three days - 09-09 nyc

[flies]

http://www.rasbliutto.net/concerts/thre ... ember.html

only caught the first day (planned to make it to saturday but my friends convinced me to hang out instead...), but i enjoyed it pretty well.

the space was very large function room beneath a church. the floors were linoleum so the sound was fairly muddy. on the other hand the huge room gave the first two acts a lot to play with.

eubanks' opener (laptop on 4 speakers) created a sense of sound coming from all directions. the speakers were basically in the corners of the room, and the audience was in the center. sometimes it seemed like you would hear a sound coming from one speaker and then hear it again coming from another. other times one sound stream seemed to move around the space. the sound material ranged from zappy electronics to synth tones. a lot happening basically all the time. I don't have too much more to say about this set, unfortunately. I said hi to bryan on my way out the door, but i was very brief since I had to drive back to new brunswick and it was getting late (i mean, it was only 11:10 or something but...). Hi again, bryan!

the second act was my favorite of the night, although it took me a minute to find a way in to what i was hearing. It featured Klaus Janek on Bass->Laptop, o.blaat on laptop (doing speaker-mic feedback through lloopp), and Gill Arno also on laptop. Janek's main technique was to make sort of whispery rustling sounds by bowing muted strings and behind the bridge and such, feeding these sounds into ableton live and granulating them to make a soft ambient texture. o.blaat's performance was interesting to watch. she walked around the room with her laptop, sending out a pulsing feedback tone at about 2000Hz (i'd guess), controlling the tone by opening and closing the laptop screen (not all the way), putting her hand inside the wedge between keyboard and screen. occasionally she would pick something up and put that in between instead of her hand, or she would put her laptop around a column or against a wall, etc. At one piont she walked over to a coat-rack full of hangers and pushed her laptop right into them, creating a clatter. she put the laptop down momentarily to play around (so to speak) with the hangers, tossing some on the ground and knocking them aruond and such. the pitch remained in the same range, and they basically remained at the same volume (when they were happening at all), but since she was walking all around the large room the quality of the sound changed quite a bit (of course, it wasn't just a static sine-wave, the pulsing contained a great deal of minute variations). Arno's laptop was plugged into the quad set up as eubanks' had been, though he was silent for most of the set (or so it seemed to me).

at first, Janek's soft textures and o.blaat's piercing feedback didn't really have much to do with one another, at least to my ear. they weren't really interacting on a timbral level (the kinds of sounds they made didn't vary too much, and they couldn't reach a common ground in this dimension), but they were allowing each other musical space and this helped me get a sense of interaction or dialog or whatever. about 15 minutes in, Janek and o.blaat got real quiet and it seemed like they were going to end quickly, and then the speakers sent out some synth warbles from Arno's laptop. If he had made any sound up to that point I couldn't detect it (and to be honest i had been thinking up till that piont that it was a duo!). To me, this was the point where the set really got going. Arno remained mostly silent, and when he made any sounds they were usually quieter than either of the other two artists. I guess this created a tension that added a lot of interest. Arno's sounds were usually synth based with occasional breathy sounds, which made an excellent liason between Janek and o.blaat. after something like 30-40 minutes, the group gradually fell to silence.

the third and final set of the evening was the trio of Barry Weisblat, Margarida Garcia, and Sean Meehan. Meehan was actually the only artist whom i'd seen before, though his set that night was very different from what i've seen before. Weisblatt played a small pump organ/harmonium (without any extended techniques, just straight up). Garcia was bowing her guitar which went into what I guess was a clean boost pedal into a small fender tube amp. Meehan, sitting on the floor, rubbed his snare drum with objects. After seeing four laptops, the instrumentation here was quite a shock, and may have influenced my appreciation of what I saw, negatively, i'm afraid.

The first sounds came from Garcia's guitar. throughout the set, it seemed to this listener that she was essentially leading the group, with the others taking on a sort of 'rhythm section' role. For Meehan, this connection isn't so much of a stretch, at least on a literal level. Unlike the previous time i saw him, Meehan made no continuous sounds at all. Instead, he made squeaking noises at a steady rhythm (like a metronome, but not that perfect) using something that looked like a whisk. about 5-10 minutes in he stopped briefly, picked a new object to rub on the drum, and returned to the same rhythm. after a short while, he went back to the whisk. His playing, particularly the regularity, contrasted sharply with what the other musicians were doing, and this was one of the main things i enjoyed about the set.

Weisblat's approach consisted of mildly dissonant chords that faded in and out. I'm sorry to say that his playing was neither static enough (like meehan) or dynamic enough (like Garcia) to interest me much. often, he would start his tones up while garcia was making sounds, so that as her metallic sounds (lots of high mids) faded away, the soft, reedy tone of the harmonium would emerge from the background. however, the basic 'tone clusters fade in and fade out' program was too repetitive. his gestures were all the same shape (rounded edges) and the same length (5-20 seconds) with about the same length of time in between. IIRC, he occasionally held one or two notes for longer, which changed things up some, but somehow this didn't solve the problem for me. I must also say that Meehan's highly restrained playing frustrated me. I kept wishing he would complicate the rhythm a little or do something slightly different. For her part, Garcia got a lot of range from her instrument, though I can't recall many specifics. My impression of her playing was of self-assurance, quickly moving from silence to full volume, with a kind off kilter quality that was nicely unpredictable.

Part of what attracts me to EAI is the attempt to deconstruct the instrument, to get as far away from what you're supposed to do as possible. Weisblat directly confounded this notion, and Garcia's bowing still left her guitar sounding very much like a guitar. Meehan's approach was more along these lines, but still unsatisfying. I think what i'm trying to get at, what I really like, is the attention to timbre, texture, density, fine qualities of sound. Weisblat's use of his instrument basically didn't engage in this kind of play at all. Even without extended techniques, I would have found it more interesting to hear more extended sounds where the varied pumping action might create more variation in the texture of the tones. Meehan's extremely minimal performance was only slightly more interesting on this level. the slight variations in tempo (the extent to which the squeaks deviated from regularity) were my main focus on his playing. Garcia was the only one who worked on this wavelength, and the sounds she made were the most exciting to my ear.

In any case, after about 15 minutes, the three artists all found themselves silent, and the audience began clapping. My sense was that if the audience had held off for a little while longer, the musicians might have picked up again, possibly with renewed energy (meehan grimaced slightly, though this could have been anything). I found the set more or less shapeless and unexciting. maybe it was just too EFI-ey for me.

My overall impression of the evening was positive. this was the first concert i'd been to in a long time, and it was good to get back into the flow of things. I'd like to hear more of Garcia, whom i'd neither seen nor heard before, and the same for Arno. Arno's effect on the trio was really exciting, so i'd be interested to see how he does in other groups. I think meehan's more rhythmic approach would work very well in other settings, so i'd enjoy seeing more of that as well.

[RFKorp]

Disappointed you didn't make it to the other nights! Would have been good to put a face to your handle on here.

FWIW. Barry's strongest work is actually with electronics and his sunday set on this gear with Tucker Dulin was fantastic. He primarily orients himself around radios and flourescent lights that interfere in a manner that (if I understand correctly) simulates lighting's effect on radio. But also with various other small electronics, and on Sunday, for the first time I'm aware of, a device that worked off the same principles as neon lights and actually sparked flames in the process of producing sound.

But the last time I saw him and Margarida play at the church, he opted to use the organ as well. So that's not totally surprising.

And yeah, Gill is an incredible artist. He often performs as mpld using prepared slide projectors to produce both visuals and sound. And it's subtle and awesome.

[jkudler]

i think barry was lighting some stuff on fire at the last erstquake. no idea what he was doing, really.

anyways, margarida usually plays bass. i really like their duo cd, an excerpt of which is here:
http://modisti.com/musicbox/?p=4125

here's another track:
http://post.thing.net/node/62

the garcia/mattin duo at mattin.org is really good too.

they're playing as a duo (not sure what instrumentation, though. . .) in philly on 10/10. i'm hoping i can be there:
http://www.museumfire.com/events.htm (scroll down)

any chance you can make it, george? i want to have them back to philly sound forum sometime too. . .

-jesse

[RFKorp]

i think barry was lighting some stuff on fire at the last erstquake. no idea what he was doing, really.

candles and light sensitive electronics responding to the flicker.

[faster]

i think barry was lighting some stuff on fire at the last erstquake. no idea what he was doing, really.

He was using candles and optical sensors, I'm pretty sure.

EDIT: shoulda refreshed before responding. Richard's got it.

[jon abbey]

echo?

this show wasn't on the 9th, it was on the 18th (which I guess is mark's topic line when splitting it off?). I would have been there, but I was at the cellule metamkine show, so I have nothing to add.

[flies]

the garcia/mattin duo at mattin.org is really good too.

edit: looks like all of the downloads are broken!!

they're playing as a duo (not sure what instrumentation, though. . .) in philly on 10/10. i'm hoping i can be there:
http://www.museumfire.com/events.htm (scroll down)

any chance you can make it, george? i want to have them back to philly sound forum sometime too. . .

-jesse

hmm, i'll see. i was already planning to be in philly the following weekend for the PSF murray/garet show. Are the other acts of interest? the description makes me wonder...

[flies]

echo?

this show wasn't on the 9th, it was on the 18th (which I guess is mark's topic line when splitting it off?). I would have been there, but I was at the cellule metamkine show, so I have nothing to add.

yeah, i meant 09-09 to refer to september '09...

how was metamkine?

[jon abbey]

oh, I see, sorry.

metamkine was very good. in a room half the size (where they more normally play) and with a better sound system), it would have probably been transcendent, but I was happy to get a chance to finally see it after hearing it raved about by numerous people for years and years.

nirav is supposed to write it up here in at least some detail at some point, and if he does, I'll probably chime in with more.

[barry]

FWIW. Barry's strongest work is actually with electronics and his sunday set on this gear with Tucker Dulin was fantastic. He primarily orients himself around radios and flourescent lights that interfere in a manner that (if I understand correctly) simulates lighting's effect on radio. But also with various other small electronics, and on Sunday, for the first time I'm aware of, a device that worked off the same principles as neon lights and actually sparked flames in the process of producing sound.

yes that was a great set, good night of music over all. that device with the wires was like something out of a frankenstein movie - very cool.

[flies]

the garcia/mattin duo at mattin.org is really good too.

edit: looks like all of the downloads are broken!!

i talked with erik = hecanjog, where the files used to be hosted, and he said they are now hosted at http://www.hereissomemusic.com/ but mattin hasn't updated the links yet. you can get all the files by changing the links to remove the host and /mattin/ directory

so
http://www.hecanjog.com/mattin/Mattin,R ... ack_01.ogg
becomes
http://www.hereissomemusic.com/Mattin,R ... ack_01.ogg

mattin, if you're looking at this, perl is your friend:

Code: Select all

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

open(IN,"discography.html");
@inFile = <IN>;
close IN;
@outFile=();
foreach $line (@inFile) {
    $line =~  s/www.hecanjog.com\/mattin/www.hereissomemusic.com/g; 
    push(@outFile,$line)
}
open(OUT,">discography.html");
print OUT @outFile;
close OUT;

[flies]

since i clearly had nothing better to do, here is mattin's discography with corrected links: http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~glocke/ ... raphy.html

[jkudler]

ha! nice. thanks. did you send to mattin? i'm sure he'd appreciate.

-jesse

[flies]

ha! nice. thanks. did you send to mattin? i'm sure he'd appreciate.

-jesse

good idea.