The most effective means I can muster to describe Rodrigo y Gabriela’s music is with a Lewis Carol quote: “Alice laughed: ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’ ‘I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’”

I’d never imagined the possibility of what they did.

The evening started simply. Both musicians sat on large trunks on a simple stage lit in red. The spotlight found Gabriela Quintero. It was confused. It had not expected her hand to look so similar to an electrified octopus playing, not just each flung digit, but different parts of each finger, knuckle, palm, as it, seemingly, haphazardly swung over the strings, the body, the neck…of an acoustic guitar playing percussion and rhythm with precision too fast but to see a blur and hear a heavy-metal flamenco orchestra.

An open hand rubbed over strings playing shakers from sandpaper friction of skin on instrument. The instrument did not resemble a shaker. It remained an acoustic guitar all night. Her knuckles played right off the strings and kept playing the guitar body with the same unique, varied beats it had on the strings. Every centimeter of her hand played against it while she simultaneously thumped the bottom end of the guitar’s body to a bass beat—playing percussion with parts of a hand never meant to strike a guitar, on parts of a guitar never meant to be struck. The strings laid back and admired the voice of what they’d only known previously as walls. Gabriela’s hands circled over her guitar capturing sound from its various regions. She tossed it into the air like a Jackson Pollock painting etched in sound. Her hands may have been the largest band I’ve ever seen.

The spotlight moved to Rodrigo Sanchez. Relieved, for a moment, to land upon a scene recognizable: a guitar and pick playing sounds of a guitar. It did not last. It’s an odd thing to see a spotlight sweat. Or perhaps they were tears…raw awe and beauty can do that. Rodrigo’s hand looked still over the strings. A small camera on the guitar told otherwise. A spasmodically plucked pick dismantled the strings beneath that still hand with precise wonder. His fast-paced melodies gave distinct shape and character to the music that could have moved even the most stubborn of hips to sway beneath extremities tossed to dust storms by the culturally rich symphonic flavors.

The duo’s heavy metal background seeped through…like blood seeps through a white cloth. Donning an unfamiliar environment, the heavy textures drove a high-powered rampage of delicate beauty.

Interesting and odd images of 3-dimensional abstract landscapes, projected on a screen behind the duo, twitched and danced to the splattered threads of a sound-driven heart attack. The whole production was simple, beautiful and effective. With a talent of this caliber, no fancy effects were necessary. A spotlight could simply light one prodigy at a time and dance a sharp, Mexican-flavored pulse, back and forth between the two.

Rodrigo spoke to the coziness of the Britt Fest venue, with picnickers on the grass lawn seated right up to the lip of the stage. He stepped into the crowd to play amongst them. Both musicians took a turn to talk to the audience in an intimate musician session’s style. The show at this venue was cancelled last year due to a lightning storm…and thank goodness. A majority of the night’s music was created in the last year and this tour acted as a creative stomping ground to play it out to audiences before recording.

Their exhausted digits took solace in Pink Floyd’s “Echoes.” This, of course, put the spotlight out of business and sent it on a journey of self-discovery, leaving the stage soft lit while they squeezed, rubbed and pulled strings to create sound effects that were, simply put, impossible to produce from acoustic guitars. My head pulled forward. It wanted to dive into that guitar. Which one, did not matter. I had to push my chin back to keep my head from toppling forward…more than once.

Their pummeling momentum swept past a stampede, that watched like tourists, as the duo ripped across a landscape that was both created and devoured by their music. Their feet took flight and tapped in time with one another, until they diverged, playing entirely different sounds from the same basic instruments. Facing one another, driving heavy metal through sweet guitar rhythms, they collaborated in the creation of raw, power…dressed as music.