce perform at Miracle Theatre in Washington, DC. Photographs by Jonathan Nevius.

The screen displays animals, and landscapes - proportioned and framed so that you feel within it rather than an observer. If you couldn’t see it right in front of you, especially for an untrained ear, it would be difficult to assert that the sounds you were hearing were coming from an instrument as ordinary as an acoustic guitar. But coupled with expert techniques and modern twists like Hawaiian slack-key, electronic synths, granular sampling, and organic sounds spliced throughout - along with the visuals of water washing over, it's as if you are deluged within the ocean and have every freedom to float away. 

I can only describe the sensations as atmospheric. A sensation I crave constantly but never know how to articulate. It's almost as if someone has their hand on your shoulder and silently tells you that it's okay to let go, you need not worry about anything anymore here, just let these melodic sounds take you and drift away. I hear influences from everywhere, Arabic strings to electronica of Berlin. From desert plains to deep within the ocean. Like I’m perched on a blade of grass and then high in the tops of a rainforest’s canopy. Through sound and visual, Croz Boyce have perfected the joy of live performance in their domain by taking you on a journey through some of the best that earth has to offer, all without leaving your seat.