Last night (Friday), at the Cake Shop in New York City, The Instruments and The New Sound of Numbers played to a relatively small turnout, one of the first gigs on their brief tour through the East Coast. What makes this show extra-special is that it featured a rare appearance by Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum, who duplicated his harmonies on an Instruments track from Billions of Phonographs.

A reader who attended the show writes Optical Atlas, "...there were only two dozen or so people in the room, many of whom were members of Elf Power, Apples, et al.--but a certain Mr. Mangum joined the Instruments on stage at the Cake Shop last night for a single song, toward the end of the set. It was 'When the Stars Shine,' I believe. I snapped a couple of blurry camera pics of the event..."

We'd like to see those pics!

The Instruments and The New Sound of Numbers--the former fronted by Heather McIntosh, the latter by Hannah Jones, both members of Circulatory System--play one more show in New York today, at Brooklyn's Sound Fix. Whether or not Jeff Mangum will make a second rare appearance is up for debate, though not for long. (UPDATE: He did appear and sing at the 4pm show at Sound Fix Records--see the first comment to this post.) You can see a complete list of tour dates here. Thanks to Brian for letting us know!

UPDATE:

Pitchfork published a story on the show today, including pictures, and you can see them here.