The no idea festival this year was (still is as I’m starting this, actually) a week-long festival featuring a core of 10 artist/musicians from around the country and the world, beginning with several days of workshops and preparation followed by 5 nights of music. Chris Cogburn organized the event with input from various other parties including some of them musicians and I guess other community people like myself. The workshops and first three nights of music took place in Austin, followed by a daytime show and a night performance in Houston and a night in San Antonio. I attended the last night in Austin and both shows in Houston.
I can’t really say this formally, but I feel that a theme of this festival was the working groups from the recent history of No Idea and beyond. The core musicians consisted of several interlaced groups that had toured and recorded previously, including some collaborations that extend back a decade or more. Because of this theme and because I wasn’t actually able to see all the performances, I’m gonna populate this review with a little more ensemble history than I would usually. Also, I’m going to capitalize – blame MS word’s autocorrect, it’s no fault of my own.
Let me start by talking a little about what I didn’t see. I didn’t make it to any of the workshops, including the more formally themed ‘Individual Artistic Practice as Curatorial Conversation’. If anyone would like to post a little about what this was or how it progressed, I’d be very interested. I also was not able to attend the evening performance of a commissioned piece by Nick Hennies that featured some the core musicians I haven’t listed yet along with several Austinites. I didn’t make it to the second night in Austin either, or the closing night in San Antonio.
Missing the second night in Austin also cost me the single performance from Rick Reed in the festival, a rematch of a duo set from last year’s festival with Bryan Eubanks. Another unique gathering I did not was the reunion of the arena ladridos trio, propagators of an album on another timbre, recorded on a tour of Texas and Mexico I didn’t catch back in the 2010 no idea festival. There was a Jason Lescalleet solo performance, the contrasting moment of that particular night I suppose – there was one each night. The third and final ensemble was new as far as I am aware, though Greg Kelley, Vic Rawlings and Andrea Neumann all took part in Boston Sound Collective performances a decade or so back. Yeah, I’ve just read Manual and really got a lot from it, was very particularly nice to see so many BSC players coming through town soon after going through the book.
So yeah, the players - I’ve mentioned most of them already but let me run through the list. Bhob Rainey and Greg Kelley are of course nmperign, and in their two performances together in the festival they were joined by longtime opponent/collaborator Jason Lescalleet. This trio has released two full-length albums and a few other collaborative tracks dating back to I don’t even know how far. I may not know all the details but I believe this was the senior grouping of the festival. Bonnie Jones and Andrea Neumann have been performing in a duo and collaborating in musical and extra-musical projects for a number of years by now, though I don’t really have any clear idea what the number is. They have a duo album that’s been keeping my curiosity slaked on the ‘coming soon from Erstwhile’ list for a while now, and last time Bonnie performed in Houston she brought a vocal project including recordings of Andrea’s voice. The trio of Vic Rawlings, Bryan Eubanks, and festival organizer Chris Cogburn performed twice at the no idea festival 2011 and I believe they did a bit of touring as well. The last two participant, Maggie Bennett and Gill Arno, sat outside the theme as if in commentary, both were also distinct in working with other media, Bennett a dancer and Arno working at the intersection of audio and visual performance.
If you’re wondering why I wrote so much before even starting to talk about music, it’s because I’m kind of annoying. Also, because it’s a struggle to put all the music in some sort of describable order in my head. 9 sets in two days was a lot, and it was still the small half of the event. But I’ll try.
m
no idea festival 2012. nights 3 and 4.
Re: no idea festival 2012. nights 3 and 4.
The Austin nights of the festival took place in a warehouse converted into a punk rock venue called the Broken Neck. Apparently they’ve got a bit of a reputation for rabble rousing, and there was some banging about earlier in the festival but when I was there it was actually quite serene. Big, open room with lots of space for the musicians, maybe 50 seats, and lots of space to stand around too. Some sound-proofing hanging from the ceiling to cut down on reverberation I guess. Some spotlights that seemed to take a lot of arranging and changed colors now and then but otherwise the lighting wasn’t too elaborate and it wasn’t dark.
The first set I saw was Bonnie and Andrea. Bonnie has been through these parts a few times and I’ve grown fairly familiar with her table of circuit bendings, electronics, and other objects. I hadn’t seen Andrea perform in a while so her elaborate innenklavier arrangement was fresh and exciting to me. This set was fairly active, with Bonnie’s very textural sounds moving from contrast to color as Andrea shifted from his and hum to her own textures and rhythms. Bonnie also used some bells and objects, and eventually provided some continuous sounds of her own, mostly from a radio but also I think from an MP3 player? The two of them have a very comfortable stage presence, aware of each other’s sound and action without seeming needing to pay close attention.
After that set was Maggie Bennett’s sole and solo performance of the main festival. She started by hanging long sheets of brown paper of a clip hanging from the wall, something of a lava flow of paper spilling out across the area of floor set aside for the stage. She then proceeded to slowly, carefully, and under complete control, roll herself into those papers, stomp and stumble through them, bend and fold under and between. In addition to providing something of a physical foil, the papers gave a blustery, crinkling sonic aspect to her dance. It was quite musical in a way, measured by steps and shifts.
The third set of the night was the mighty trio of nmperign with Jason Lescalleet. Greg and Bhob sat in adjacent chairs armed with their traditional instruments and accessories (though I think Bhob has been bringing less and less to the set over the years, without really depleting the performance at all). Jason had something of a reduced setup, with four hand-held tape recorders and one portable reel player. As the winds began a series of small, studied explorations, he set about placing the hand-helds around the stage (one per each collaborator, one moving around a lot, one off to the side) and started a loop playing slowly in between the other two. As the set progressed he would switch the portables from record to play, answering back the other two with echoes of themselves to interact with or run away from. Eventually he cut the loop and replaced it with a longer piece, turned on the microphone and let the layers of recorded sound gradually build. In description it starts to sound a little like the Jason Lescalleet show with nmperign, but the intensity of their performance saved the set from being comical or awkward, even as Jason strode carefully around the stage in socked feet adjusting and rearranging all sorts of sounds. Jason had more tools and tricks on his back table as well, which he used to make thicker and heavier sounds at some points but I didn’t keep careful track of when. The overall sound of the set was thick and raspy, with a tininess that might have been hard to listen to at length but worked really well as a gradually growing haze of it.
The final set in Austin was Lucre, the trio of Vic, Bryan, and Chris. Despite the cello and drums on the stage, this set was very much an electronics trio. Eubanks most obviously so, with his table of synths and variety of blips, washes and and crackle. Chris still uses the Meehan-esque cymbal and dowel, but the core of his performance is now drones played into the resonant cavity of the drum that he then manipulates with objects or striking the drum. And Vic of course has his wide array of bend and modified electronics, and his cello looks like it tried out for the mad max string quartet, all dressed in spikes and metal. Their performance tends towards building droning layers and then covering those surfaces with events, sometimes delicate and careful, sometimes gasping and rushed, and sometimes thick and disruptive. Sometimes the drones line up and hum together, sometimes they shrivel to a whisper that seems like an ending but then rises again into other layers and sounds. It’s hard to keep track of time and order with this sort of activity, the music has the sort of time displacement effect that Keith Rowe and AMM are famous for. A particular favorite aspect was a moment when Chris maintained a drone with his dowel and cymbal while pulling his hand away at free moments to upset some of the glass objects resonating on his other drum, letting him create two delicate drones together, as Bryan hissed and buzzed gently and Vic gradually moved from a drone of his own to loud, erratic blats of noise.
That covers the music I saw in Austin on Saturday. I will work on the Houston sets now and tomorrow, hopefully to post them soon.
m
The first set I saw was Bonnie and Andrea. Bonnie has been through these parts a few times and I’ve grown fairly familiar with her table of circuit bendings, electronics, and other objects. I hadn’t seen Andrea perform in a while so her elaborate innenklavier arrangement was fresh and exciting to me. This set was fairly active, with Bonnie’s very textural sounds moving from contrast to color as Andrea shifted from his and hum to her own textures and rhythms. Bonnie also used some bells and objects, and eventually provided some continuous sounds of her own, mostly from a radio but also I think from an MP3 player? The two of them have a very comfortable stage presence, aware of each other’s sound and action without seeming needing to pay close attention.
After that set was Maggie Bennett’s sole and solo performance of the main festival. She started by hanging long sheets of brown paper of a clip hanging from the wall, something of a lava flow of paper spilling out across the area of floor set aside for the stage. She then proceeded to slowly, carefully, and under complete control, roll herself into those papers, stomp and stumble through them, bend and fold under and between. In addition to providing something of a physical foil, the papers gave a blustery, crinkling sonic aspect to her dance. It was quite musical in a way, measured by steps and shifts.
The third set of the night was the mighty trio of nmperign with Jason Lescalleet. Greg and Bhob sat in adjacent chairs armed with their traditional instruments and accessories (though I think Bhob has been bringing less and less to the set over the years, without really depleting the performance at all). Jason had something of a reduced setup, with four hand-held tape recorders and one portable reel player. As the winds began a series of small, studied explorations, he set about placing the hand-helds around the stage (one per each collaborator, one moving around a lot, one off to the side) and started a loop playing slowly in between the other two. As the set progressed he would switch the portables from record to play, answering back the other two with echoes of themselves to interact with or run away from. Eventually he cut the loop and replaced it with a longer piece, turned on the microphone and let the layers of recorded sound gradually build. In description it starts to sound a little like the Jason Lescalleet show with nmperign, but the intensity of their performance saved the set from being comical or awkward, even as Jason strode carefully around the stage in socked feet adjusting and rearranging all sorts of sounds. Jason had more tools and tricks on his back table as well, which he used to make thicker and heavier sounds at some points but I didn’t keep careful track of when. The overall sound of the set was thick and raspy, with a tininess that might have been hard to listen to at length but worked really well as a gradually growing haze of it.
The final set in Austin was Lucre, the trio of Vic, Bryan, and Chris. Despite the cello and drums on the stage, this set was very much an electronics trio. Eubanks most obviously so, with his table of synths and variety of blips, washes and and crackle. Chris still uses the Meehan-esque cymbal and dowel, but the core of his performance is now drones played into the resonant cavity of the drum that he then manipulates with objects or striking the drum. And Vic of course has his wide array of bend and modified electronics, and his cello looks like it tried out for the mad max string quartet, all dressed in spikes and metal. Their performance tends towards building droning layers and then covering those surfaces with events, sometimes delicate and careful, sometimes gasping and rushed, and sometimes thick and disruptive. Sometimes the drones line up and hum together, sometimes they shrivel to a whisper that seems like an ending but then rises again into other layers and sounds. It’s hard to keep track of time and order with this sort of activity, the music has the sort of time displacement effect that Keith Rowe and AMM are famous for. A particular favorite aspect was a moment when Chris maintained a drone with his dowel and cymbal while pulling his hand away at free moments to upset some of the glass objects resonating on his other drum, letting him create two delicate drones together, as Bryan hissed and buzzed gently and Vic gradually moved from a drone of his own to loud, erratic blats of noise.
That covers the music I saw in Austin on Saturday. I will work on the Houston sets now and tomorrow, hopefully to post them soon.
m
Re: no idea festival 2012. nights 3 and 4.
The second day of the festival I attended began in Art Palace, a small well-lit gallery in midtown Houston. Right by the solitary line of the H-town light rail, but otherwise the area was quiet and sparely populated.
The first set of the night was maybe a first-time duo, Greg Kelley and Brian Eubanks. Bryan took up half a table with his synthesizers, and Greg sad beside him with just trumpet, mute, and sheets of metal. The music was mostly gentle, with Bryan moving between washes of noise, pure tones, and occasional bubbles of noise while Greg explored small delicate drones, washes, and hums of his own. The passage of a train melded so cleanly with the music I didn’t realize what the source of the sound was until the second set.
The second set was a second helping of the Jones/Neumann duo. It’s difficult to describe what was different about this set, but there was something more decisive this time, a certain sense of certainty. The sounds were similar – noises, textures, the occasional clean tones, layered over each other tightly and comfortably. There was one more evident difference – at two moments and maybe with Andrea leading, the two broke into simultaneous narrative, describing first the lives of their grandmothers and then of their grandfathers. The stores didn’t take a particularly central role in the sound, more of a layer among several, but there was a tenderness to it, something patient about choosing the words while choosing the sounds, that made the stories suddenly essential to the performance. I missed a chance to ask how exactly the telling was planned, but it was beautiful to witness and also brought close connection to Bonnie’s work with oral histories and voice that I mentioned previously. This was probably among my two favorite sets of the festival.
m
The first set of the night was maybe a first-time duo, Greg Kelley and Brian Eubanks. Bryan took up half a table with his synthesizers, and Greg sad beside him with just trumpet, mute, and sheets of metal. The music was mostly gentle, with Bryan moving between washes of noise, pure tones, and occasional bubbles of noise while Greg explored small delicate drones, washes, and hums of his own. The passage of a train melded so cleanly with the music I didn’t realize what the source of the sound was until the second set.
The second set was a second helping of the Jones/Neumann duo. It’s difficult to describe what was different about this set, but there was something more decisive this time, a certain sense of certainty. The sounds were similar – noises, textures, the occasional clean tones, layered over each other tightly and comfortably. There was one more evident difference – at two moments and maybe with Andrea leading, the two broke into simultaneous narrative, describing first the lives of their grandmothers and then of their grandfathers. The stores didn’t take a particularly central role in the sound, more of a layer among several, but there was a tenderness to it, something patient about choosing the words while choosing the sounds, that made the stories suddenly essential to the performance. I missed a chance to ask how exactly the telling was planned, but it was beautiful to witness and also brought close connection to Bonnie’s work with oral histories and voice that I mentioned previously. This was probably among my two favorite sets of the festival.
m
Re: no idea festival 2012. nights 3 and 4.
After that, the music moved to 14 Pews, a former church converted to a theater that now also welcomes musical performance. The pews in the name are for real – padded, fortunately, but the seating is 14 church pews pushed out of alignment this particular night to make space for a large table in the center.
That large table was the workspace of Gill Arno, two slide projectors and an amplified tabletop. His set began in the dark, with small activities on the table made loud and abstract, some layers looping and some not. Soon the slide projects came on, presenting layers of flickering images slowly melding from one to another. Pastoral scenes, cityscapes, and cloudscapes, drifted across consonances in shapes with a flicker that was also present in the sound. Like Maggie Bennett on the previous night, Gill augmented the sound more sensory information, though in this case it was images and light rather than movement and body.
The second evening set was another first-time trio, made up a little like a piano quartet – Andrea as the pianist, Chris on drums, Bhob playing reeds and Vic providing bass (or at least cello.) Ok, so it didn’t sound anything like a standard jazz quartet, but I think the symbolic similarity provided an interesting thought exercise about roles and activities in improvisation. Chris’s drums, for example, were almost never rhythmic, though Andrea and Vic both explored rhythms at times. Bhob mostly kept his sound among the drones and whispers, but once or twice let his sax broadcast its most familiar tones. Vic certainly plumbed the lowest tones now and again, lower than most basses will ever reach. And there was at least one moment where Andrea with her mallets found something that might have been a melody. I think the first half of this set provided as many beautiful moments as any other set of the festival. The second half seemed to also follow the jazz tradition and morphed into a series of solos, but there was awkwardness to it that I found a little distracted, like every lone musician had just missed the ending everyone else arrived at. That might have been my own bias, however, as I have a special affection for a perfect ending.
The last set of the Houston portion of the no idea festival was a different beast entirely. Jason Lescalleet didn’t have his big reel to real set-up, certainly not the paired monsters he used when he came to town with nmperign last spring. He mentioned early in the weekend that he had enough gear to make music with or without borrowed equipment, and indeed he had plenty to sound with. It wasn’t terribly easy to see what he had going on at his table. I saw the same four handheld tape recorders, the small reel player, and a big mixer. He had a couple of keyboards that he later went after with tape. He also dragged a large podium onto the stage and set up his laptop on it. He dragged a microphone over to the back door, and started his set off with amplified road sounds that gradually lost their clarity in a thickening soup of rumble and crush. The sound grew into a hefty noise wall, though not blasted enough to resonate messily and wash out details. I don’t know for sure if the room was shaking, but I certainly was. As he brought the sounds back to earth and eventually to silence, my entire body was ringing a little bit. But fortunately my ears were not.
The next night the show moved to San Antonio, and I can only imagine more excellent music was made. I believe all the sets there overlapped with what I had seen, but with this group of musicians that’s not really a guarantee that anything would be the same. I want to thank Chris for making this whole thing happen, and all of the musicians for providing really amazing performances and also for being really friendly and accessible while they were passing though. I hope the No Idea traditions carry on and some of these artists come back to visit again in a year.
m
That large table was the workspace of Gill Arno, two slide projectors and an amplified tabletop. His set began in the dark, with small activities on the table made loud and abstract, some layers looping and some not. Soon the slide projects came on, presenting layers of flickering images slowly melding from one to another. Pastoral scenes, cityscapes, and cloudscapes, drifted across consonances in shapes with a flicker that was also present in the sound. Like Maggie Bennett on the previous night, Gill augmented the sound more sensory information, though in this case it was images and light rather than movement and body.
The second evening set was another first-time trio, made up a little like a piano quartet – Andrea as the pianist, Chris on drums, Bhob playing reeds and Vic providing bass (or at least cello.) Ok, so it didn’t sound anything like a standard jazz quartet, but I think the symbolic similarity provided an interesting thought exercise about roles and activities in improvisation. Chris’s drums, for example, were almost never rhythmic, though Andrea and Vic both explored rhythms at times. Bhob mostly kept his sound among the drones and whispers, but once or twice let his sax broadcast its most familiar tones. Vic certainly plumbed the lowest tones now and again, lower than most basses will ever reach. And there was at least one moment where Andrea with her mallets found something that might have been a melody. I think the first half of this set provided as many beautiful moments as any other set of the festival. The second half seemed to also follow the jazz tradition and morphed into a series of solos, but there was awkwardness to it that I found a little distracted, like every lone musician had just missed the ending everyone else arrived at. That might have been my own bias, however, as I have a special affection for a perfect ending.
The last set of the Houston portion of the no idea festival was a different beast entirely. Jason Lescalleet didn’t have his big reel to real set-up, certainly not the paired monsters he used when he came to town with nmperign last spring. He mentioned early in the weekend that he had enough gear to make music with or without borrowed equipment, and indeed he had plenty to sound with. It wasn’t terribly easy to see what he had going on at his table. I saw the same four handheld tape recorders, the small reel player, and a big mixer. He had a couple of keyboards that he later went after with tape. He also dragged a large podium onto the stage and set up his laptop on it. He dragged a microphone over to the back door, and started his set off with amplified road sounds that gradually lost their clarity in a thickening soup of rumble and crush. The sound grew into a hefty noise wall, though not blasted enough to resonate messily and wash out details. I don’t know for sure if the room was shaking, but I certainly was. As he brought the sounds back to earth and eventually to silence, my entire body was ringing a little bit. But fortunately my ears were not.
The next night the show moved to San Antonio, and I can only imagine more excellent music was made. I believe all the sets there overlapped with what I had seen, but with this group of musicians that’s not really a guarantee that anything would be the same. I want to thank Chris for making this whole thing happen, and all of the musicians for providing really amazing performances and also for being really friendly and accessible while they were passing though. I hope the No Idea traditions carry on and some of these artists come back to visit again in a year.
m
Re: no idea festival 2012. nights 3 and 4.
cheers for the reports..sounds fab.
Re: no idea festival 2012. nights 3 and 4.
some photos of the afternoon houston show at art palace.
-
Little Dwight
- Posts: 68
- Joined: Thu May 29, 2008 1:13 am
- Location: Houston
Re: no idea festival 2012. nights 3 and 4.
i felt the same.mudd wrote:This was probably among my two favorite sets of the festival.
it's nice to see photos of the fest. wish i had taken a few of the austin portion.
-
EllusFanKanDay
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 9:21 am
Re: no idea festival 2012. nights 3 and 4.
is that a potato masher?
Re: no idea festival 2012. nights 3 and 4.
no, it's a trumpet!EllusFanKanDay wrote:is that a potato masher?
seriously though- i don't know. there are a lot of objects in the photos, and none of them really give you an idea of what the sets sounded like.
Re: no idea festival 2012. nights 3 and 4.
definitely a potato masher.
m
m