A series of informal reviews (musings??) from art openings and concerts, or whatever I choose to review, in whatever place I happen to be at.
Codie opened tonight, a 3 woman livecoding supergroup, with Sarah GHP on visuals and Melody and Kate on sound playing Strudel or Tidal I think, linked through flok. Sarah was remote so they played a video of her work. The sound opened with a deep digital dub thing going on. Definitely sounded like they started minimal or with nothing and quickly built up. I loved the transition to dub techno, and I think Sarah’s visuals look so different from a lot of other livecoding visuals. She’s not using Hydra or other more common tools but instead built her own. There’s a tropical vibe, and i believe she runs it through a fairlight visual synth? The bass got deeper, heads were nodding. This was a good opener for the night as giant shapes and colors flashed and got repeated, gridded, or swiped.
Next up was nnirror. Like the first night, a performer in the vague genre i’m calling (incorretly) post-autechre. but seriously, is it okay i say this? nnirror did open for autechre at a bunch of their dates on their recent tour (as did some of the other performers from night 1 i see now!). the broken beats livecoded and patched - juggled, scrambled, fried. sorta coulda dance to them. individual tracks that wove together over the course of 40 minutes. spiky.
followed by keith fullerton whitman. i’ve seen him perform a number of times, going back to 25 yrs (yes, i’m that old) when i saw him perform live on air on the radio station at my college, where he remixed the marble madness (go listen to it, please!). his set was all modular synth - a tangled web of cables - a rat’s nest. impenetrable. he never unplugs and replugs. everything is plugged into everything else. he’s built a system that he knows and can play and plays itself. that he can tug and coax and tickle and it slowly or quickly unfolds into side hustles and pockets of jank and loping beats and grooves, with a bundle of voices chirping around each other. did i like it? i liked it and at times i didn’t like it. it’s a system that can go either way. and though it was entertaining, it was like watching a single man jam band himself. i did like it i’ve just decided. i’ll see him live again. he spoke earlier in the day and demonstrated that he was trying to figure out his own way of making a new approach to improvisational jazz but true to the modular. was that a part of this performance? i couldn’t tell ya. but it was its own sound system, and i have mad respect for him and his approach and experiments. a true virtuosic player of the maschine.
next was c_robo_. i pre-listened to his music online cause i saw his name popping up previously. he’s fast. it’s a new approach to livecoding. strudel i think. with lots of modifications. he showed off in his earlier talk how he assigns hotkeys to jump between samples and effects, adding and subtracting. i could be saying this wrong. but def he’s using keybindings with the number keys to affect his livecoding and quickly add and subtract stuff. he does still type and such. traditional hello world type intro commented out text at the beginning and end of the set. his beats are fast. the energy does pull you in and propel you. there is a journey forward even if it doesn’t arrive. well, he tried to manufacture an arrival of sorts. he attempted to crash his IDE. now that is possible. basically, as opposed to the original england style i’ve experienced of starting with no code, he instead has insanely huge multi hundred of lines of livecode prewritten. he’s modified his IDE so that he can turn on specific sections to trigger sounds/lines to start and continue playing. so he has all these different tricks in his bag he can trigger, and the sound is hectic but bringing something new to livecoding i think. i dug it. maybe not home listening, but a nice night out trying out new sounds. and yes, he’s pushing at the limits of the IDE with all those samples running, it glitched out, paused, many times. and i think he didn’t mind that and it’s part of the c_robo_ live experience. i dug.
finally, gabor lazar. loud drenching beats but it sounds, hmmm, i’m not engaged. he’s playing something on his laptop, but i could’nt see his screen and not sure what he’s using and it was fine. i didn’t hear of him previously but he was def the ‘headliner’ so i guess i’m missing out. (checks online). ok so he’s on planet mu so he’s a somebody! lol. i don’t know though, i am still in this same mindframe that i’m trying to escape Warp Records or whatever 1999 and find something different, growing, new. maybe too harsh an assessment from me, but is this different? does it move my body? am i rolling in it? i try it out and it’s not bad, it’s definitely loud, but i need a break. i go outside to talk with friends. then we gab and gab and gab. i come back in and walk back into the center of the sound and realize it’s not bad up close. in the back of the room where i’d stood previously it sounded more dinky. up close the bass envelopes me into a giant smoosh. i like it for the remaining minutes. glad i’m wearing my earplugs.
afterwards i catch up with friends again and we got gigantic burritos the size of a baby. it’s 1am and i have a flight the next morning. i shouldn’t eat the whole thing. (15 minutes later). damn, i ate the whole thing.
I forgot to mention: V Vale and Marian from Research Pubs were there all three nights. Incredible. I checked out their zines and bought 3 of them and had some good conversations with V. What a hero! I bought Terminal Punk, How to Love Forever (or something like that), and a guide to reading and writing. Research is such an important reference for me. I first found Research 8/9 when I was staying at a rural anarchist commune in germany about 15 years ago and loved reading j. g. ballard and the interviews. what a cool publisher/mentor/thinker. this was a huge highlight for me.
one other final note: this festival was fun but TOO MANY MEN. it’s important to organize with diverse representation of the world. see my review below for an example of what that looks/feels like.
Warning: this post will mention the death of a friend
I jumped on the BART train, taking it across the bay into Oakland. It’s been three years since my last visit. This is a noise show and I’m psyched. I need a break from angular post-autechre breaks and though I know this will look almost the same sub-genre to many people I must confess I’m really more down for noise: that’s what gets me fired up.
I am so eagerly anticipating this noise show for a couple reasons. I haven’t been to a noise show in a warehouse in Oakland specificially in YEARS and I have fond memories playing these spaces 15 years ago. In 2011 I went on a tour on the west coast, stopping and playing at some warehouse whose name escapes me. I stayed with Jsun McCarty, an incredible noise musician who was building string instruments, amplified and running through various pedals, but even stranger, the bodies of these instruments were built out of discarded styrofoam. I forget what they named these, and I can’t look online right now as I’m typing this on a train. But the band name was Styrofoam Sanchez (see video at link), among other funny noise band names they used. We played shows together, and Jsun put me up in his space when i visited. We jammed, hung out, visited a pirate radio station where he got interviewed, tramped around oakland and the mission, lots of fun together.
Sadly, Jsun passed away wayyyy before his time. You can do a web search for the Ghostship warehouse fire to read more, or this profile on Jsun from KQED. This was a huge tragedy. I remember that day trying to get in touch with Jsun to make sure he was okay. He wasn’t.
Jsun’s artist/music collaborator Michael Daddona keeps his tradition and artistic activity up, and pays tribute to Jsun. He’s organized Ratskin Records as an incredible combination of performers - particularly diverse, including indigineous/native, SWANA artists, Latinx, trans, many many different people. Visiting this warehouse show at The Church of the Buzzard was an incredible scene, full of welcoming people. I met up with my friend Sholeh, who introduced me to her friend Kelan, who was so kind he ordered food delivery for me when I said I was hungry and there were no nearby markets or places to get food open (My bad for assuming it would be like Brooklyn and Berlin and that I could get food after 8 on a Friday!).
Michael put together such an incredible lineup. Every one played a 20 minute set, with like 3 minute intermissions between bands. Truly Michael is such a powerful organizer. I loved all of the sets I saw, from Bored Lord with her wild breakcore and noise to Sholeh’s vocal lilting processed singing through modular synth and pedals, to the insane quasi-bro theatrics of Tugboys. I only went to night 1 of the two night event, but it will stay in my mind for a long time. And shout out to the sound engineers. Can you believe they had a high end Meyer sound system with serious room speaker array and subs in a noise warehouse in Oakland? Some of the best noise production I’ve ever heard, on par with The Handbag Factory (LA) or TV Eye (Queens).
With the aggro gronky texture o hell and jingly skronk beats, walls of squelch, and spine-tickling processed singing, I was totally floored by these ‘mature’ noise performances - folks that weren’t famous - (what would that even mean in noise? maybe wolf eyes is the only quasi-famous band?) but just people honing their craft and playing such strong sets. A feast, truly.
This was the opening night of the Algorithmic Art Assembly. After some afternoon workshops, folks started to pop up. The venue is a cool theater. I wish I’d been there in its glory days. A beaut. The sound: loud. The scene: dark empty floor. A stage with modular synth or laptop in the center. Performer after performer ascending to the stage and playing 30 - 40 minute sets of oblique saw wavs, slippery sine waves, supercollider-derived mangle-beat repeats, experimental Max mega patches and the like.
I was socializing and connecting with old and new friends - and I don’t totally remember who played what. I definitely saw the first three and a half performances, but I missed Kindohm even though he was the only person I’d heard of previously and thought I’d dig his music. R Tyler played vaguely post autechre beat-y things. Not 100% danceable, not that that’s required, but also it was not NOT danceable. Things sped up, slowed down, jumped - a glitch. Is it post (i keep using that word - again) post-breakbeat live coding. i think this was in tidalcycles.
Wolf Parkinson White was next. he started ambient-y and brooding but this too became angular and even more undanceable beats. maybe a little memory of the work of bogdan raczynski (but not kid606) cerca 2000? less of a grower / show-er. despite the plinks, tinks, pops and smears there is an even-ness - i think more of a journey might be nice. i paused to get a drink.
the next performer was william fields and truthfully, the two different performers i would have trouble telling apart in terms of their performance. both play a very autechre-influenced not-quite idm style. my apologies to fans and performers of this genre for not being able to more accurately capture the joy of this micro-genre. it’s not my jam, and sounds to be a sound of the past, to my ears. i said the same thing about the autechre show i went to in berlin several months ago (scroll down). but i think my own reaction is not the same as others, as everyone else seemed to love that show but to me it was a nostalgia trip. i need new things to listen for i think (which i could point out in a different essay but maybe this ain’t the place for it, but loosely i’d say this micro-genre doesn’t deviate from that particular sound and approach, and i think it should - the same way i don’t want to go hear a straight techno music set circa 1996, i want to hear something evolved).
after william fields came nathan ho. i liked him. he wears a witches outfit with cape and black witch’s hat. hilarious. he keeps the bit up. the sound: that does sound like he’s trying to push to the next thing, even though he’s coming maybe from a similar background. i think (though might not be true) he’s a bit younger - and seems like a math nerd. it comes out in the music - (PAUSE - takes a break to pull up an album by Nathan to refresh my memory while writing. HAHA i am SO on the head it’s insane. Get this:
In 2008, at the age of 11, I created Googology Wiki on my parents’ computer. “Googology” is a word for the study of large numbers and fast-growing functions, deriving from the 9-year-old Milton Sirotta’s coinage of the term “googol.” The website was never meant to go beyond my personal use, and I gradually drifted away from it. Fifteen years later, it has grown to tens of thousands of articles and a community of hundreds of active users.
He goes on to write more about his music for the album deriving from a mathematician’s ‘ordinal number’ system key to the study of large numbers. (UPDATE: Nathan gave a talk the next day that was DEEEP tripper mathematician territory. HARD to follow, but def came across as a math/musician genius.)
At this point I’m needing a break from math-breakcore-braindance-beats. I went to get tacos and missed the last set. Sorry.
The fact that I went to this was mostly an accident. I saw that tickets were required or becoming a ‘supporter’ (they didn’t use the word membership) and it started at $99, which is too high i think. I usually go to the New Museum at most twice a year. Other friends of mine were going. They’d finessed tickets somehow. I messaged my friend S because she had mentioned going, and she said she was a friend’s +1 and that I should message our other friend. He got back to me ASAP and said he couldn’t go but he had a free ticket and I gave his name at the door. I didn’t know if it would work, but at door not only did they let me in they asked if I had a +1. Okay, anyway, this just demonstrates how overly networked and self-serving our community is. Moving on…
The New Museum has been closed a couple years. I thought 2 or 3 but no, didn’t it close in 2020ish? Has it been five years? I’m not looking it up, so I don’t know. But it’s been a while. This was some mega million expansion as they took over the building next door and expanded their galleries. The architecture - fine. A big ole winding staircase, not necessarily visually impressive, not particularly a good use of the space. Some public seating area that’s in all glass - strange, I don’t want to sit in a place like that. So who knows but I wasn’t bowled over by the architecture or the wind-y rooms added on. This was a night of snappy dressing. All the artists age 30 - 55 from Brooklyn had turned out!
I ran into two of my colleagues and many friend and started by ascending to the top. Upstairs was a temp bar and views of the city from the rooftops, but too packed to really see. I descended again to check out the art, stopping first to check out the New Inc art incubator space - their 3d printers and laser cutter and small immersive media room and their co-working space. Very nice. On to the art..
The main thing on view was the opening of a giant exhibit called New Humans: Memories of the Future. Title is so-so, but the exhibit was fun, cool. A history of robots, early and recent and historical art. It’s a bajillion item show and hard to describe its 3 floors of objects but some highlights were weavings, Anicka Yi’s drone octopus sky creatures, a video installation by Hito Steyerl, very early computational art by Allison Knowles, a cybernetic object by Marvin Minsky, an Alien model by H. R. Heiger, and the robot inside of E. T. from the movie. And that’s aside from famous 20th century artists that were presented in the show but easy to miss as they didn’t stand out as non-flat 3d objects or interactive works. For example, I’m looking at the artist list and it lists so many from Dali, Jeremy Deller, Vera Molnar, El Lissitzky, Marcel Duchamp, Dubuffet, Agnes Denes, Brancusi, Francis Bacon. I missed these and so much more. I barely remember the Nam June Paik, can’t remember the Rebecca Allen, Milford Graves, Bryan Gysin, I do remember the Cao Fe. I’m listing name after name because the exhibit felt like that. Just a ton of shit, some okay writing, but not really a great theme or walkthrough. Just a bunch of stuff.
The New Museum website sucks by the way. No text. Not even really much of an intro. No photos. What a crock. So okay, it’s a grab bag of vaguely cybernetic past and recent-ish artworks relating to “robots” and autonomous objects, and weaving, and militarism, and entertainment, and models. I’d love to go back to see the work again. But big message, take-away ideas - not much. And maybe that’s okay - the point is to see great artworks that individually might make you think, or display great beauty. Most of the works succeed at that. But as a past museum curator, I expect more from an exhibition. I mean, not everything needs to be a response to LLMs right now, but would it hurt them to take some stance, say something, address it in some way? If not, maybe this is really a catch-up of a show. It would be more honest to just say “we’ve missed the past 70 years of cybernetic and digital art and here’s a bunch of it” and not really what’s happening now/new. But if so, what makes this the NEW emphasis NEW Museum, huh?? This isn’t the grab bag of a Whitney Biennial, or it shouldn’t be. One random example: there is a Rammellzee-designed figure decked out urban streetclothes and vaguely samurai-influenced design that Rammellzee was known for. But what does this have to do with New Humans? Honestly, Rammellzee could/should get his own exhibit. It could be treated on its own. A damn audio tour could help so much here! Something! I can make something up, but I’m a digital artist and curator. I’m not a regular visitor.
Maybe that’s fine. This isn’t a regional art center. This is a showing of great work. But it’s a lot. They’ve selected such a large amount of artists and some great works - but they’ve mixed everything up into a messy salad. It would benefit from some structure and statements. But it’s worth seeing even without this corrected - with hundreds of historic artworks, rarely exhibited, it’s worth it for the gems that shine through.
I arrived pretty late to this one! I missed the first two acts (thus listing the title above as + more) so I can’t write on them. I was finishing up something that had a deadline on that day so needed to just finish the damn thing, and then I was hungry and had only had a salad so I got a Chapli Chicken burger at the Burger Bhai place across teh street. I eat “Low carb” so had them wrap it in lettuce. Not super appealing looking. Tasted okay! It was good. My friend joined me and we got spicy fries and I had a couple. I don’t usually eat those since I don’t really eat potatoes. They were delicious.
To the task at hand: across the street from Burger Bhai we enter the venue and stand in the back. Three hornswogglers (I’m in a Dahl mood) goin’ at it skronking at length. Ok, so it’s a bass player, viola? (or violin, i think it’s a viola), and electric guitar. The viola’ist’s bow is completely fucked. Strings hanging all akimbo. She’s scraping the shit out of her device. This is the modern classical improv. Everyone’s scraping along improv’ing. They are all feeding off each other. The guitar player plucks, uses a little bow on their instrument. The viola player grabs a metal nail and scrapes the strings. The bass player smears his hand along the wood, making squeaky sounds and textures. I love the textures.
I’m enjoying the entire palette of this performance. But it never “goes anywhere.” There are no distinct sections. They are clearly improv’ing together but it’s all some continual plane of existence, no highs, no lows. Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful and fun and I’m glad I’m checking it out. But it’s an acoustic version of that Merzbow show I saw at Knockdown Center a decade ago that was jut guitar/laptop skronkling for 45 minutes with nothing to show for it at the end. I’m not asking for a score, but…(grandpa enters the scene)….back in MY day, we had various methods when did/do improv that we could bring to bear…taking opportunities, finding little scenes where we could try other ways of playing together…dropping out to allow solos…referring back to earlier themes or melodies or rhythms…varying our technique…leaving silences…changing tempo…using eye contact to find moments together.
This was a really cool event of performance art put on by artists that I think don’t usually do performance art. Each piece was 20 minutes long, and not related to the other works. I arrived after a 45 minute bike ride from my home, on a crisp evening. The daylight savings time change happens here a few weeks before than Europe. So even though it was evening it was still light out here, and that helped with my mood.
I wasn’t sure what to expect, maybe an audience of 20 or 40? I’m more used to these kinds of things at galleries where everyone stands around, and I thought CPR was a small room, because a friend had performed there 2 years ago and it was like that. But evidently they have a back room, and it’s set up like a black box space with typical theater seating. There was easily 125 people there, and we were crammed together. This larger room was actually a white cube.
An announcer in a regal but plain costume (think HER) welcomed us and let us know there would be audience participation and that if you participate you have to take your shoes off, i guess because of the white floor. Okay. Then they asked for volunteers. I wasn’t in a volunteer mood, so i kept my hand down. Five suitable people were chosen from the assembled and they headed up to the floor, standing in the only spotlit section. On the other side of the room, a musician had a folding table set up with a bunch of noisemakers on it and parts of a drum kit (snare, cymbal). They began to play music while the announcer began the piece, instructing everyone to close their eyes and leading a guided meditation about a journey. This helped to set the mood, and the dark lighting throughout and the trancelike music by the musician almost put me to sleep, in a good way. The volunteers on stage were guided through movements, walking along behind the announcer, lifting long rods together as the announcer described a journey along a river. At some point, moving with the participants they guided through the journey walking, rowing, swaying, and reading lines from a poem, overlapping. It was a beautiful piece and I was surprised the participants were so in the pocket since they had been plucked at random, but I guess it was an artsy crowd so everyone mostly just fit the task. A nice piece and spiritual ‘journey’.
The next pieces were each different. There was one I loved by a single performer, wearing only small shorts, moving slowly and deliberately, I would say kind of like a dinosaur. He contorted his arms around his head or torso, slowly moved his limbs as appendages, like he was a 4 legged animal, a camel, a pre-homo erectus. A tattoo on his bald head looked like an extra face was on the top or back of his head. A peculiar and not-displeasing visual effect. Other performances included a performance on Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions - To be honest, this one was the hardest to follow and I lost track of it. This was mostly told through a voiceover with slides and video. It was almost like an experimental essay or ‘performative talk’ I think they call these things. Neat idea but I was lost and it kept going on and on.
I’ve forgotten one of the performances, and there were 5 total. The last one was also interactive in a way. First a naked woman crawled out in the corner of the room and wrapped around what appeared to be a smaller speaker or amplifier. Then a woman came out and had a microphone, didn’t at all refer to the naked woman in the corner, but asked the audience if anyone there made more than $200,000 a year. One man raised his hand, and she asked again and he said he thought she asked if anyone made more than $200 a year. Confusing. There may have been a language barrier happening. The she asked if anyone made more than $150,000 a year. No one raised their hand. She explained she was trying to find a scapegoat wealthy person there but it made sense the audience was all artists. Anyway, then she asked everyone to come down to the floor and two friends joined her and she told us they were going to “rock out.” She cajoled about half the audience to come down to surround the band while they played maybe 2 quick rock-y songs that vaguely resembled Rage Against the Machine to me. I looked over and the naked woman in the corner disappeared, maybe while the audience was ‘rocking out.’ (Can you tell I hate that term?). I think there was some lyrics about unions? It wasn’t the strongest work for me but it’s how the hour and a half performance night ended, and though I was losing interest around then, I was glad that something new happened every 20 minutes and I got to see a variety of work performed. I don’t usually see performance art that often, maybe a couple times a year, much less than i go to see experimental music, but it’s good to try these out.
Whitney Biennial crowd looking at Samia Halaby’s digital
computational paintings made in BASIC and C
Well shoot, I cannot believe I am saying this: I liked the Whitney Biennial. I have seen at least 4 or 5 Whitney Biennials, and they all sucked. I don’t even like to say the work ‘suck’. But they did. And yet, this one, I liked. I really liked it.
It neither tried too hard nor leaned into trend too too much. The works felt accessible, small or made from someone following their own method rather than some blue chip formula. I’m speaking in generalities. And bear with me for one more: I could generally see the seams in the works. The handmade. The DIY. Not tooo many painters. Not too many works that look sellable.
Let’s get into specifics. The show sits on two floors of the obtuse ugly unpleasant building. It’s no MOMA, and who knows what the new New Museum will feel like when it opens in a couple weeks.
Some standout works:
We spent about two hours perusing the show and then ascended to the eighth floor to see the Calder’s Circus at 100 show. I love this work, but have seen it in so many configurations over time that this time, with being overloaded from the biennial i actually didn’t have enough concentration to give it my all, maybe spending only 10 minutes on something that i normally would probably have spent an hour viewing. that said, i did enjoy his wire sculptures, the documentary that i’ve seen before and will see again, and the ephemera like drawings and showbills for his circus performances.
Overall, i recommend the biennial. the calder show comes down tomorrow so is likely closed, but will i assume go on tour. or parts can be seen at many museums like the new calder museum opening in philadelphia.
the biennial will be up several months. i think i’ll return. i want to spend more time with some of the video pieces, on a less crowded day.
overall, this biennial was smaller, not pomp-y, not overproduced works, and not overthought curating. while showing a wide variety of work, there were a lot more hits than misses than i expected, and it’s worth a view.
My man Richie played this show. We’ve known each other a decade or so, part of the same art collective. And was I hyped: I like his style, and this was actually in my own damn neighborhood for once! I love living closer to the huge park but man do I live far from the neighborhoods with lots of concerts and such. I literally just walked 5 minutes to get to this show. I miss when I used to live in hipsterdom and this was the norm for me! Anyway, I digress.
This spot is a Brooklyn hipster trinket shop during the day. They sell gifts like nice ceramics, soaps and kids items and novelty gifts and jewelry.
This was curated by Cecilia Lopez and Melissa Almaguer. A new monthly show. All free improv sets.
The opening act was Almaguer, Kochis and Binter playing as a trio: a tap dancer with keyboard synth and flute. This was truly weird. Great!
The tap dancer had two different surfaces, with different textures, which she could not just tap but rub. A medley of shakers and other noisemakers lay nearby, which she would brush against or strike with her foot too. Accompanied by the keyboard, played making treble-y pad sounds that were unremarkable doodle-doos that evaporated into nothing.
While the tap dancing was extremely visually arresting, I’m never a huge fan of tap, but here, I appreciated it for its novelty within an improv set.
Let me also interrupt myself here and say the flautist was too damn loud. I get that flute can be lost, so in that sense it makes sense to have a mic, but man, it was so shrill. She switched to piccolo at one point too, as if that was even needed. I was truly fearful for my hearring and though I put in my ear plugs as I always do in these circumstances i even added a finger to firmly push in my left earplug. The long long piece didn’t go anywhere. No buildup. No movements. Just lots of stuff tried out. A rehearsal. After how long, 35 minutes or so, the set ended and the tapper asked the other organizer if they could do another piece. NO was the firm response.
Short break and then Yo Vinyl Richie was up. Cue up that Bandcamp album while you’re reading this.
Wheeling out his 3 turntables, then arranging a couple dozen albums on the floor, in stacks that were inscrutable to me but I could tell were some kind of ordering system, a visual score he was about to perform. Richie is doin’ something unique: there’s lots of bebop, hard bop, post bop, free improv, a little soul, then recent experimental albums by other musicians. He freely uses his hand, beat juggles but maybe that’s the strangest part as he’s not playing beats. The strength of his work is in his layering, which makes sense. Environmental album sound effects like rain, forests, etc while squeaky experimental jazz is played at the wrong speed, sped up, slowed down, stopped and started by hand and squeaks and gurgles played like an instrument on the third turntable. Richie’s set was also long. So long in fact that I was antsy and wanted to go. I saw the next group setting up, looking like it would be crazy loud, and I truly was not up for that. I gracefully Irish goodbye’d and fled into the night.
i’d been looking forward to this, half because it’s a free show, half because i haven’t been to this venue in a decade and wanted to see what it was like again. it was good! hasn’t changed at all. big comfortable room, low light, mostly just a drinkin’ bar, very williamsburg, a back area to sit and smoke, and a back room with a stage and nice feel for a concert.
i ended up talking with c. spencer yeh a bit while we waited to be let in. we caught up and talked the good ole days of the experimental music scene on the east coast from boston-providence-nyc-philly-baltimore-dc - talkin venues and acts and such. he was burning star core. i had a few names and had a few different venues over the years. anyway.
well, they let too many people in and we were squished like sardines and that was uncomfortable and not very covid-friendly. but not only was the show free there were free shots and free beer samples from some good brands. i have no idea why. i got tipsy and didn’t even spend any money.
CUBE was the opener, and i know him. he’s also the publisher and writer of BAITED AREA, a really well-done magazine with interviews with artists, DIY royalty, musicians. I highly recommend it. Well written. Excellent production. CUBE was back from a series of shows on a mini tour in the west coast, plus he opened for Autechre for a series of their north american shows. his music is fun, some cool gimmick things in it. like crunchy scratchy stuff that goes on too long (that i like), or that loops and loops and too many things synced and loop (again, i like this), and he has some old bedside tablelamp that flashes in time with his beats. all that is good. the beats or music as such is vaguely mid-range blip blip blip, i kept thinking ‘post-drill-and-bass’. i never got tooo deep into it but i guess it’s okay. for some reason, he sings sort of too, though you can’t make out any lyrics, and so there are ‘songs’ of sorts, but then again he lets the blip blip scratchy shit proliferate throughout and between the tracks. so it’s okay! but i wouldn’t listen at home.
the headliner came on a bit later, drew macdowell. i saw his modular synth waiting while CUBE played and was excited for the set. and it was a deep tripper set. heavy slowly evolving chords and textures that went on an hour or maybe more. i was stuck in the back left corner completely crushed in between a dozen people. it was almost okay on account of the free show and free alcohol but at some point i’d had enough and thought - “this is fun but i’m very uncomfortable being this squished and i haven’t paid any money and i want to go home” and i ducked out, probably a couple minutes before the end, but that was fine. i bought the latest issue of BAITED AREA and brought it on the subway with me. so even though there were delays on the line, i read 3 - 4 interview articles and had a grand time.
really great show tonight. was in a bit of a funk due to a disagreement with someone i care about. stopped on the way to the show, in a blizzard!, to get tacos from the spot near where i used to live. the best taco shop in new york city that i know of. the taqueria on wyckoff spot across from the hospital. that one. anyway…was running late because the L was down and i was talking to my parents on the phone and it was a blizzard. anyway, got to the show on time and there were plenty of chairs and people filing in.
chatted with the dragons before the show. we were very close when we
lived in the same city, and i’ve known them for hmmm
the lights dimmed and the mc announced it would start. the first act lafrae sci i didn’t know anything about. i was sitting in the second row for the second time at this festival, surrounded by friends. lafrae sci played this palette of sea sounds with occasional bass thuds with echoes and some real POWER. that overwhelmed the wave-scapes. it was beautiful and lush and the combo of the wash sounds and beer had me nodding a little. i was thinking of a drexciya sound scape and was surprised afterwards to read that was indeed a reference. far out.
act 2 were ben and dorothy. dorothy on electric cello and ben on laptop and an o-coast semi-modular that he seemed to use mostly as an audio processor of the cello. this started fast and scattering and strong and proceeded on from there. a masterful and heavy noisy improv-y but never boring or uneven performance. not so much that dorothy attacked her strings but overwhelmed them, plucked them, stroked them, resonated them, making them cry out, talk, laugh, screetch. ben laptop twiddled but i didn’t mind, as he was clearly processing her input and adding in samples and granular synthesis and just really the synthesis of the two together made a slab of textures that never stayed the same but never jump jumped. it just seriously built a wall of sonic textures moving evenly and clearly from a to b to c to d to e, etc.
finally were the lucky dragons. i’ve seen them perform between 6 and a dozen times, even hiring them to perform at a museum i worked at a decade and a half ago. but i haven’t seen them play in maybe 8 years. they have never played a bad set, and no one else sounds like them. this was gorgeous starting with their intense fast cycling loops that produce intense bursts. it’s really hard for me to develop the right language to describe what they do since they have their own genre and sound that isn’t described well by other systems. like clearly they play ‘experimental music shows’ but that’s not a good description of their music. there are elements of steve reich / glass but if reich or glass new how to use a sampler and max/msp. ya dig?
i have so much appreciation and joy for their music. at some point sara dragon (not her name) picks up the mic and begins intoning a description of orchids. their sex lives. their gender. the view of an orchid as seen by a bee. the inability of scientists to classify new species, or they disagree on them. all this being stated calmly, clearly while a wall of fast vibrato’ed electronic musical lines and loops and scratches, so fast but so full-sounding and resonant.
to my left i notice a man scribbling in his notebook throughout the show. does he pull out his phone at one point to record the audio secretly? i think he is a critic. my instinct. i was at an opera or classical show in the summer when i saw a woman pull out a notebook to scribble in during and after the concert. the next day i saw her review in the new york times i think it was. what journal is my seatmate writing for? when the lights come up he quickly gets up and disappears. everyone else stands around and talks and talks and talks. we all love the show and are having so much fun rapping together. meanwhile our critic has rushed home in the blizzard to type up his review while it’s fresh in his head, with his pages and pages of notes.
good show. let’s see where his review gets published and what he thought. but it would be hard not to love that show.
this is a festival taking place at fridman gallery in new york, on bowery near the new museum and a couple blocks from chinatown. so my friend dan and i decided to meet at spicy village before the concert. let me tell you, spicy village was incredible. high recommend. we got the chicken pile, i don’t think that’s what it was called, but something like that. also, nothing about the food was very spicy, though it was tasty. we also got a stewed beef thing with hand drawn noodles. i mostly skipped the noodle but the beef was succulent. dan likes peanutes and they had fried salty peanuts so we got that too. i honestly think we shoulda skipped that as i started drinking too much water to offset it. we also went to get boba milk tea but i forgot the milk part and just got iced oolong, which tasted like nothing. my mistake.
Now for the concert. Calderwood was ambienty noodly in a good way and maybe it was the whiskey we had earlier in the evening and the low light levels, it couldn’t have been the plastic chairs, but i was next to the heater, and the next thing i knew i had nodded off a few minutes, 10, 20? how long was the set? it had started harsh and im not sure what she was doing as she was sitting on the floor and we were sitting on chairs in rows and had no view of her but i think she was bowing a metal string and that was picked up and amplified and run through processing on the computer. in the end it came out as beautiful murmuring electronic noodly doos but like i said, sleeeeep sleep.
that was set 1. next was sue huang, who gave a vocal performance, reading an autobiographical but poetic text about divorce, dating, the pandemic, the LA fires, and the fires of kuwait. it was a strong read. maybe a 25 minute recitation with a black and white experimental video behind showing scenes, stock scenes? wind, nature, buildings, streets, curving. it worked. worked well.
finally the konjur collective. a hard bop and occasional free improv and occasional ‘conscious’ spoken word. there was even some kora. and each of the 4 members of the quartet seem to play sax on the side too. outfits definitely post-arkestra. this one went hard and i really liked it, hadn’t seen a performanco on that tip in a long time. definitely had a ‘philly/baltimore vibe’ to me.
each of the 3 performances were very different from each other and so it was a nice trip to different lands. satisfied despite the higher cost of the ticket (we thought).
this was a grab bag closing party for two exhibits and i think an artist talk and photo slideshow but i arrived super duper late. flux has two locations and i went to the wrong location, then thought i was feeling sick and should head home but then doubled back when i felt bad i had come all the way out and should go support my friends so i went so i wouldn’t experience FOMO. i ended up missing the formal part but everyone was hanging out in a small group left so i hung out too, said goodbye to my friends heading back to kazakstan and then berlin. and then made my way home too.
The first performance of the year I attended is the opera. Last year I ended up buying a couple tix to some operas during ‘cyber monday’ when i exploited a little loop hole i discovered that let me buy a couple of cheap(er)ish tix. i ended up going to 4 different operas that spring i think. but this year i didn’t see any that particularly compelled me, and i had always wanted to see this opera, so this was the only ticket i bought. i even got a balcony box ticket because it said obstructed view but the ‘seat with a view’ website made it seem like the seat would be fine. NO IT WASN”T. the girl in the seat next to me swung her big head and jacket in front of me and blocked my view. i was fuming and should have said something but i kept my tongue because i was too mad and didn’t think of a polite thing i could say that i wouldn’t have yelled. i mean, honestly. it was really annoying. i also didn’t like the plot of the opera. dumb. and i like mozart, i really do. but bleh. i made a poor choice. and there was no intermission! i like intermissions. i was really annoyed. the opera, even with discounts is still very expensive, and i like it to drag on with multiple acts and a long intermission. but no, this was all in one, scene after scene after scene. a dumb story that i didn’t care about and didn’t even pretend to make any sense, and i don’t mean that in the opera sense, i mean like in a nonsense way. it was just not that interesting a story. i feel funny criticizing mozart. but this was not my thing. didn’t love anything in fact, not the staging, not my seat, the singing of everything in english. this was ‘lighthearted’ and the struggle was basic. BASIC. there i said it. this was a BASIC opera. serves me right for going to this instead of the opera about the school shooting that they’re self-satisfied about, very human and deep and compelling, but i don’t want to go to an opera or a musical or a theater piece or a movie about a school shooting i don’t. anyway, back to the magic flute. this was a miss for me! 2 stars.
Well this was a fun one but i didn’t win anything. or at least, i didn’t want to spend so much money. backing up, i got there and there was a huge spread of food and drinks. i felt dumb because i had just gone to find food in the neighborhood first and spent money when i didn’t need to. since i got to the gallery and realized they fed and liquored people up to get them to open up their wallets and bid on things. this is a gallery i’ve curated shows and events at, but not in over a decade. they are friends, and i like the space a lot. it’s a long running artist run space, 26 years in fact.
at the auction, which is their annual fundraiser, they had a few hundred items - mostly paintings but also drawings, photographs, sculpture, and some objects. the big highlight this year was a photograph by zoe strauss of two mummers men with their dicks exposed, showing tattoos on them. strange. it went for a lot, but can’t remember how much. maybe just under a thousand bucks? lots of other items. i wanted to bid on this one painting of a home goods store in the suburbs near where my parents live where i bought my teak cutting board. it was just such a funny and sad painting of a big box store in the suburbs surrounded by a parking lot. but i was prepared to spend up to 60 bucks, and as soon as it shot past that i was prepared to spend up to maybe 90 but it ended up going for 200 or so and i was not about that right now. i don’t even have the wallspace.
party steve showed up cause i tipped him off. even joe. pete and emily came and we went to the trestle inn afterwards. it was liike i hadn’t even left this city 10 years ago. or it was like we were picking it back up. but steve was in a bad mood. joe was in pain and used a cane and had to go rest. and pete and emily left almost as soon as they dragged me over because their babysitter wanted them to come home. i walked wearily to the commuter rail. it was freezing. i had to kill almost an hour so i got a slice of really bad pizza and read a book, waiting for the train, then heading back to the woods and eventually to bed.
this was a performance part of open studios. no input mixing, experimental vocals, clarinet, synth. can’t review myself! hard to see from an outsider’s eyes. my internal feeling was that the parts worked at times, didn’t wor at other times. ! makes sense since 1 of the trio didn’t practice with the other 2 first. anyway, i haven’t listened back to the recording yet. then can make some decisions on what i thought.
This was a fluxus spectacle, and hard to make heads or tales of, as it went on and on for 4 or 6 hours or longer. I stayed for about 2 1/2.
Nam June Paik (1932-2006), the inventor of video art, was also a great composer, sent to Germany by his parents in order to prevent him from becoming a communist in North Korea. His earliest music scores – largely unknown – form the basis for this post-fluxus action. You might hear June Paik murmuring: “I make technology ridiculous!”
I hadn’t been familiar with this part of Paik’s background, so was interested in checking this out. It was held in the red salon in the back of the beautiful Volkesbühne.
Basically, anarchic madcap theatricality ensued, like watching a 1930s cartoon come to life. A variety of pianos, complete and “prepared” were played, at times played with hammers, nails, or one’s head, and even a raw supermarket chicken wearing a diaper was made to dance on the keys. The three performers alternately yelled, played, or frolicked. I found the one white dude performer the most annoying as not only could I not understand what he was saying, he dominated the dialog, had his mic way too high (I put in ear plugs), and I don’t know, I didn’t like him.
But I loved hearing all the crazy ways to play the piano, the layering of old early 20th century recordings (via Youtube) projected on top, and even the occasional performance art performance that didn’t totally annoy me. Would I have hated fluxus when it was in its nascence or would I have been a huge practitioner, doing the annoying? Yes.
I loved this. I was on a mini trip/vacation to Leipzig and a friend of a friend joined us for brunch and invited me. I’m so glad I went.
A huge group of people came out to the artist-run space SMS Leipzig in Leipzig east. In the gallery was a video playing on a phone and then a ton of sticks leaning on one wall and various knives for carving hanging on the opposing wall. We were instructed to select a walking stick and then to optionaly decorate it. I did a zig zag cut on both sides of my stick.
Then we set out on an epic and lovely 3 hour hike through a big park, which reminded me of Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Everyone was so nice. There were about 25 of us perhaps. There were 5 or 7 or so installatons set up in various places in the park, and they weren’t disturbed by the public. There was a model of a kind of GDR house, absurdist newspaper installations, two panels that were on gorgeous wooden standing boards in a field, a video on a phone set up on a tree branch that was accompanied by coffee and snacks, a short absurd reading, a hanging fabric-based work, and maybe one or two others I’m forgetting.
We climbed hill and dale, spread out, having conversations, and being led by an intrepid scout lader wearing a winter fur style hat, a backpacker’s rucksack, and large hiking boots. The air was cool but not chilly. We marched with our hiking sticks and must have looked funny in that urban/suburban/park atmosphere to onlookers.
The full hike was a beautiful slowly roving exhibition and party format. It was accompanied by a lovely folded 1-page zine/catalog. And I’d love to try to copy this approach in NYC sometime or elsewhere.
Okay, this was a weird one. Even for me. Even for Berlin.
This was a performative installation consisting of what looked like funky funny DIY exercise machines from an artist gym, drawings of female bodybuilders, painted glass pieces, and then a performance with bodybuilders as instruments. Let me explain: There were 4 buffed up women bodybuilders, who could definitely take out anyone in the audience. They wore straps that held like guitar cable strings, and extended the strings in poses for a period of several minutes while musicians dressed in black bowed the strings.
Let’s talk performance art: it was quite a spectacle! I mean, the audience could not hold back from photographing or videographing, me included. It was not just bizarre, it was definitely singular. Will never see this again. Never seen before.
Let’s talk music: it didn’t fully work. The ‘musicians’ such as they were I think were actually artists with a concept, but the audio was not much. Hacking at strings. How could that even compare to the rippling musclebound bodies that produced the instruments? It couldn’t. My friends and I were baffled why they didn’t plug them into amps. My occam’s razor response is probably that the people didn’t know how to do that, and didn’t look into it. It would have been easy, and it would have sounded stellar. The audio sounded dinky, tinny, not much. The bodies were loud. The ladies in their not much clothing outfits were already a performance, and in the ‘art’ context they were enough. The dinky bows did not much.
But that said, it was a fun spectacle. There are to be at least 2 more performances, and I’d hope the artist would make a change and add amplification, but at the least it was a fun quick time.
Mat is an acquaintance of mine but i came into this a bit uncertain. I like their work together as musiciansand performers, but as i’m none too optimistic on LLMs I didn’t know what i’d think about a LLM-front-and-center project.
This is an exhibit, but like the opera-as-exhibit i saw at Hamburger Banhof yesterday, it’s presented as an exhibition. Coming into the exhibit there is a warning that they will record and our voices will be used to power an LLM voice database, and could be released in the public domain. You say okay and walk in. There are two smaller rooms, with 3d printed clear plexi towers/objects in an installation. It looked nice, but i couldn’t quite understand the ‘inscribed’ printed iconography, and it makes sense that the images were LLM derived because they were indecipherable. So this was the appetizer. Some background ambient Holly music is playing. But i think that was coming from the larger room.
In the main room a wooden tower to ‘heaven’ or somesuch in the center of the room, with wooden bench seating all around. It looks like a Quaker meeting to me, or other religious event. In the back was what looked like a church organ woodwork/equipment, but lined with GPU fans, looking like an insane bitcoin mining operation as musical instrument. In fact it is playing MIDI but i wasn’t sure if drives or what were making the noise.
We sat down and the benches filled with people. There are 10 weeks of events for the exhibition and this is the first one. After we gather, 3 women walk in, wearing muted robes. They are leading. Holly stood up on the landing, watching, along with Mat. An ‘angel’/LLM with a fake child’s voice narrates a bit, explaining we are to sing on cue. The leading guides are silent and pantomine directions, like the flight attendants do at during the safety warnings as you takeoff. We were handed sheets with lyrics, which were in latin. They weren’t translated, but that was okay. The leaders sang, basically ‘spirituals’. There was sparkly ambient Holly Herndon washes of sounds at points, particularly between our singing. The hipster audience was enthusiastic and participated, blending with the leaders. It did sound beautiful, and reminded me of religious singing from childhood or playing spirituals as simple sheet music in high school and learning to blend. The LLM angel voice encouraged us between songs to ‘swarm’ our voices at points, which i thought would be more hectic but overall it was just very gorgeous traditional group religious singing and the LLM thing was a gimmick, a red herring, a McGuffin, to move us along and pull us in to the event. Now that said, the LLM thing might actually come into use later, taking the recording of our voices and training to create a new digital choir voice. I think that’s the end goal. They said in writing it may be public domain’ed and the LLM angel voiceover said it would be public domain. We’ll see. But overall, it was a nice group singing activity.
The exhibition wall text lists the first name while the museum’s website lists the second, so I don’t know the true name of this show. This was a gorgeous exhibition where you essentially walk through the set of an experimental opera that was staged in-person in the village of Syrigana in Kosovo, with set pieces, costumes and audio recordings rearranged into a stunning museum solo exhibition.
This is a love story folk opera, based on the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditional story of Adam and Even but here turned into a fox and a rooster, a queer and local folklore reimagining.
There are 2 huge rooms with set pieces, and additional spaces with installations that I believe were built for the opera or added later for the exhibition. The music plays in the space, with lit stars that change and flash, and a giant backdrop sunset that shifts along with the music. There is also a documentary in the center connecting room with a an adventure the artist and their partner had visiting rural Kosovo looking for ancient artifacts of culture and meeting local people.
I loved the work so much I sat and read the book for the exhibit, that included essays and an interview with the artist. I should go back and buy the book. I’d also like a recording of the opera performance, as the music was strong. This wasn’t just an opera in name alone, like a work that had been presented at MOMA last year that was really just an installation and some strange voices and drones that played continuously. This was actually an opera with singers, staged. Here we did not see a recording of thet opera ,though I do think that would have strengthened the exhibition to have that screening/running continously somewhere for viewers.
Halilaj is a brilliant artist, who has pulled together many talents: staging, music, costumery, narrative. This was the first Kosovo opera commision, performed in Kosovo, and staged not in a performance hall but in a village. The artist shows all of the challenges in the culture, the tension that exists between ethnic albanians and serbs in his mother’s town. Only 8 days before the opera was to be staged, there was an arson attack and the storage containers holding much of the garden of eden set and costumes was burned to crisps. This I learned from reading the book. But the artist went on, prevailed, was urged to continue, was told this was the nature of the living environment in the country. Over 1200 attended the opening we learned.
In the exhibit at HB there is a gorgeous leaning/sitting structure covered in traditional rugs. We sat and listened and watched the lights changing here for a while before moving on. But the set pieces of a caravan, the giant sun, the watching married couple of fox and rooster, all were strong, looking out over us. I recommend seeing this exhibit, and seeing if it moves you as much as me.
Okay so this wasn’t a DJed show. It was a talk on the Black Atlantic sound migrations - from the Southern US to Jamaica to the UK to Europe to South Africa, and beyond. Denise’s book Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters (original performer of Hound Dog, popularized by Elvis) is now on my reading list. She wove a historical narrative of Black musicians and the flow of music between cultures and technologies. My recommendation is to listen to My Brother The Wind by Sun Ra right now! (Ra banging it up on a Moog synth in 69).
Afterwards was a screening of 1998 documentary Modulations: Cinema for the Ear, an INCREDIBLE documentary on the birth of electronic sound systems and machines - Stockhausen, Schaefer, Saunderson, Cox, Can, Kraftwerk, Bambataa, Autechre, Squarepusher, Alec Empire, Donna Summer, Aphrodite, Ryoji Ikeda, LFO, John Cage, Moroder, etc. The list is a mile longer but i’ll stop there. See it!
I’ve been at a lot of shows lately but couldn’t pass this one up. I’ve been wanting to see DJ Haram and wanting to visit 90mil so this was the perfect combo, especially with this interesting lineup that seemed half DJ event and half live performance sets.
Got there a bit early and hung in the bar/cafe area. Played some chess. I brought a mess of friends so it was all good. There was ambient stuff in the beginning (Kovac?) and then some really great jamaican dub, super dubbed out dubby dub. No Lee Scratch Perry but that kind of thing ya know? For example at one point I had to do it, I shazammed and it was the real deal Glen Brown and King Tubby Version 78 style. I was in couch lock hanging while friends left to get some Halloumi situation on.
They came back and I got to my feet and the night continued with DJ Haram throwing styles every which way from rap and hard club styles while she sang over it, and Dakn joined with some rap on one or two pieces. The audience was super way into it. Dancing hard even though the place wasn’t packed, the energy was great.
my egyptian friends met my sudanese friends kind of deal.
Dakn followed haram, who got such a long and loud ovation. he unleashed a rolling combo of UK Grime and boom bap with arabic rap vocals with maybe a touch too much reverb to try to glue it all together, but the beat production was HARD ya know? Extreme audience dancing reaction like totallly vibing out. My whole crew was there and LOVING it. peaking time. I mean, this was such a nice bit of energy, like how can you bottle this moment or make a kodak snapshot in your mind? took some photos and videos but of course they’ll do nothing to really bottle up this experience beyond leaving a fleeting reminder like these words. i get why mckenzie wark writes on raving (do i?) and the whole rest of the bit. berlin was doing its berlin thing and the combo of the sound, experimentation, fumes, haze, effects, chemistry, crew, brew in a homegrown miasma really worked on me.
faded home at a reasonable hour, melting around 3.
Yow! Killer show. This afternoon my college roommate that lives in Berlin messaged me to see if I was interested in going to the show. Yes I was! I’ve had a number of friends tell me how good Ciani was live, and I like listening to her music, especially her Frkwys Sunergy album with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. The price wasn’t completely insane, and tix still available, so I jumped at it.
On my way to the show, on the S-bahn, I see a message from my friend. His kid is sick so he’s staying home but his wife will be there. So I went to meet up with her and her friend. The show was held in the round, with rugs on the floor. People were mostly sitting, and some lying down, every which place they could. We had to elbow and tut mir leid our way into a place, but we found room near the front right in front of Ciani’s setup Buchla synth.
I missed the DJ opener but no one had much to say about it, so okay. The duo of Cassie Kinoshi and Petter Eldh I wasn’t sure what to expect. I listened to them in the afternoon and heard more and less traditional jazz. But what they performed was experimental textured electronic bass noises with looping sax and wooden flute. It was good, far out. I didn’t quite fall asleep, my mark for a relaxing performance, but I liked it quite a bit. Nice textures and variety and almost almost a beat. It would have fit well with the sounds of Atonal festival I think.
After their wonderful set there was an announcement of a 30 minute break. I kind of groaned but it was okay. We talked and sat, not wanting to give up our good location in front of Ciani’s synth. When Ciani started, it was immediately good. Now it was 4 channel sound, and she played with moving the sounds around for the entire hour-ish set. Now I usually don’t care about 4 channel work, and even here it was a bit gimmicky, but it was maybe the least bad version of that effect I’ve heard. (Seriously friends, we don’t need it. I’m very impressed! I’m clapping. Good work! Now put those extra channels back in the box! Thank you!). I wasn’t sure if she had a joystick to control the panning but I think it was some automation she setup as it seemed to loop through the panning forever and ever pretty much.
The sounds were classic Ciani, and quite complex, running pace but not hectic, variety of textures, changing. Definitely not tired new age, but a timeless modular synth sound. The Buchla has such an expressive range (was it used on any of the Fourth World music stuff? need to look that up. maybe not? seems not.). I particularly liked when she rolled up the sounds so squashed and flanged they’d sound like white noise beats, pitter pattering or attacking over time. Her changes are fast and expressive thanks to her use of the Buchla Thunder controller in conjunction with the Easel Command. After the set she encouraged to look at her ‘beautiful Buchla’ but I was actually fascinated how many tablets she had (4 or 5!) each with a different software synth loaded onto them. She said how much she loves the Animoog app (Buchla and Moog, united in harmony! lol. Don Buchla would be rolling in his grave?). It did sound lovely.
The audience was in awe. I really loved it too. My friend’s wife’s friend said she’d seen Ciani maybe 6 times, in the past year alone. Wow.
As usual I started to feel restless maybe 10 or 20 before she finished, but it was a good and energizing set, I’m glad I went, and it was a ‘good vibe’ overall. I’m feeling inspired, and ready for more music-making and concerts again soon.
What a rad performance night. I found it listed on the echtzeitmusik mailing list of mostly improv music concerts. I didn’t know what to expect other than seeing the night would combine dance with live experimental music and that one of the performers would be playing daxophone. In fact, a competing performance the same evening elsewhere also had a daxophone performer listed. Since most of the world doesn’t know what a daxophone is, and i’ve only really ever seen my friend D play it before, it’s pretty wild there are at least 2 more performers in berlin. figures.
we’l come back to daxophone, or the dax. to start, the night featured 2 performers, a dancer and a barry sax player, though the sax player also moved around in a semi or fully-improvised duet with the dancer. it was nice and meditative, slow, and i started to nod off almost asleep i was so relaxed. i came to. i clapped. it was really good. they explained that next would be the participants from a workshop in dance and music improv they had led that afternoon. 2 performers started abruptly but were joined by maybe 10 more people. there was violin and another sax player and the rest were dancers. the movements were compelling, funny, really good at working together. afterwards we were told many of the people were performing for the first time, but i didn’t get the feeling of that. it was strong and compelling, playful. surprisingly not full of ‘improv dance’ tropes.
a short break. i got some bibimbop from the restaurant in front of the exploratorium space, which was a large room that reminded me of many other performance art venues in other cities. after some food i got back to my seat, i had accidentally left my jacket there so no one took my spot. a dax player was setting up next to my chair and i introduced myself. of course he knew my friend.
this had been listed as dax and electronics and butoh. i hadn’t seen live butoh performance before. this wasn’t butoh as i understand it. at least not the traditional form, if that can be stated that way. butoh is a modern performance practice that began after the second world war. ok, i’m bopping over to wikipedia:
It is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion. However, with time butoh groups are increasingly being formed around the world, with their various aesthetic ideals and intentions.
ok so the performer wasn’t wearing white body makeup nor was it super slow. it was definitely a mix of mostly fast and frenetic body contortions. also, it was directly reacting to the music. let’s talk about that. the musician started with pedals and some kind of mic and played with feedback and delay. kind of like no-input-mixing-board music. there were daxophone tongues on the floor and held by the dancer. as the dance piece went on the musician also moved, like in the first act, and crossed the floor. the dancer helped unspool the instrument cable as the musician crossed to the other side of the room and set up the dax, seemingly performing this as if in dance. the piece wound on and on and took on many forms, though i never got bored.
there were moments of daxophone tongues being thrown and gathered, many way of playing the instrument, the dancer removing their suit and wearing a yellow bathing suit underneath, and a yellow light held to their head, reflecting their bright dyed yellow hair. lights were eventually abruptly put out and the feedback noise wound down. a success and beautiful night, with great performances of sound and bodies whirling around each other in improvised motion, physical and spiritual pushing and pulling. at the end, i was feeling inspired and excited. exchanged contact info, skated to the subway, purchased kebab in a box and boarded the ubahn home, where i met up with my housemates and we watched skate videos til late into the night.
Wow, this was a cool spaced out fuzz odyssey tho over too short. Maybe they had played earlier sets, i don’t know. but basically, my friend brought us to this space that he volunteers at and i’d heard lots of good things about it. it’s a social space, a hangout and organizing community garden, very punk, eco-toilet, improvised architecture, tent structure, fire pit, etc. people were bbbq’ing and putting food out. there was a bar and when i asked if i could donate some money this woman asked me to pay with a smile. i obliged.
this fuzzfest of a noise jam broke out with this saxomophone-dude, a woman doing gentle vocal murmurs, a guy that on and off played on his pocket korg, and a guitarist and keyboardist. maybe someone else. they loped around but it was engaging, and the sax and korg in particular pulled me in. the woman doing vocals had a laptop, maybe processing or recording, and the sticker on top said FIGHT COPS (see photo). a buncha of folks just hanging and having a good time and introducing themselves. lots of people were refugees from war.
at one point a birthday song broke out and it turned out it was someone’s birthday. at 10pm the music stopped, to avoid problems with the neighbors. we talked about anarcho organizing principles and experiences in our 4 different countries (malaysia, ukraine, china, us). we started to get cold so Z, T, S and I took the u-bahn home, then we played a few rounds of poker, using beer/soda tops as chips, and baked apples. anytime someone won a round everyone else yelled ‘Capitalist!’
Went to the opening of the Diane Arbus and Ligia Lewis exhibitions at Gropius Bau. This was a free event and despite arriving relatively early at 7pm the lines were long. We caught the tail end of some dance choreography but the website doesn’t list who it was and there was no info onsite, definitely a mistake to not credit your artists. This always pisses me off about bigger institutions. Hopefully they at least paid some money to these performers! But I don’t take it for granted.
We stood in line for the exhibitions, and enjoyed them both, especially as Yazzus’s DJ set bumped in the background. In the corner of that massive open air central hall, the sound gave us a little kick, was a little knotty in a good way, though it wasn’t pushing into new territory. This wasn’t like DJ Marcelle, but no knock, this was danceable despite not being in a dancing space. We got drinks after getting our fill of the exhibits and sat in the hall to listen. In fact, 2 hours had elapsed in what seemed like rapid time, so we swamped the bookstore looking for deals before catching the U6 home.
I had been looking forward to this especially since I saw them play one time previously, 22 years ago in Prague when I studied abroad there. The old radio building venue is interesting, built right before the rise of the Nazi architecture. Outside was gloomy and wet but the inside of the building looks like a pool, but sort-of post art deco subway style. The audience was the kind of audience that goes to “International House”, meaning it wasn’t very diverse, certainly not as much as a free concert in the park group would be and at 40 euros for the back-of-the-hall seats we sat in, no surprise.
We got some wine and the requisite brezel as we settled in. There was no opener (shouldn’t there have been?), but the hall was beautiful, there really were no bad seats as sight lines and acoustics were very strong. And I was glad it was packed for the band. Maybe a couple hundred shy of a thousand in attendance. That’s a lot. The concert was exactly two hours, with a 15 minute intermission (more wine?) and 1 encore, that I’m sure was stipulated in the contract.
Let’s get into the throat singing. It was rad, and I was thankful they seemed to balance out the cowboy tuva pieces with the raw voice. I did want for a bit more multi-tone singing, but it’s possible that while I said the sound was good equally everywhere, maybe I was too far back to hear the lower frequencies and such and they didn’t get picked up as well on mic. So it’s a tiny question or criticism maybe but still, it was a varied and beautiful performance, the songs were not repetitive. I didn’t get bored. I wanted more when it ended, and yet I was tired and ready to go home to bed too (maybe the wine). I don’t need to see them in a year or two, but 22 years would be too long again.
This was an offsite performance art event organized by PickleBar in Moabit. A friend joined last minute, and they didn’t have a bike, and we headed to the art space first accidentally before realizing it was offsite. So we arrived late, and since Germans always begin at the stated time, even young cool people, we were told by the door greeter this meant we had missed half the performance. Fuckin eh, man. So I was a bit pissed. My foreigner mind cannot really fathom having a performance that starts at a specific time, lasts only 38 minutes, then everyone is supposed to leave, travelling wherever they came from or somewhere else. Literally people started walking out the door immediately after the show. It’s done! LOL. Who does that? Anyway, it’s normal here!
Ok, so let’s jump to what this was: a strange and great very Berlin performance - two women chanting, moving, licking, climbing. This was held in an old hospital complex in Moabit, in what appeared to be in maybe a lecture hall, with raised rows of seats in a semi-circle that rise up to a balcony. While we only saw 15 minutes max, what we did see was great. Strong sound design, good costumes, compelling movement and chanting by the two performers.
A poster and long text description, almost an essay accompanied the performance, part of a series called She Wailers on (keywords!) female voice and power, silence and hidden violence, sorrow and uncovered history. Those things did come out in small ways, though I didn’t see the whole performance, and I think mostly it came out through reading the text first. Climbing up and over each other and up and over the rows of chairs, tables, etc with hard edge ambient in a darkened space surrounded by Berlin’s performance art scene - it really worked. My friend and I loved it.
A walk home and we stopped at Go Asia for chinese vegetables, then a hang out at home and we had a dark ambient drone music session on the modular synth.
It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? Weeks and weeks. I haven’t gone dancing in that time, or seen any other shows, which are usually the things I write about here. I have seen some screenings and such but I’ve chosen the constraints of “live music / DJing / performance” so those will remain un-written here. I have gone on vacation however, to the island of Usedom along the Baltic Sea. And there, for lack of other forms of live music entertainment, and because I do like classical performances, I chose to see the NDR Elbphilharmonie perform.
Let me say that the performance was “fine” and “nothing special” but still Classical is nice to listen to, a “treat” usually. But the music wasn’t the main attraction, at least to my friend. She was very curious about the venue, in Peenemunde. This was one of the third reich’s military research and planning spaces, with forced labor. A very dark history. The museum itself was unfortunately not open though the grounds where we were had some interpretation materials. It was also a cold drizzly night, and due to some interpersonal issues, the bleak atmosphere did not contribute to my mood, despite my friend’s enthusiasm for trying to learn the history of the area. I had gotten us to the venue on the train but not realized that the train stopped a half hour before the concert was to end. Perhaps we should have just left the concert early to walk back to the last train. My friend was unamused and asked me to figure out the way back, talking to Germans there to find a way back. Since we were not older than 50, and not dressed exactly the same as everyone else in black and off-black, and my friend and I look different, and we were in a conservative area, and the fact I’m an auslander, I think all of these made it hard for me/us to find a ride out of there after the show. I arranged a taxi, having been told it would be 10 or maybe 20 euros. The taxi driver told us 30 when we got in, then 50 when we got out. My friend got into an argument I could not fully follow in my weak German. We did not pay 50 but the night was expensive, involved arguments, snuck in wine, a depressive atmosphere, bland Sibelius, and speech from a represenative for a probably-conservative right politician. 1 out of 10 stars.
The Algorithmic Pattern Salon 2025 was a super fun conference, existing very much at the intersection. Let’s try to draw it out: It’s not an Art and Code conference, or a tech art or a mathematics or a knitting conference but instead some combination of all of these plus something more. Just by its nature of being founded by a visionary live coder / programmer, it seemed to pull members of each of these communities to establish a new quasi-super-scene. And because it was in Sheffield and not in London or Paris (par example), it was 60% people from the UK, and then folks from other parts of Europe mostly as well as the US (at least 3 of us, but 2 of us currently based in Europe), and some folks from further afield.
During the day Friday and Saturday were talks, usually 15 minutes or so, with 5 - 10 minutes of Q&A. In the evening were mostly live coding performance nights, with Friday being a sit-down concert and Saturday being simultaneous live coding club nights. During the performances there were tables set up in the bar for folks to do kumihimo weaving. I sat down and got sucked in and missed two friends’ sets.
I popped over to catch the show next door and it was pretty much a present day Braindance Coincidence style post-IDM set by this group interworld media media crew. I’m not sure which two performers I saw actually but believe it was possibly MYNA with Sleepsang? OMG it was so next level. It started ambient-y deep tripper material but then -zwip, spin it back - jumped in bpm, energy and breaks. I particularly like harder stuff when I’m out dancing, like juke footwork / gabber / some breakcore that’s not too corny. This was as good or better than most anything I’d heard DJ’ed performed live, and it was incredible. This was in a tiny room about the size of half of my apartment and everyone was dancing like crazy and couldn’t even keep up. Seriously, like Afx or Bogdan Raczynski level. I loved it. Check them out.
Sunday AM I attended the kumihimo weaving workshop, which I had gotten up to the night before as mentioned, but learned and tried a bit more, making a 16-strand keychain for myself, then heading out of town on the train with some new friends.
Overall, this was a great weekend, art, code, ‘academic’ but not too academic talks, live coding, weaving, workshops, raving. Really nice.
Everest is my friend and most of my Berlin friends were at this too, including long lost friends, new friends, and old friends. Everest was a bit jetlagged and had been setting up until the opening, but I liked the feel and seeing all their work, that I had mostly experienced online previously, in person in an exhibit.
I feel so self-conscious about showing my artwork, made on a computer, with an audience i usually consider online-first. So this reassured me about my old Babycastles days and my own approach: just set up some screens and make it varied enough and an interesting enough use of the space, and trust your audience will be able to view the screen as ‘primary’, it’s okay. While it was a ‘minimal treatment’ it was still interesting. Everest set up old broken internet pieces starting from the right of the gallery entrance and then more recent and working pieces as you moved around the space.
They also used a variety of screens to break it up, from old CRT monitors to large flatscreens on a pole to videos on regular monitors. And they have printed books, print-outs taped to the wall. Some interactive works, some works you ambiently browse through a book, some works you look at on the wall. Works for me.
We hung a couple hours, talked and talked. It was great to meet Nimrod, and later Tilman in person.
I moved on to SAVVY but there was a LOUD Dj and it covered up the ability to enjoy any of the artwork, especially since it was all didactic “this work is about X” type pieces. Doesn’t mix well with ‘cool beats’. (I’m being snarky).
Afterwards: drinks with friends and bike ride home in the rain at midnight. When I got home i played ping pong and ate salad greens with herringsalat.
Wasn’t sure what to expect. I put on a nice shirt. But it was more or less mostly the same art scene crew I’ve seen at all the other art scene places in Berlin these past couple months so t-shirt/weirdcore woulda coulda shoulda been fine. Was meeting a freunde here, and got there a few min early. Security wouldn’t let me in because it wasn’t yet time but I saw other people in there so “accidentally” I walked around and went in maybe through restaurant staff entrance to get to my friend. We sat and waited and then people started streaming in a couple minutes later.
I thought there would be some opening inside the museum but no. In fact, i don’t think any exhibits were open. It was really just a ‘traditional’ hang out party typical networking drinks thing, on the patio out front. So just drinking smoking n chatting. But….the DJ that opened played the whole 3 1/2 hour event, and she was incredible.
The opening sounds I was confused. Dogs barking. Lots of barking. Was laughing and my friend was like “That’s DJ Marcelle.” Slowly rolling unfolding over the event, with the crowd mostly not noticing the set so much on account of the volume being so low. (Excorp note: see my previous complaints about volume levels of Hamburger Banhof shows.) But as the night went on, the darkness came on, and the beats became footwork triplets or beat repeats, dembow and reggaeton, the crowd was moving - still chill but vibin’. We sat down on the museum stairs adjacent, flashed some smiles and waves with Marcelle and more and more people plopped down next to us to join or danced in front of the stage while all around them smokin and drinkin and ..
Whole set was great. When it ended, lots of people including my friend went up and bought her latest vinyl single. I appreciated she had a sign that proceeds would be donated to support the Palestinian Childrens Relief Agency, in keeping with her playing of parts of Nan Goldin’s speech from the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in fall 2024.
Goodbyes and then I rode home along the canal, a solo biker with nary but the occasional canal-side dream under the moon.
This was a nice and relaxed audio night at Pedalmarkt, the second of these events that I’ve attend. It’s inspired by the Show Us Your Screens live code show and tell night also held monthly (at Offline). There was a small crowd and it felt very much like a group of friends. The opener was actually a talk on Amateur radio, including some light theory, what you can do on the radio bands, QSL cards, different formats. There were good audience questions. After the opener there are 10 minute sets by the visitors. Host Andre kicked things off with a performance using a portable shortwave radio and a web-based Software Defined Radio (SDR). He added granular synthesis and other effects to the mores code, and Single Side Band (voice) communication and FT8. I hadn’t heard FT8 before and decided it sounded like aliens, even before the effects were added. After this performance was a twinkly guitar + laptop drone-y performance that I enjoyed as well.
Man, I woulda coulda shoulda probably gone to an earlier night and seen more folks I know, but you know what, this was great, and I saw stuff I didn’t know about, ’cept for the headliner. Literally all the acts were incredible. I’ll just list em: Anthony Linell, Jokkoo Collective, Topdown Dialectic, Heith, Merzbow / Iggor Cavalera / Eraldo Bernocchi. Let’s run it down. Anthony Linell played dark ravey night Berlin music but in the best way, synthy driving grooves. The lighting in the huge warehouse was perfect. Jokkoo Collective played some neo-afrofuturist by way of late cyberpunk / The Matrix rave with 6 musicians and vocalist. This started looser jazzy and then because a baddie bop rave thingo. The audience soaked up these two performances. 2000 people there? More? Topdown Dialect. Modern abstract Dub-probably I needed to be turnt to enjoy it more but i werent turnt and I went down and played games, got tofu douhan to eat, chatted with friends. Topdown Dialectic was just gorgeous and immersive shimmering flashing lights and driving beats. I hadn’t been able to properly get a taste online prior, and so was caught off guard by how beautiful this was. Incredible. I was front left crew, maybe immersed in about 20 feet from the stage. Just jamming. Heith came next: again I didn’t know who this was or what to expect. It was 2 people, playing like raved out Drain Gang style with the vocals and delivery of a descendent of Crystal Castles but like….they played harmonica, EWI, some weird vocal computer thing and so it was jazzy (not the right word), spaced out, groovey-and intense. I loved it. Everyone was wayyy into it. Thing 2000 people eye rolling back in the head. I found the experimental games by Jenna Sutella and played them. Very good! Last act was Merzbow/ Iggor Cavalera/ Eraldo Bernocchi. I’d seen Merzbow at Knockdown a couple yrs ago and didn’t love the live set. Harsh repetitive broken guitar without the fun of Merzbeat. Not tonight: it started subdued, footage of a forest (which looped the whole set, oh well, a missed opportunity) with nature sounds, then a rising merzbow-ian (i’m allowed) noise crush white noise thing. I should mention the other dudes. They were present. They subdued masami a bit, played together, hard to distinguish what they were doing until the iggor calavera dude (from sepultera - can’t remember what they sound like) switched to the drums about 40 min in and started slow drumming like the Boredoms in Boadrum 88 that I saw in like 2008 and thought sucked despite Andrew WK and every famous drummer ever being there. Anyway within a couple min the drumming increased and became a wash and Masami kept going. Was this the best ambient set I’ve ever seen? Not even close. But it was distinctly merzbow and enjoyable. One funny thing: Merzbow barely acknowledged the audience. They were the headliner on the closing night. As they finished their track he unplugged his modified guitar looking thing, walked off. The other two embraced and bowed, maybe Merzbow barely acknowledged, then was off. Go cash that check Merzbow lol.
Berlinners enjoyed it but said the minimal lighting and use of video projection was a missed opportunity and that maybe the slashed culture budget was to blame for that. I didn’t know about that aspect so for me the huge space I hadn’t much experience in took center stage, and I liked the setup and the great sound system. A win despite the, gulp, 55euro entry fee!
For real though this was the long night of the museums, where Germans get drunk (politely) and stumble around the Natural History Museum looking at gems with a scientific interest, not like those Cali commies. I visited the New Synagogue - don’t let the name fool you, it’s from the mid 1800s. I learned its history, what happened prior to and during the holocaust, sang some during havdallah. It was an interesting experience, mobbed by German visitors who seemed eager to learn about its history. There was cantorial singing which sounded beautiful but distant. It was a powerful experience seeing the reconstructed synagogue, collected artifacts, and interpretation.
I only went for about 30 minutes, to see my friend Lor perform. She is a powerful singer and rapper, paired here for the first time with a frame drum player. There were some sound technical difficulties and I could tell they were frustrated, but I didn’t notice it as an audience member and said that to them, that the audience enjoyed it very much.
A whole mess of folks played this one. It was a ‘noise show’ but this was a nice venue! On top of a 8 floor building of (subsidized) studios and such. The speakers were huge. There was a large and a cute cozy makeout couch, a patio for smokers. The night started with Auguste Vickunaite who loong loopy fuzzed out tape loops. I was distracted during TRJJ or missed their set. Gajek played fuzzed out guitar. Inkasso and ML played a KILLER harsh beat Vatican Shadow type deelio and the audience was grooving hard. Smoke machines were pumpin all night and you could really get lost in the space and the sound. Nosedrip closed out and I believe played between acts. Overall the night rolled right along merrily and it was the nicest noise venue that still felt like a venue in a long time. Oh, and a plug for the insane speaker setup. Probably 20k Klipsch speaker setup in the space. How?
This was an art show and performance, invited by my friend, who ended up coming way late, but my other friend joined me. She took like one look and was like, this is going to be a bondage performance art thing, which I didn’t realize at all but she’s German and realized it instantly from the wood pieces set up.
My friend Nina was visiting from LA and performed along with 5 other performance artists. This was a real salon, in a smallish DIY space not near anything else, in Wedding. Like, no food nearby, no stores. Not even beer. No spati within blocks. The night started off with a ritual led by Nina. We closed our eyes and she explained she would put a caper in our mouth. So sweet, she interrupted her trance-inducing incantation to ask if anyone couldn’t eat it, and (I’m slow) I asked if it was vegetable and Nina knows me so well she said “it’s not shellfish” since she has a great memory despite me not living in LA for 8 years and she knows I’m allergic to shellfish. So anyway, I did the caper ritual and that kicked things off so well. Many poetry readings, prose readings, films, Nina performed music alongside her incredible edited abstract video art. This was a nice night.
Led by two friends, a performative walking tour equal parts political / dialectic lecture and girl in a Godard film. This was a tour through ‘memories and ghosts’ and grounded in the writing of the artists, who read their parts or silently led our unruly throng of rambunctious artists from around the world. Maybe there were 25 of us? Afterwards I led a parade of bikers to the biergarten and got Matjes herring platter. SO good. Some men were playing a pretty ok few blues numbers as well but thankfully we were able to respectfully talk to each other anyway as we were across the garten from them and everyone else was talkin too.
I found this on the echtzeitmusik newsletter only an hour before the show and I looked up the spot (a latitude and longitude listing) and found it was only a 10 minute bike ride away. Perfect. It listed the spot as across the river from the band. I was running maybe 15 minutes late but sure enough, the location led me to a seating area in the shade across from a graffitied building, a warehouse? 4 musicians were noodling around, setting up. Marina Cyrino – amplified flute; Tony Elieh – bass, electronics; JD Zazie – turntable, CDJs; Matthias Koole – guitar, electronics.
This was a noodly plinky electronic-y one. It was a bit cold and the obvious audience at first was just me and a couple sitting on another bench. It started mild and nonchalant but after a few minutes as the boats rolled by it picked up steam, with the guitar noodles and electronic sample drums and stabs building some momentum. The flippery floppery never turned into a groove or varied much at all, but due to the environment, I didn’t mind and seemed to work despite the same-y-ness.
Some families came by, but they quickly moved along when they realized it was skronky freejazz. As other riverside strollers went by, they occasionally stopped. Even a raving screaming roaring drunk man with some mental health issues came and watched and bellowed, cursing out the band while the rest of us applauded.
The sound was not quite loud enough to overpower the tourist boats that rolled by every couple minutes, but it was nice hearing the music merging with the rest of the environment. This was a cool setup. I love outdoor shows, and this idea of playing at a distance from the audience was unique and I’d love to hear it again. They had an intermission and announced on their loudspeaker there’d be a 15 minute break. I biked off in search of Doner kabob but had some trouble finding a place open on a Sunday (typical Germany problem). Then when I found a spot there was a line. All that is to say by the time I got back, they must have played a second shorter set because they were already packing up. I sat a little bit, ate my kabob, then rolled home satisfied.
So this was my first time there. I was told it would be mostly tourists, but that it had a great sound system, good rooms. We got there at 02:30, there were 4 of us together. No problem getting in. Crowd skewed a bit young, lewks were not as intense as elsewhere, and to be honest I hadn’t done the intel on who was DJing so was at mercy of my friend’s choice here.
It was def Berlin club house - basic 4x4x4x4x4x4x4x4x4x4. “Longtime readers” know that’s not my jam but it wasn’t bad, it was catchy and I got into it. We started on the upper floor, drank some mate, did a little dance.
I don’t think they had Function Ones but some a strong sound setup as expected, maybe slightly too loud (Ohm for example tuned the volume correctly). After an hour we went down to the main dungeon-ish room maybe at 0330 or 0400, wall to wall packed of course. This had a nice feel, dark and mysterious, big warehouse room with tunnels and such snaking out.
We made our way to the front, mostly carefully. This room was dark, sweaty, lights skittering, elbows out. So packed it felt a bit like rats in a cage. Here the beat was better. We moved for a couple hours. Time passes slow and fast. Flashing lights. Roll your ankles up, keeps the body cool. Little trick from Ian.
I was ready to go before Ian was, but I hadn’t come by bike, phone almost dead. Thankfully I knew the way to go. It’s starting to get light out. I join the laaate night partiers/early risers on the Ubahn, switch to the S24, then a short walk from the Sbahn. I’m walking up to the building and I see a fox! A good sign! Walk in. No one up. It’s breakfast, time for bed.
This was my own party so I’m biased: it was perfect. First, how can you go wrong starting with a BBQ? We had ribs, turkey, sausage, crusty french bread and hummus, cheeses, salad, drinks, a nice spread.
Around 2130 began the music. Patrick started with an experimental music set, using lots of processed vocals. Meanwhile SarahGHP was live coding visuals using La Habra. At an early point it became clear a natty speaker was crapping out, popping and ticking. We tried changing out the cable, but ultimately just had to turn down a bit. This was a setback to be sure, but we kept the music going despite the issue.
Next up was ExquisiteCorp with a dark brooding set. Opening with a wall of drones that built, then devolved into spinning blips, closing out with staccato jittery beats. The visuals by SarahGHP were a good match. Afterwards a live set by Lor on vocals and looper. Absolutely gorgeous singing, heartfelt lyrics. Huge audience response after her set, again despite our crappy house speaker situation.
Rounding out the night was a house set by DJ Blackmoonchild out of Detroit. Kind of a perfect end of the evening while evenyone kept eating and drinking til the early hours.
a tale of two cities:
first from a friend (who i think is anonymous but i wanted to quote anyway):
dang we had all the hit songs tonight from #autechre : angry bass bees, FM robots take out the trash, sleeping house allergic to own chimney, Really Really Big Steps, metalic puppies going mental at daycare, 303 acid riff bullied by white noise burst, electro house track you remembered from a dream, 7/8 thing that gives you heart arrhythmia
secondly, my own take! let me start by saying someone gifted me a ticket. i should also couch things and say my favorite autechre album is from 1995 (Tri Repetae) and while I’ve dipped into their music in the past 20 years I haven’t generally been able to listen to a whole album of theirs or a whole one of the 4 sessions from their NTS performances. so while i was excited to see them live, and enjoy talking to sean online, and i admire that they’ve been consistently and increasingly making more abstract music over the years, i am not a diehard fan. it pains me to say this. okay, that out of the way, let’s advance here.
i have no idea who opened the concert. i came halfway through their set and waited in line to buy a scotch and soda. next came tim haswell. he was okay. i’m doing him a disservice but i would shorthand mention there were some merzbow moments, some scribble scrabble moments, some brief low end drone moments that were shorter than i’d like and hard to hear. i kept wanting like a Deru or Tim Hecker moment (I’m sure that sound-alike Hecker confusion happens a lot for him) but of course that didn’t really come.
Finally, as the printer paper signs outside the door of the venue indicated, Autechre’s performance will be held entirely ‘in the dark’ so they started to pull a curtain shut, though of course some light could still stream in. Autechre began playing, and I heard the same Max patch style I associate with them, with wobbling synced and unsynced beats and danceable moments.
Their entire set was an hour and a half exactly. The first 40 minutes were fine, workable, but I kept wanting things to be more danceable. Their beats are pretty consistently made from the same ‘stuff’ (I’m sure someone could say in the comments if I had that - SQUARE WAVE or whatever, FILTERED WHITE NOISE BASS DRUM idk). I realy like more variety of samples, and kinds of synthesis but they are playing in the midrange and low end, and the club’s PA system was not up to snuff for the size of the room and the amount of bodies there. At least 1k there, and yet the sound was a bit muddy undiscernable in the midrange at times. That said, no one else said anything about this.
I had expected the performance to go an hour. At the 45 minute mark I was having fun and while I had been vibing the whole time I broke out into light D&B dancing. I was on the only risers in the space and while it was dark and I couldn’t see the stage, which I’m sure was just Sean and Rob on their lappies “checking email”, it was nice to be a bit higher. I tried to take a photo but it was too dark. I went from interested and dancing, to appreciating things breaking beats, exploding, to getting bored, back to interest and things changed a little bit, then, okay, when will this end, to “I like this a lot.” That’s also what happens when I watch Tibetan Monks chant for 90 minutes. I know this. The whole performance was 89 minutes by my count.
I enjoyed it, I really did. But I also started to think about this show and maybe Autechre’s music kind of like - please don’t punch your screen - a kind of ’experimental Drill’n’Bass Grateful Dead, in the sense of there are certain beats/non-beats and sounds and approaches that they use as their kit of parts, and you’re going to hear them (or listen at home) to appreciate variations on these kits of parts. Honestly, I hope this doesn’t sound like I dislike them or think it’s junk: I actually really appreciate this approach. It’s almost like performing generative music rather than letting the machines autoplay, “the old fashioned way.”
At the end of their set one friendquaintence said it was the best concert he’d ever been to. He went and bought a shirt. They were jokingly minimal. On the front: Autechre Twenty Twenty Five and a blue oblong ellipse.
Other friendquaintences also loved the show. They started talking about going to a Takemitsu / Xenakis concert coming up, not my faves, though I can appreciate them historically and “intellectually” and I think there’s a similarity there too.
What can we deduce from this? I am an ass, and Autechre is great. Bring on more blurry broken beats. Tschüss
Our friend Blackmoonchild was DJ’ing this afternoon easy breezy affair. Biked over with Chinendum, enjoying the wind and sun. We got there and ran into Blackmoonchild herself looking for the entrance. Made sense we were all together because she sent a dropped pin. She tried calling the number she had for the place. I didn’t hear thumping bass so I figured we weren’t exactly close (real heads know that’s how you find a “secret party”).
After a little to-do we found the route down a long twisty path through the skate park, past the shipping containers. Inside an open air dance party space that reminded me of some of the parties in Kingston perhaps.
Blackmoonchild jumped into it with detroit with techno, Detroit house and even a bit of footwork thrown in. Some highlights include a rework of Art of Noise - Moments of Love and a couple tracks I didn’t know from DJ Assault that were unmistakably his.
I have to say, I danced the full 2 hour set top to bottom and then some, and not just because she was a friend. The crowd was up and down, looked good, having food, enjoying the weather, sipping and dancing, ambling around, and lounging. Perfect sunday afternoon ‘brunch’ dancing vibe.
“This is what berlin was like 20 years ago.” This was a packed place, some kind of Berlin cohousing association that had recently taken over the space and would be modernising it.
It was a kind of celebratory party, with attendees from all of the other cohousing spaces. There was a silly passphrase to get in, in English, that I didn’t take seriously, but then there was a large group of people that couldn’t get in because they didn’t know the password. Legit.
I was confused because everyone looked, hmmm, don’t know how to describe it… I had been told most of the people were artists but they didn’t dress like artists from the US, which of course makes sense, and so I couldn’t quite place things at first. There was a disconnect (only in my head, not for anyone else) between the dingy, graffiti-covered walls everywhere, makeshift bathrooms in landings, worndown century old building - and the dress of the people. Maybe to state the obvious: no one wears jeans or t-shirts. All wear dresses, skirts, trousers, button down shirts. Nothing wrong with that, but fairly different from what I see back home, and definitely different than the club scene here I’m used to.
Let’s talk about the music and the hang. The genres listed were the usual suspects: electro, techno, house, eclectic, disco, and mutant pop. Actually, I didn’t get to hear mutant pop I don’t think, and I’m not sure what that would mean (Negativland? Evolution Control Committee? Danger Mouse? Neil Cicierega? Bootie? Girl Talk? Are you impressed?). Inside were different rooms with DJs, mostly house. I wanted to find but couldn’t find the techno. There were also bar rooms. Out back another bar, a fire people were sitting around, and then a couple hundred people sitting anyplace they could. Inside the place was pretty packed as well. The house DJ was not bad, and despite being fairly tired, I made a best effort at dancing for an hour or so before taking a break to sit by the fire outside and later heading out.
If you don’t know floating try to picture the ewok village. With half a dozen bamboo and “eco-village” x hippie burner buildings are constructed semi-permanently, connected via a series of piers and walkways suspended just above a gross miasma pond of runoff from Tempelhofer airport / field.
You enter on a back road at the park. The path looks confusing, why are all these cars parked everywhere? There are like 1970s veedubs and caravans (“do people live in these?”) parked all around. I saw some lady looking confused and so I asked her if she was looking for Floating. Yes she was. Visiting from Estonia. Ok. So I led her and Xiapei with me up the path til we got to the 3 story staircase/jungle lookout over the expanse of the mires of Floating U.
The name and description of the event made it sound archaic and spacey and it lived up to its name, but in a good way. In the afternoon was a workshop where people built all kinds of radio antennas to transmit and receive from. At least that’s my understanding. The workshop sounded cool but I didn’t want to be at this thing all day from 2pm to 11pm so figured I’d check out the performances. We arrived a couple minutes into the first set. It was nice, packed, but hard to hear standing so far back. For the second set I grabbed some wine and sat down next to Hainbach the synth wizard and “synthfluencer”. I introduced myself to him and his partner and we hit it off. They were really nice, and super knowledgeable. We talked for a while and exchanged contact info. Will invite them to open studios next month.
Haven’t mentioned the music. I think I missed Kris Kuldkepp’s performance. They used the constructed antennae from the workshops made during the day I believe. The performer Wouter Jaspers (founder of Koma Elektronik) basically was tuning into all these transmissions scattered around the Floating University Property. There were dipoles, monopoles, and many others I don’t know the name with eccentric antenna patterns (didn’t see a Yagi). The sounds of the animals (birds, frogs, crickets) blended with the radiophonics making a warm, pleasing semi-alien planet soundscape. So lovely. I actually almost fell asleep I was so relaxed. It went on a for a long while. and at the end, peace. Hainbach was pleased.
This was a trip. Doors opened at 11 and we made it there a bit later. Trouble getting in, their machines with ticket info were down but eventually okay. Organized by AN(8)X which represents and supports subcultural groups within the Asian diasporic and LGBTQ communities in Berlin.
Held in a warehouse ruins converted to decadent spa-club. For the music think techno, gabber, nightcore, brazilian funk, rap. Emphasis on the hardstyles. Almost all women DJs and a dance floor that reflected the music. Total goth-town. They even played the classic goth rave footage projected while everyone danced. There were two rooms, pretty loud. Outside was a huge outdoor with cabanas and such. There was also homemade chinese vegan food, which was really tasty. We went dancing for a couple hours, then swam in the pool with the giant floaties. It was freezing at first but soon we got used to it. When we came out, I didn’t feel like paying 5 euro for a towel so used another item of clothing to dry off and went back into the dance floor.
This was when the real brainmelting beats started. DJ Sarah Bonito played an extreme but pleasurable 2 hour set of hard style music, particularly gabber, with lots of interludes, breakdowns, etc. Somehow she kept the energy up for 2 hours. The crowd was so fired up, lots of jumping, hands, screaming. Forgot to mention the hands hanging down in the passageway to the second room.
Only other thing they could have added is an outdoor pool-side ambient DJ but it’s okay. Our friends left but we kept dancing a bit longer before we were ready to go. Made it home right around sunrise, satisfied.
TBH arrived very late with Stepan, he bookin’ it on scooter and me on the bike. Before I was in another event at Z and he had arrived and was looking for something to do. Both of us like party concerts, especially free ones, so we were ready to move even tho we’d get there late. Each place, nation, space, zone has their own formal and informal rules and our travel was somewhat between the de facto and de jure, so we made good time and arrived at the second to last performer.
Found our friends easy enough and became part of front left crew. Scene was a crowd but def not elbow to elbow like at the Hamburger Banhof Stingray and Ellen Allien. It was fairly dark as we arrived and Berlin crowd was in their 3am outfits. NGL i liked it better than HB. And we could actually hang. Evita Manji did some dark Crystal Castles-esque (showing my age here) singing overtop broken plastic sounds from the laptop. I particularly dug the hyperpop ballad of a couple tracks with sparkly glitchy voice but i didn’t mind the depressing sadxgirl stuff either.
There’s a red light glowing outside, not that kind. Ambience. It’s the liminal space kind. Me and another dude approach the area carrying instrument cases. We size each other up. He’s got 5 years on me easy, maybe 10 years, but his face is friendly. Anyway we’re all older than small children, who should not be out right now carrying synthesizers to a… a what? a jam band thing? “It’s my first time.” Despite looking like the “right” place and Google maps agreeing, it’s unclear to me how to get in. It’s all sealed up. “Two minutes” says the other guy. Oh, we’re two minutes early.”
Which is the door? Two minutes later a portal opens, more like a vault door swinging out. I’m hungry and should have gotten kebab already (I don’t and stay famished til I leave 3+? hours later).
Inside a few people are clustered around a table. How’d they get in? It’s amateur night in that our names aren’t on the bill but we don’t say that and I go to the table to unpack. I think Jayrope told me to show up on time so there’d be table space left. Ah, they plug me in. More people showing up. They ask my name and see that I am running stereo so label two spaces Lee Mod for modular. More people arrive by the minute. It’s true. They come on time. 15 men! A woman is also participating too. She doesn’t set up on the table with us. Is this her way of staying apart, or does she feel pushed away? Oh, she’s doing video synthesis. Another two people show up with Vidiots stuff too and the three of them are sequestered away from all of us making the noise.
Someone asks if I take midi. I don’t. Do I want a pulse? It would be rude to say no. I tell them I mostly make ambient music, washes, pads. But I take the cord and plug it into a mult. I ignore it for a couple minutes and just drone with the Plinky
The pulse increases, there are a dozen of us making noise, a quarter on modular, half on drum machines and the like, and another quarter on other hardware like pedals and boxes. It’s working. We are beating and breathing as a hive. For the next 3 hours we slacken and pulse and fly and slow and throb and dub. We break beats.
The guy two to my left mutters something at me. He doesn’t like my English. He starts smoking and ignores me. I have a compressor that no one else has and can dominate if I need to. but I am a good boy and play along. We have spectators! That’s nice. An audience is very into it. Dancing breaks out. I take some breaks to move around the space and just listen. At some point I grow weary. I am hangry and need kebab. I pack up, say goodbye to new friends, nod and tschuss everyone. “See you next time!”
I show up about 20 minutes after start and the tiny shop is packed with people. Believe me there are seats for 15 and maybe another 10 of us standing or sitting on the floor somehow. I have my arms wrapped around my knees to compress myself. First acts are warm and inviting. Guitar, peaceful, soaring, naked sound at first. Then a duo of beautiful improv, highlight is the bowed electric bass. A talk on building an electric guitar from scratch. I didn’t fully follow it but accepted it was happening. Everyone had a short set, so be it.
The headliners were Silver Galaxy, consisting of Anna-Maria Van Reusel on synth and Dennis Slypen on guitar and pedals. They were absolutely incredible - my ears in pure pleasure, even more than if my mouth was eating ice cream or my favorite pizza. That’s very happy. One of the best performances I’ve heard in years. Both are virtuosic musicians. Totally “in the pocket.” OMG, I had to play after them. Thank goodness there was a break first. I played a short set, which received a good response, and afterwards I enjoyed talking with folks about the music. Thanks to Pedalmarkt for putting together such a cool event and to Anna-Maria and Dennis for giving me a ride home with my synth. We live two blocks from each other!