An in-depth interview from the Observer, covering the shoes, how the cello bow was first applied to the guitar, the fans (Gillian Anderson listens during yoga, Gwyneth Paltrow during childbirth), Icelandic culture, their film, Heima, and their CD sleeve innovation.
Many thanks to Craig McLean, author of the article, for sending me scurrying to look up ‘thorablot’, a word surely to stun my Scrabulous opponents, but might not be in their dictionary. Ah, rotten foods of the world!
I attended the opening performance for the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival on Wednesday night. The event had additional sigificance outside of being the opening night of the festival - it was also the first time the festival had booked a night of only Mexican artists to perform.
The Mexicans in question, .pig and Murcof, put on an excellent show, although they weren’t as good as I was expecting.
.pig’s performance was a piece entitled “feto talk”, which consists of massively filtered and distorted turntable scratches and vocal effects. Speaking objectively, I don’t think I’d ever listen to them on my own time but as a performance they were impressive. The music was very harsh, very static-y and dissonant, so I was a little relieved when they finished after about half an hour. I think that’s probably all I could’ve put up with before getting irritated or bored.
Murcof is one of my favorite musicians of all time and I had extremely high expectations for his live performance. He has a new album coming out on September 17th, Cosmos, so I was looking forward to hearing some new material, and he did not dissapoint in that aspect. He played four new tracks from the album, ranging from one I’d heard from his myspace page, Cielo, to a couple of extremely drone-y ambient pieces that were new to me.
All of the songs were great and I’m eagerly anticipating the new album, although I’m a little surprised by the direction his music seems to have taken. The two drone-y pieces were a surprise, as most of his music seems to incorporate a fair amount of IDM-like percussion. Picture Tim Hecker-style ambient, except built from the classical sample-based palette that Murcof uses, and you’ll have something pretty close to what I heard Wednesday.
Anyway, the music was good but the performance itself left a little something to be desired - Murcof basically sat in front of his laptop and didn’t move for most of the show, except to tweak knobs on a mixer and a MIDI controller. I’m used to at least video being projected when I see electronic music acts, and its absence at this show reminded me of why it’s usually necessary with laptop-based musicians.
Most laptop artists are god damned boring to watch live.
Also, Murcof only performed four songs. The show didn’t start until 9:00 and I was out of the theatre by 10:30. What the hell.
I had tickets to the next night’s show, which Tim Hecker was performing at, but honestly, I didn’t think it was worth the effort to Bart it to the Mission, then walk to the train station and get home at 1 AM just to see him play a half-hour set.
Even if the festival has good performers next year, I’m not sure I would consider going if the format is the same. I’d much rather go to something like the upcoming Biosphere show at the Recombinant Media Labs Compound.
I went to this show at the Recombinant Media Labs Compound last night.
I’d been to a show at the RML before, but at their old location in Hunter’s Point. I’ll start off by saying that their new location is in a thankfully less scary area of SF, in the SOMA near 7th street.
I arrived 10 minutes early, and the show didn’t actually start till around 10, which was kind of annoying. I guess the first hour was for the benefit of their regular crowd, who consisted mostly of grey/black-wearing trendy-young-professional types, mixed with a healthy dose of tattooed, dreadlocked alternative-y folks. The first group is the kind you’d expect to see in a modern art museum doing a lot of chin-stroking in front of Rothko paintings. They all seemed to know one another.
Once 10 PM rolled around they lead us into the studio, which is the room pictured on their homepage. It’s an amazing space, you’re completely surrounded by speakers and a seamless wall of screens for their “surround cinema”-related stuff.
After everyone was inside, we were treated to three experimental videos which utilized the surround cinema effect. A guy who introduced himself as “Not Human” forewarned us that the first two videos were at normal volume but the third was “fucking loud” and that we were advised to utilize our earplugs. The videos were set to two Biosphere tracks, and the third was a recording (I think?) of one of the tracks Ryoichi Kurakawa played there a couple of weeks ago, and was as loud as advertised.
An aside on the loudness of their system - on the way into the studio they have a machine that dispenses earplugs, and warnings that the sound level inside exceeds 120 dB regularly. That pretty much sums it up.
After the third video and a short break, Deadbeat stepped up to a laptop plastered with an “I <3 Dub” sticker and began to play. I’ve heard people say that Deadbeat’s albums are kind of a pale reflection of his live performance, and after finally seeing him perform solo I can see where they’re coming from. It was interesting seeing him play very loudly, as his dub basslines are groovy enough to encourage dancing, yet his music isn’t quite uptempo enough to allow one’s self to actually dance continuously. Thus everyone was very vigorously head-nodding or swaying for most of his show. He ended with a DNB-esque remix of Saul Willliams - Black Stacey, which was awesome.
I didn’t know what to expect from Richard Devine, as all I previously knew was that he produced abrasive IDM. It’s kind of hard to put a description of his set into words, but I’ll try. Essentially, Richard Devine is a complete psycho, a rockstar, and his music is the electronic music equivalent of death metal. I’m almost surprised people didn’t start moshing during his set, it was that percussive. People (including Devine) were seriously throwing the devil-horns hand sign during pauses in the harsh beats. On that note, Devine was incredibly fun to watch, as he grimaces and winces like he’s struggling to defecate pieces of solid iron. After the show was over I seriously felt like I’d been beaten; the sound was so loud you could literally feel the waves of compressed air from the subwoofers travelling over your skin. Amazingly enough, the earplugs did their job and my hearing was pristine once I removed them.
Oh, and I got to watch Deadbeat rock out during the Devine set. He was jumping around with the enthusiasm of a little kid, it was great.
All in all, an amazing show. I’ll definitely be attending more events here.
In 2000 and 2001, Biosphere created a sound installation for the Northern Lights festival at Kulturhuset along with English sound sculptor Jony Easterby.
The installation was called Fluxgate. The basic premise of the installation was that visitors were to throw snowballs at various target areas on the sculpture. The accuracy of the throws combined with current astronomical data on the aurora were then used to generate different sounds.
There’s a 20-30 minute recording of Fluxgate in action on Biosphere’s site here. Other free MP3s of his can be downloaded here. As the page states, if you enjoy the music and are feeling generous, you can donate to his paypal account (details of which are on the page).
Working with UC Berkeley physicists, Roberto Morales-Manzanares has produced software that enables users to create music from solar data. That sounds rather dry, but Morales sees this as a stepping point to access aural events happening in space. The technology exists to make our listening experiences much, much richer.
Albums to watch for this year:
Layering Buddha, the previously mentioned album by Monolake.
Cosmos, the fourth album by Mexican minimal electronic/classical maestro Murcof.
The Cold In Between, on Plong!, and Nightwidth on Merck, by Swede minimalist Anders Ilar. No idea what the Plong! one will have on it, and I’m assuming the Nightwidth EP on Narita will be represented on the Merck release along with who knows what else.
Vince Watson seems to have a lot of projects in the works, with an older album destined for release on Transmat now set for release on Belgian label Delsin. He’s also working on an album for F COM and apparently will be doing some work for NRK. No word on whether those last two will be done before the year’s up, but the Delsin album is slated for an Autumn release.
Also, I’m behind, and I haven’t checked out Loscil’s most recent work, Plume. It was released at the end of last month.
Can music affect the content of your dreams? The Sky Orchestra, developed by Dan Jones and Luke Jerram in collaboration with hot air balloonist Peter Dalby, will find out.
Their music/art project consists of seven speaker-equipped hot air balloons. Each balloon will play a separate part of a musical score as the group floats over a city. Performance time is dawn, when most of their audience is still asleep, presumably in REM sleep mode.
More details from Futuremusic.
