AMPLIFY 2011: stones

[jon abbey]

Good grief! Guess that's one set that won't be making it to an ErstLive release

it might if we had filmed it, as a DVD. one of my favorite few sets of the fest, unbelievably entertaining and even more so for those of us who know mr. kirby well, watching him standing on a chair with a broom in a three piece suit, while annette was blasting descriptions of "adult ADD" and a bit of Southern preaching behind him (again, she had no idea even who he was until afterwards).

one other essential detail: after a few minutes of the initial music-less back and forth between annette/taku to begin, radu said very loudly from the back of the audience "STOP TALKING AND PLAY". so they did.

[jon abbey]

when she had run out of things to toss, annette joined the audience and started clapping and stomping her feet excitedly. taku returned with an inflated trashbag, which he dropped onto the drumset. another audience member (cough, cough) threw a piece of annette's dispersed equipment at the guitarist, and taku announced the set was done. this time the whole audience provided the enthusiastic clapping. no stomping than i noticed.

one more detail here, which is that after I threw the (very soft) mallet at kirby (just missed his head by a few inches, still pissed about that), kirby was the one who (re)started the clapping (while still standing on a chair mid-stage) and this time the audience joined him, which they hadn't when annette did it from kirby's seat in the front row a few minutes earlier, and that was the end. I actually don't remember unami saying anything but will defer to mark on that.

[jon abbey]

yuko will put up more today or tomorrow, but two to give you an idea:





(L to R) David Kirby, Cat Lamb, Taku Unami (C. Spencer Yeh in front of him), Annette

[jon abbey]

and some additional reporting from ethan howsthatsound:

After Taku had just finished assembling the "band", he walked around to the back of Annette's table and whispered: "do you know where we are in the set?"
Annette: "No, I don't, (looks around) but it looks like a very important part, so let's keep going, we're not finished yet."
Taku: "Okay" (nods naively)

[mudd]

truth be told it may have been only a gesture, and I think the clapping had already happened.

m

[billygomberg]

well and, as a finale, Annette has a brief dialogue w Mr Kirby, which she concludes by saying "I try to keep the ego down, but it comes back up, and the music goes away."

I mean, too many details to try and recap for that performance.

excellent night.

[leroysghost]

And right after Krebs complimented Kirby on his egoless guitar playing, Unami had the final word (right before the applause) saying "I'm just glad I got such a great recording" (having adjusted the newspaper mikes to Kirby's suggested placement).

[mudd]

and so it ends.

currently exhausted, and traveling tomorrow. will get to the last sets when i can. today will be particularly difficult to write about.

m

[billygomberg]

and so it ends.

currently exhausted, and traveling tomorrow. will get to the last sets when i can. today will be particularly difficult to write about.

m

ha agreed. AMPLIFY really ended on a high, high note with these two nights at IPR, which were beautiful, challenging, and much else in equal measure.

[jon abbey]

Yuko attended all but two sets (the 9/2 shows), and she writes:

===============================

after AMPLIFY 2011: stones

In the first long silent day after the busy 15 days of the AMPLIFY festival, I still hear Radu Malfatti's almost inaudible little click sounds on his trombone mute which he made occasionally in his sets, not just in my memory but in my actual ears as if I were just hearing the sound right in front of me. On the 11th day of AMPLIFY, I thought I found the music finally in the duo set of Radu Malfatti and Michael Pisaro, who were playing Radu's piece 'Claude Lorrain 2'. Radu's click sound was so subtle and quiet, sometimes almost inaudible, but the most powerful and memorable sound I have heard during all of the 15 days. Pisaro's sensitivity certainly helped to deepen the silence surrounding them to bring out Radu's click sound in the purest form. Time felt like it was standing still for a moment when he made the click sound in the middle of the silence - like the profound tranquility spreading after a little stone was thrown in a pond in a Japanese garden. The rough reality in the middle of the noisy, chaotic streets in East Village of New York has disappeared at the moment. Now after most of the active/aggressive sounds performed during the festival have gone, that little click sound still remains true and alive in my ears regardless of the passage of time.

P.S. but I still liked The Dolphin!

--Yuko Zama

[jon abbey]

it seems like anyone who spoke both Japanese and German would have been quite entertained during the Krebs/Sugimoto set that ended last night. Sugimoto told stories for much of it (and played a fair amount of guitar, at the same time and separately), which turned out to be stories about his history with Annette, which goes back something like 15 years now. Annette of course had no idea what Taku was saying, and one of the main texts she used to counter/contribute was someone speaking in bad German about what a great animal the bedbug is (and of course Taku had no idea about this either).

one funny story that Taku told (I got the translation after from Yuko) that made the Japanese speakers in the audience laugh out loud mid-set was that one time in Tokyo when Annette was a vegetarian, she asked Taku for a note to give to the cafe she wanted to eat at saying "please give me anything without meat". of course, because this is the way Annette's life seems to work, she ended up bringing the note to a butcher shop.

[jon abbey]

and of course you didn't need to speak either Japanese or German to enjoy that set anyway, I certainly did.

[leroysghost]

and of course you didn't need to speak either Japanese or German to enjoy that set anyway, I certainly did.

I think that the sight of Taku Unami stifling his laughter (rocking back and forth, face in hands, shaking all over) every time Sugimoto deadpanned some anecdote (he only broke character once, I think it was during the butcher story as well) was just as good if not better then actually being able to understand what he was saying.

[faster]

Great festival, Jon, Yuko, Kirby, everyone else involved.

Revelations: Radu Malfatti, Andrew Lafkas (not at Amplify, but I played with him a bunch & he was my host in Queens), Cat Lamb & Tucker Dulin (at Fotofono w/Radu), Yuko's macarons

Reminded me why I love their music: Toshi Nakamura, Taku Unami, Graham Stephenson, Bonnie Jones, Bryan Eubanks (again at Fotofono)

Food: Chilaquiles for breakfast at Coatzinga in Jackson Heights, cheese shop in Brooklyn, Secret Stills whisky, Gil Arno's cooking

Sad I missed so many sets, but what I heard was great. I hope this means more great NYC music in the future--the city is a good place for this stuff, sirens and crazy ass moms on the street corner notwithstanding. It was really great to see so many people again after some years and meet so many new people. You are all wonderful and I'm lucky to know you all. Except Quam.

[faster]

P.S. but I still liked The Dolphin!

--Yuko Zama

this is shocking

[jon abbey]

she said she heard real dolphins arrive sometime in the middle, and she was very impressed at your collective ability to summon them.

[jon abbey]

Yuko's full set of pix for the festival is here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13715378@N ... 574103700/

465 pix from the 15 nights.

[mudd]

i'm going to give the last night an attempt. as i mentioned before it will be very hard to write about.

saritote is the duo of taku sugimoto and moe kimura. taku came to the festival scruffy and dressed dark with a half beard and a hat not dissimilar to the picture at the top of this page. moe was slight, looking gentle and fragile with maybe a troubadour touch. both had music stands with pages of score and guitars - his on his lap, hers in a case beside her. the started the show with eye contact, taku signaling with a full body not the start of their first piece. after that moment they seemed to work in a private space, acknowledging the audience only briefly, while flipping pages or a moment waiting for movement to die down between pieces. taku scowled a little but it wasn't clear if he was annoyed by audience sounds or just impatient to return to the focus of the music.

i don't know how many people have heard their recorded output, but they were certainly working in the same area. i'm pretty sure there were several of the same pieces, though i believe they played sligthly longer than both cds put together.

the music of saritote is extremely gentle. taku's opposite era is an inescapable signpost - calm gentle tones placed with perfect delicacy and care. moe followed his notes with vocals, one syllable at a time building phrases carefully spaced in silence. a times it seemed almost too careful, though later in the set moe showed a confidence and strength that belied her frail form without overturning the serenity of the songs. at some point she picked up her guitar, first holding it vertical on her knee and playing a single-note accompaniment to taku's careful chords, later harmonizing with chords of her own.

this was their first performance outside of japan, and the room wasn't as quiet as they had been the previous night. none the less the sense of tender intimacy was well preserved.

m

[mudd]

the next performance was the duo of takahiro kawaguchi and taku unami, perpetrators of the 'teatro assente' album recently release on erst. i have every reason to believe this represents a similar modus operandi to the album, and in fact at times it might have sounded similar. sound was, however, only a small fraction of what happened during this set.

the performance began with a ladder.

or maybe the performance began with the musicians crashing and banging in the back corner of the room. hurling boxes and detritus as they collected mic stands, extra chairs, cardboard, and other debris to heap on and around the ladder. the light was low, and kawaguchi placed flashlights to build freakish shadows on the walls. the ladder itself has something taped to its topped that created what might have been a nightmarish grimace on the ceiling. both operated with a firm sense of purpose, marching up the growing pile, firmly placing the pole or plank they had collected in the back, and then marching to the back without any signs of communication between them. unami tied his string to the top of the ladder and abandoned it, so later when he return to retrieve it he had to step over a heap of chairs and a pole without hesitating. with it he strung a line from the ladder to the back of the stage, which he proceeded to hang with garbage bags like laundry.

meanwhile kawaguchi build something of a shelter on the other side with brown paper taped between a broom handle and the wall. he placed a fan and a flashlight beneath it, and when the fan started it rippled through the paper and pulled it from the broom. he had to crawl under the latter to the back side of the heap to reclaim his tape and restore the roof of his shelter, which continued to billow. he hung a trash bag from one of the hanging poles and began to fill it with the clockworks seen in his previous set, cranking them once again with a pair of pliers to set them ticking away.
he tried to put more in taku's laundry, but found the bags hung upside down and instead hung another himself. when he was finished with his clockworks he used his pliers to poke several vicious holes into the brown paper billowing in the fan, spilling shadows across the room. satisfied with his work, he settled behind the ladder sat still.

largely overlapping with kawaguchi's activities, taku unami had wrapped a black cloth hood over his head and set about flicking a lighter and trying to light a candle blind. he eventually succeeded and set the candle at the base of the ladder (kawaguchi stepped over it several times without giving it a moment of attention). he then moved back to the far side of the stage from kawaguchi's activities and busied himself on the floor. he was largely shielded by audience members, but when i stood up (as most people were doing eventually) to see over to that side i saw he had surrounded himself with lit candles and extended tape measures, building a sort of ritual circle on the side. still hooded, he began to cry and whimper to himself. the crying continued, and at some point kawaguchi emerged from under the ladder, shoving various unstable pieces and tossing a box at the ladder. he then stalked off to the back of the stage (again ignoring unami completely) and started yanking on the laundry line as if to pull the whole structure down. unami continued to whimper until suddenly a cheesy cell phone ring sounded. there was an awkward moment where everyone looked around to see who had just interrupted the performance, but then unami pulled the phone from his own pocket, and stage-whispered some sort of promise to finish the set soon into the phone. both then got to work on an amplifier and other electronics that had been sitting largely unnoticed in that far corner of the stage, and soon heavy rhythmic noise was crowding the room. unami and kawaguchi returned to their purposeful march but this time straight through the audience and out of the room.

the noise continued for a few minutes and then kawaguchi returned to turn it off and the thank the audience for their attention.

so there was sound. if my eyes were closed i can only imagine it would have been quite similar to the content of the album, filled with thuds buzzes and clicks. not to mentioning the crying and the noise. but to be honest it was very difficult to process the sound with my attention captured by the rest of the performance.

m

[mudd]

the last set of the 2011 amplify festival was the duo of taku sugimoto and annette krebs. annette sat behind her table of with laptop, mixer, guitar, and accessories, while taku was armed only with his guitar, a handful of papers, and a plastic cup of wine.

it was a set that touched upon several decades of this duos work in more ways than one. taku played some of the sparse, delicate notes he was prone to when they first collaborated, and annette also touched upon drones and buzzes akin to her earlier recordings. she also played sound recordings, at times quite length sections of voice. he mood for the recitations was cheerful, like a man in a bar who knows he has a story his friends will love. he would play for a few minutes, drop into concentrated silence, and then a fraction of a smile and he's start telling a story.

when annette recognized the mode taku was working in, she started to play against it a little. she would fade in her own monologue samples just as he was talking. or she would give his stories a drifting and creepy sound track. even if she couldn't understand anything he was saying she seemed to sense something of the humor of it, and that spurred her to bring her own comic sense to the performance.

i lost count of how many anecdotes taku told. some were clearly funnier than others - unami laughed freely, but only one made kawaguchi break into laughter. the good natured humor of the whole was infectious so even though i understood nothing the set left me smiling. or maybe that's just because the music was excellent too.

jon's mentioned above that the stories were tales of annette from the long friendship and collaboration she has shared with taku. in a sense it was a story about the music too, how many things have changed and how much is still founded on shared senses rather than shared language. it was a very warm closing to a fine set of performances, only a few of which i was able to catch myself.

m