AMPLIFY 2011: stones

[billygomberg]

here's my last thought gathered up:

a couple thoughts on the Amplify nights at IPR, which, as I indicated earlier in this thread, were wonderful, and a fitting close to the previous weeks of concerts. For one, I was particularly exciting for Krebs and Sugimoto, not just in combination, but in there other performances. I think the last time I saw Annette was at least three or four years ago, and Sugimoto hasn't made his way to this part of the world in my time here, moreover, I have thoroughly, thoroughly loved the Saritote material.

Malfatti/Sugimoto was certainly anticipated by myself as "I wonder if they are going to do anything at all," and, by that standard, their duo was quite active (maybe b/c Anne + I were sitting as close to Sugimoto as possible). Yuko's estimation of Radu's taps is spot on...one of the most evocative sounds of this Amplify, used of course with perfect timing and articulation. But once Sugimoto drew the Ebow, I had further cause for concern...the Doremilogy series is really, really not one of my favorites. Thankfully Taku did not approach that territory, rather, beginning with low, exceptionally quiet swells, that, even just feet in front of the amplifier, were not easy to discern from the general hum of the space. As Mr Flaum put it, these notes became present only as they returned to silence. Radu issued his usual lovely tones...static, oscillating and breath tones, generally above the surface, but just. Towards the middle of the performance, Sugimoto's volume crested, his timbre gleaming with a little more brightness, meeting Radu in loosely entwined polyphonies. Could Taku have just turned it up a little? Just a little? Yeah of course, but he didn't. Like many of the performances I caught, it's beauty was matched by a degree of difficulty, a need to truly listen (this goes especially towards the sets with more visual/theatrical elements).

Takahiro Kawaguchi's solo was a real highlight for me - one of a handful of sets that I found really exciting. Possibly because it contained the distinct possibility of a motor whipping something off of Takahiro's table and into my lap (front row at IPR was still, definitely the splash zone). This was a very engrossing performance; the more visual elements giving way to really captivating sound and a good sense of narrative and rupture. Flaum described Kawaguchi's performance pretty accurately - the wave of timer clicks that grew and slowly dissipated, a muscular, thudding motor (requiring two hands to control) casting green laser through the audience, fans starting up and stopping, lights here and there. Both Anne & I enjoyed it thoroughly.

For those of you who love to debate, Krebs and Unami's duo would certainly provide plenty of fodder. They started off in audible discussion about what exactly they were going to do, had they begun, etc, shot through with broken English. Radu made the first audience contribution with "Stop talking and play already!" Following Kawaguchi's solo, I at least went in with a sense of adventure, and it's a good thing that others clearly did as well. Kreb's suttering electroacoustic interruptions were riveting, but Unami did his best to distract...and once Unami got the audience involved it became very difficult to comprehend the entirety of what was proceeded, much less where it was going. I'm not big on audience participation, I think it rarely works in a way that is enjoyable, much less contribute to the character of the performance. Here, I think it worked out, mostly bc I think Krebs and Unami framed it well, with a lack of self-seriousness which easily dooms such ventures, a sense of giving in to this thing they had made. Yeah, it was silly, especially with an ad-hoc "band" "performing" on "instruments" which Unami scavenged from the recesses of IPR's space. Whatever, I found it exciting and entertaining.

Opening the second night was Taku Sugimoto and Moe Kamura's Saritote duo, whose two epic 11 or 12 minute CDs are some of my favorites, and this performance was really a highlight. The way each song, filled with silence, led so easily into the next created a beautiful arc. In particular, an interpretation of Erik Satie's "Vexations" just had me smiling - Sugimoto led with the first phrase (as scored by Satie), after a silence, Moe sang a verse along the melody, Sugimoto responded with the same phrase from "Vexations," this time modified with a beautiful series of chord voicings. This repeated once (with a new set of voicings from Sugimoto on the second phrase). By my count, that leave 995 more repetitions. This was really a magnificent set, and if you've heard the recordings, you've got at least an inkling of what you missed.

But quickly back to the splash zone for Unami and Kawaguchi. I didn't really expect them to shed much light on their recent Erst disc "Teatro Assente" (which, as I discussed with Jon on I think the first night of Amplify, and also evidenced on IHM, is nearly impossible to describe), and well, they didn't. Setting about their business well before the performance had been given the starting shot, the full array of IPR's miscellany came into play, along with Unami's now signature boxes (looking well worn), string and tape measures, Kawaguchi's timers and lights, then some candles, paper, who knows. I couldn't hope to capture every action, much less listen as a piece of music. While the temporal nearness to the Krebs/Unami duo begs comparison, I found these to be rather different performances, this one only addressing the audience in the performer's workmanlike movements occasionally brushing by, or just being outright in the way. There was a palpable awkwardness to their performance, their work setting up points of weakness or obstacles, full of immediacy.

Lastly we got the duo of Taku Sugimoto and Annette Krebs. I really had not the faintest idea of what to expect here, and was pleasantly surprised by the contrasts and angles, the consistent use of spoken word from Annette's desk and Taku's mic, differing lovely interjections from their guitars, electroacoustic noises and silence. Sugimoto's casual, offhand delivery gave me clues to the content of his speech (which others have detailed - basically small stories from his relationship and collaborations with Annette), and the whole thing put a nice signature on the very pleasant attitude surrounding this entire concert series - a casualness of exchange, a real openness in a space that could easily be too many serious dudes looking serious at desks of serious looking gear making serious sounding music. Obviously, if I could parse spoken Japanese or German, this duo did drop some real humor, but I wouldn't say the set was "funny." This is the kind of performance that doesn't seek to be ensconced in the language of history, rather it is of the moment, particular to Taku and Annette's long collaborative story and the mood of the series like this, where, especially by this last night, many of us between audience and musicians are quite chummy. The performances at IPR certainly showed a diverse group of musicians willing to push around an orthodoxy that they themselves had built, that what is most important is the exchange with each other, and their audience.

[leroysghost]

There was a palpable awkwardness to their performance, their work setting up points of weakness or obstacles, full of immediacy.

This was an important part of the set for me. Of all of Unami's six sets this was by far the most like performance art (no surprise if you've heard Teatro) but the connections to music was still very present and in fact the crux of the performance (as it was for the Krebs/Unami the previous night, though not at all for the stuff Mattin/Chamy do these days). It was very much to performance art what Hose is to easy listening, while the style in this case was quite close to performance art the structure was very much a typical improvised meeting (an irony hopefully not lost on anyone at this point despite upthread notions to the contrary...). Starting out with furious nonstop interplay, trying to lay down the groundwork (complete with haphazard construction, mistakes and even stepping on each others toes) before each player moved off and did his own thing (including ignoring the other player, doing purposefully incongruous things and even considering tearing down the whole construction) until coming together again in a dramatic static climax until someone finally decides to end it (I wonder how frequent an urge it is to stomp over and turn off the other players equipment like Kawaguchi did to end this set, interestingly the same way he ended his own solo the previous night).

A choice moment was when Unami's awkward ladder climb dislodged Kawaguchi's dangerously heaped pile of chairs and stands he had placed pracariously on the rungs of said ladder. As it all came crashing down, the largest of the stands nearly hit Flaum between the eyes but surprisingly the whole business somehow caught on a lower rung of the ladder and the structure remained intact, except now Kawaguchi had to dodge this large metal pole every time he went back and forth between his gear and the structure (a task he perfromed admirably given the lack of light in the room, that is until the one time near the end when he went around the opposite side of the ladder and smacked right into the other end of the stand).

[leroysghost]

I realise that criticising an AMPLIFY festival on IHM is like wandering into a British Legion VE-Day anniversary dinner and peeing on a portrait of Winston Churchill, but I've never really been a fan of performance arty stuff though, simple as that. Again, I think the new disc sounds great though. I just hope noone ever tells me how it was done.

it's actually more like Edwin Prévost writing something bitchy without having any idea what he is talking about and causeing a bizarre and pointless fracus that people gave just enough of a shit about to argue painfully over for eternity, but tomato tomäto

As far as the influence of film goes I'd say that it's the reverse that's closer to the truth. Kurosawa's strong suit is his sense of atmosphere. Space, sound, light and shadow are what you focus on because filmicly (and particularly thematically) he is spotty at best. So the fact that Kurosawa likes how cardboard boxes sound is much more key than how Unami crying in a circle of candles and tape measures is a vaguely J-horror-esque image. Sure so he uses boxes cause of Kurosawa, but that's not even a reference we would know without asking him personally.

What we do know in the context of his performances during Amplify:
Dawn Of The Dead poster tee in neon green stencil (http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/stylinonline_2177_688525225)
Deathspell Omega Paracletus Sigil design tee (http://www.van-records.de/images/produc ... 1340_0.jpg)
Irregular Rhythm Asylum tee (a perfect name for Unami's brand of music but also a alt-zine hangout in Tokyo)
Thomas Ligotti Grimscribe paperback [despite the kvlt geek humor inherent in both, the major theme for Ligotti and Deathspell Omega is the pointlessness of art in the face of the ultimate horror of life (death), and coming to grips by making art in service of that horror (exaltation for Deathspell Omega, almost Beckett-ish matter of factness for Ligotti). Ligotti has a later story where he refers to life as a grotesque theatre, but to Unami's sensibilities it is perhaps just an absent one]

So there is a very absurd, humorous, beautiful, silly, depressing, whimsical, complex, nerdy, campy context that fits what Unami does just as well as anything the audience's individual experiences can. For me there was very little Fluxus in the performances I saw. It may be my limited knowledge of Fluxus, but it always seems to me that they were more about effecting the audiences lives regardless of the success of the piece as a piece (Milan Knížák needed Walter Marchetti to turn his Broken Music into actual music after all, Milan has just been using them as objects to be looked at and listened to like regular records, affecting him by sticking in a groove for days or wreaking his turntable. He didn't compose music with them, he looked at them as already complete objects that were ready to effect his life).

My immediate film/art reference after Unami solo, Unami/Rowe and Unami/Malfatti was Rivers And Tides. The rest was Unami's sense of humor that I was already familiar with from his records, and a little bit of Beuys thrown in when he was crawling on the floor with a jawbone covered in cloth (but Beuys has that narrow area of experience so well covered it's hardly worth mentioning, anytime movement, cloth and animal parts are involved Beuys will come to mind regardless of context). These are just my points of reference however, trying to and nail down something as notoriously inscrutable as music (pretty much the opening or concluding line of every music revew ever), or worse, to denigrate it from afar because time is linear makes no sense.

But in that same vein did anyone else notice how similar in attitude and personality Radu Malfatti was to Werner Herzog? If you want to have a compare and contrast conversation i think we'd all get a lot farther with that one.

[surfer]

My immediate film/art reference after Unami solo, Unami/Rowe and Unami/Malfatti was Rivers And Tides.

Really?!?

Can you expand on this a little?

[leroysghost]

The whole concept of building, collapse, rebuilding, collapse, building again to attain something beautiful that will eventually be destroyed. The nature connection isn't there but creating for the space with the limited materials around you certainly is, and finished product in all three cases was sculpturally gorgeous.

[surfer]

Process, temporality, ephemerality. right. Interesting connection, one I wouldnt have thought of.

[jon abbey]

great post, jake, but...

But in that same vein did anyone else notice how similar in attitude and personality Radu Malfatti was to Werner Herzog? If you want to have a compare and contrast conversation i think we'd all get a lot farther with that one.

I don't really see this one myself too much, besides being of very similar ages and both of Germanic heritage, want to elaborate?

Michael Haneke and Bela Tarr and maybe Fassbinder if he was alive are the guys who for me connect more to the European part of this music, Haneke in interviews reminds me of Keith sometimes. Radu is tougher, I might go with Tarr if I had to choose.

[leroysghost]

I was mainly joking, but they are both perceived as being cold, severe and over serious in taking things to extremes when in fact they are warm and goofy with a high sense of play (both in terms of playfulness and athleticism, as well as intuition/improvisation). That "Stop talking and play" interjection seemed very fitting of both men, in intonation and intent.

[faster]

Those things are all definitely true. I really loved seeing Radu bond with Andrew Lafkas at fotofono--similar dudes in many ways, with really wonderful serious/goofy ratios.

[free math]

Tuesday 9/6: My first time going to the Stone was for my performance in the Three Duos sets with Dave Barnes and Richard Kamerman, and I got there a bit early. Taku Unami had just pulled up in a black cab, getting out with a small suitcase and an armful of cardboard boxes. We briefly met and chatted, and I went off to get a piece of pizza with Joe Foster, leaving Taku standing in the rain with a pile of cardboard boxes, and no awning. We ran into David Kirby and had a whiskey at the downstairs bar around the corner. The Three Duos sets happened and were what they were. I thought they went pretty well.

Taku Unami's solo set was maybe the best possible thing to come after my having performed. I was a bit tense from just having concentrated on trying to make good music, with some exertion, and now the evening's main act was a man building a child's play fortress. I didn't know exactly what was going to happen; I pictured his participation on the Krebs/Unami disc to be something like hoisting cardboard boxes from pulleys and dropping them on the floor. Others have described the actions in his set. Very, very casually and gradually he began his efforts: opening up and erecting the boxes, precariously dangling tape measures, futzing with the fan. Every step of the way was obviously, visually/apparently, fraught with the risk of failure, and indeed Taku met setbacks at each step. When he retired to the back of the room, it felt like he was really just taking the time to appreciate what he had built: a rickety moving contraption, lit askew by probably a three-dollar clip-light from the office store. The lights moving around on the fan (which was just there in the venue) seemed to be crucial to the entire thing, seemingly more important to Taku than any incidental sounds made by the use of the materials. The sounds, incidental as they were, weren't really to be appraised on their own, to my thinking, but the sound of being in the room with the performance was interesting enough, and not able to be divorced from the setting and vibe in the room and the fact that we're here to see a performance, by a musician whose recordings we like. The audience participation bit (pulling the thing down) was fun and served to, if possible, release any hot air that the performance may have retained.

During the performance, all sorts of ways of interpreting the set occurred to me, but I don't think any were being suggested. There was an almost obvious parallel to make of the building process with the making of improvised music: the risk of failure and acceptance thereof, the somewhat ridiculous inconsequentialness of that failure, the starting with close to nothing, the use of utterly basic materials, found or adopted and re-contextualized. Maybe more than anything, though, Taku's performance was fun, funny, humble and good-humored, very welcome aspects in any setting.

[leroysghost]

a man building a child's play fortress...fun, funny, humble and good-humored

yeah my immediate, post concert appreciation on the street corner outside the Stone was "Andy Goldsworthy: age five". It nails the atmosphere perfectly but belies how accomplished Unami's structures were.

[free math]

I don't know if I'd go quite so far as "accomplished," and that's not to take away anything from the performance. To me it was rather the seriousness presumedly inherent to the context that made the (OK, probably pretty minor, in the grand scheme of things) elements of humor so much more ripe. One of my first thoughts was that the set enabled a broad range of jokes to be made in conversation afterward between members of the audience.

[Keith Rowe]

Hello
a contribution from someone who was there for some of the time, (stone)
At the risk of evoking a response similar to the one the Linguistic Soc. of Paris (1866)
where discussions about the definitions of words and usage gave rise to their observation that contributions were deemed as “ Dogmatic bickering and Vapid speculation”
I would be extremely careful of any pronouncement one way or another.
There is in a sense a “festival effect” or possibly a “grouping effect” this might be
compared to a distorting mirror effect on events, a certain lack of objectivity, the lack of a measured view,
As to the recent Amplify 2011, my natural perspective would be to say one might be
impressed at how a person deals with events, but not so impressed with what they actually do, like a student who might impress while carrying out something with the larky ingenuity of a clever undergraduate staging,
Of course its only human to inflate our efforts as seen in the context of the festival
distorting mirror, and think we are at the epicentre of all, in fact of course all that we do is doomed for the dustbin of history.
Amplify will hide as much as it reveals, the political and the aesthetic torn halves of a totality, that does not necessarily add up before the court of judgement.
a constant struggle between technique over content, and effect over evidence.
hope that’s not too negative
best
Keith

[jon abbey]

FWIW, Keith was there for quite a bit of the Stone part of the fest, I believe he saw every set between the 2nd and the 11th, so 12 shows that didn't involve him.

as for the above post, I don't quite get the usefulness of it (for anyone but Keith?). I had a similar discussion with Keith in person at some point during the fest, but I guess I think that 1) no one really knows what will hold up in the future and for how long and 2) one can say what he is saying about anything, so why even bother talking about any current art?

I guess my question back to Keith would be "if you feel like that, why do you continue to work?". or maybe he doesn't include his own work in the above statements?

[Tanner]

One thing I take from all of this stellar reportage (thanks dudes) is that Taku Unami likes both Deathspell Omega and Dawn of The Dead. And that makes me oddly happy.

[jon abbey]

One thing I take from all of this stellar reportage (thanks dudes) is that Taku Unami likes both Deathspell Omega and Dawn of The Dead. And that makes me oddly happy.

he promised me a list of black metal bands he's into, I will bug him for that soon.

[Herb Levy]

FWIW, Keith was there for quite a bit of the Stone part of the fest, I believe he saw every set between the 2nd and the 11th, so 12 shows that didn't involve him.

as for the above post, I don't quite get the usefulness of it (for anyone but Keith?). I had a similar discussion with Keith in person at some point during the fest, but I guess I think that 1) no one really knows what will hold up in the future and for how long and 2) one can say what he is saying about anything, so why even bother talking about any current art?

I guess my question back to Keith would be "if you feel like that, why do you continue to work?". or maybe he doesn't include his own work in the above statements?

I don't suppose to answer for Keith Rowe, but I know a lot of artists who respond similarly when they talk about work by other artists.

It never seems to have much to do with their own commitment to making work, just how they want to talk about (or avoid talking about) work by other artists.

[jon abbey]

I exchanged a few mails with him since those posts, he was also referring to his own contributions.

[Damon_Smith]

One thing I take from all of this stellar reportage (thanks dudes) is that Taku Unami likes both Deathspell Omega and Dawn of The Dead. And that makes me oddly happy.

he promised me a list of black metal bands he's into, I will bug him for that soon.

I am the only one getting weary of this? It seems to be a matter of course these days. Of course, I work a lot with Weasel Walter, who, along with Kevin Drumm (actually, insipiered by KD) was one of the earliest to cite black metal as an inlfunce for improv.
I guess I am just tired of every other "Brooklyn based" "band" citing Black Metal and Gregorian chant as sources. Both have some good informaiton but neither are as naughty or radical as people seem to want them to be. End of grumpy rant.

[Dan Warburton]

discussions about the definitions of words and usage gave rise to their observation that contributions were deemed as “ Dogmatic bickering and Vapid speculation”

That more or less sums up most of my posts here, for a start.

one might be impressed at how a person deals with events, but not so impressed with what they actually do, like a student who might impress while carrying out something with the larky ingenuity of a clever undergraduate staging

The use of "one" is particularly telling there.. I love Keith writes his posts here as he plays his instrument, leaving plenty of room for manoeuvre / interpretation on the part of both the performer and the reader / listener..

of course all that we do is doomed for the dustbin of history.

Eh oui, but we can still keep struggling along, posting our thoughts and reviews in little corners of the web until someone comes and brushes them away one day..

Amplify will hide as much as it reveals, the political and the aesthetic torn halves of a totality, that does not necessarily add up before the court of judgement.

So who's presiding over this court, I wonder? That old line about "standing the test of time" always makes me rather uneasy.. in music history (art history, maybe all history), there's always been a good deal of serendipity / luck involved in the way certain pieces / composers /events have become "classics" "established masterpieces", "essential works of the canon" (insert cliché of your choice), not to mention extra-musical considerations (Gesualdo the murderer, Mahler's dodgy heartbeat, Penderecki's opportunist choice of a flashy title for his Threnody for 52 Strings, and of course, the clinching factor of an untimely early death.. Hendrix, Curtis, Cobain, countless others). So I'd like to know who's sitting in judgement.. The Wire magazine? The Professsor of Music at XXXX University (heaven help us)? The BBC? Classic FM? John Peel? Jon Abbey?

a constant struggle between technique over content, and effect over evidence

If I was given to swiping quotes as IHM signatures, as are several posters here, I couldn't imagine a better one.