Coachella 2011: Scala & Kolacny Brothers strike an odd note

It was past midnight Friday when 24 female members of the Belgian girls choir Scala & Kolacny Brothers lined up onstage inside the Gobi tent. The crowd was small but enthusiastic. At this late hour, casualties of the long, hot day lay like dehydrated seals in groups all over the grass.

The women in the chorus, all young and attractive but not annoyingly so, wore simple black attire that could not be mistaken for sexy. Their conductor, a bald bespectacled man named Stijn Kolacny, provided the only movement in the set. He jerked his arms in stiff, uniform rotations, looking very much like the kind of robot the band Devo might build were it in the business of building robots.

 Images from the 2011 Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival

His brother Stephen Kolacny accompanied on piano, creating music that sounded very adult contemporary and darkly Gothic all at once. An odd combination to be sure.

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-- Jessica Gelt 

Comments

[ChunkLite]

Yep, there's nothing more annoying than young, attractive women. Particularly when they look--yuck!--sexy.

[Tom Falkowski]

Scala were utterly fantastic. The fact that they stopped us dead in our tracks going from Boys Noize to the ChemBros was expected. I wanted to see all three, but that's Coachella. We saw them sing Solsbury Hill and the Foo's Everlong. When they broke into an original song, I hate to say, gravity pulled us to the ChemBros. I should have gone to see them at the El Rey Thursday before Coachella...