Live Blog from New Projects Weekend (7)

Mathletics! Yes! Proper rocking riffs and a band dressed up for cosplay. There's a trombone up there... it's like Status Quo at Live Aid in 1986. Three members of the band are wandering around the venue.

I guess heavy rock in 2013 has got to be aware of its own absurdity, and The Mathleticss Team know it. I suppose after the seriousness of the laptop acts, this kind of surreal mania was always going to be a relief.

My relationship with the excesses of heavy rock goes back to the GWAR gig I saw as a teenager. GWAR dressed up as monsters and had a fight on stage, pausing only to cover the audience in fake blood or semen. If these guys aren't quite on that scale, they is a similar sense of nonsense. They have announced they intend to play intergalactic rock'n'roll. The subsequent tune is very Hawkwind, even done to the saxophone versus guitar battle.

Then there is my inordinate love of Holy Mountain. I can't help but think that rock is ironic.

I've pondered the idea of a heterosexual kitsch recently. That is, an application of irony, enjoying stuff that isn't cool or fashionable but investing it with the seriousness of sincere attention. The Mathletics Team are all over this: their fashion is something that would have been serious in 1984. Now it's daring me to laugh.

They are using the saxophone like Roxy Music would - sudden solos and to add heft to the rock attack. The brass section doesn't shape the sound - this is all about the guitars. Apparently the lyrics are all about geek culture - I can't hear them, although the singer has that 1980s female rock shout (you know, Bonnie Rait. I have never heard her, but this is how I think she sounds).

Anyway, it's good to have some fun. It was getting very artistic this afternoon, and they have a backstory.

Live Blog from New Projects Weekend (6)

There are two rooms to the installation in The Art School. One has music, and is full of people chatting and drinking beer. It has the atmosphere of an opening of an exhibition. I am sitting in the other room, wishing I could get an Internet signal, dreaming of the love of my life, and surrounded by dry ice.

A description in the style of visual art critics of a few years back, when the nervousness about understanding the concept led critics to merely relate what they saw, not its emotional impact: the room is rectangular, the walls painted white; dry ice hangs in the air, while two mobiles hang from the ceiling; a project from the corner onto the flat wall, passing through one of the mobiles, which is a glitter pyramid in a Perspex box.

The impact is calming. The music and conversation bleeds from the next room, muted and relaxed. The projection is abstract patterns, kites in an artificially blue sky or shadows against a window frame. The dry ice wreathes mobiles and air, making the focus loose and the hard edges of the mobile, even the shadows they cast, are softened.

It’s not a pyramid in the Perspex box, but an eight sided solid. But it still glitters.

In the other room, the chat is getting louder and there is a row of lights hanging from the ceiling – bare bulbs that flash on and off, some red some clear. That is more sinister. I prefer the safety of my room. The projection has a green hue.

This is a pleasant chill out zone after the rigours of the music.

Now, in the main bar of The Art School, a video of hot dogs with subtitles. I think it's subliminal advertising because I am getting hungry.

Live Blog from New Projects Weekend (5)

Is The Female Band? It’s another laptop performance. I bet I look like part of the show again… and it stopped just as I arrived. I can’t say much, although it had a really good sample of a voice speaking.

I am going to kill the promoters for this. I am totally out of synch. The day is based, according to Fielding Hope, on the idea that moving between two venues means the audience won’t get bored. I am not bored, but I am confused about where I am. The Female Band were in Nice’n’Sleazy and I am back in The Art School for another laptop show. It’s all dark ambient and a man in a spot, rotating his head. I thought that this was the Mathletics Team, who sing about geek culture.  I am pretty sure it isn’t.

While we were running between buildings, Eric explained the difference between analogue and digital sound. Stroking my face, he said that analogue is a wave, a continuous flow. Digital, he continued, is a series of points. He poked me in the eye repeatedly.

It’s in the mapping. The analogue recording copies the whole wave of a sound, while the digital captures moments. I need to do a drawing to be clear, but it comes down to whether the sound is on or off. Like that version of I am in a room.. I heard recorded onto a computer, the digital process is precise while the analogue is more… representative.

I think Eric was trying to explain why I was finding the laptop music harsh and the guitar caressing. 

Whoever this is, it's back to the alien landscapes of curious geometries, that seems to be my stock response to electronic music that relies on layers of sound. There is always a howling wind, slow builds, a crescendo, an increase in intensity and a bass that rumbles in my stomach. 

I have a very hard time with electronic music like this: rather like contemporary classical musical (including minimalism), too much of it sounds the same. Why this guy isn't part of Pulse's programme at the City Halls is not clear - what makes this music "successful"? It does appear that laptop ambient music, made by more sardonic and knowing artists, follows a certain template. The hostile universe, the ebb and flow of sound: is it simply the path of least resistance.

A snap like a whip against stone beats out a steady measure. There is a sandstorm around us. Oh, I am so menaced. It's dark in here, I am hungry. And although this is well structured, in much the same way as a symphony, the mood is static and cold. 

Once upon a time, Morrissey got called miserable. Yet by singing, he lent his music more passion than the average depression. With the advent of laptop music, real misery can be given a score. 

During the Sonica Festival, I chatted to a few artists who were emphatic that the laptop, by opening up a universe of sound, was destructive to creativity. It's limitations, they urged me, that really encourage originality.

Hang on, a beat has arrived. It sounds kitsch against the immense tunnel that the distorted main noise is spiraling through. I think back to Princess NRG. That was dance music. This is head-nodding music. And it is masculine. I don't know what masculinity is - I am reluctant to accept it is fighting and drinking, or mere physical prowess like too many choreographers seem to think. But I know this music is masculine. 

My earlier comment to Eric: the meaning of the music is what I feel. I am feeling hatred. Hatred of the privilege afforded to the artist to sit there and make this noise. I wanted songs about geeks.

But seriously, what does this artist really have? I am hating on his privilege, which consists of being allowed to play his tunes for twenty minutes. And as that beat keeps going - it is at slow walking speed - I am actually starting to enjoy it. Sure, there's a black hole devouring all existence next to it, but by putting a steady rhythm there, he has lent the whole a shape. It's not quite as bad as I expected.

There's still too much misery. 

Hang on: this is Mount Analogue. I looked it up on Wikipedia. The name comes from a novel about a mountain with non-Euclidean geometry. Looking back to my first thoughts on the sound... ah. The boy has nailed it. This has been a musical interpretation of the book.

It just stopped. And the novel was unfinished. It might have been genius... 

Live Blog from New Projects Weekend (4)

Mack makes a delicate start - almost Spanish flamenco style on an electric guitar, with added echo and now a drone. Notes emerging from the hum and buzz of the sound system, until the crackle drowns and submerges the melody. The crack of cables echoes the rattle of castanets. He’s very Spanish in his mood, running melancholy scales up and down the fret board and tumbling into clusters of low notes.

It’s gentler than Caries. The sustain and feedback hovers, threatening to destroy the fragile picking. He’s applying an acoustic method to the electric, moody and melancholic again. Or am I slightly sad and applying this to every piece?

The sound of a guitar in the distance: Mack’s playing seems to come from the other end of a tunnel, or through a weak radio signal. The sound system is simply obscuring the clear, firm pizzicato. These are transmissions from another world, another cliché.

Certainly, his actual playing is accomplished and precise. He’s problematising the performance. The electricity has been made audible – thanks to some fiddling with wires. It’s a battle for a thing of beauty to survive.

Eric talked about a message. Old school music journalists weren’t afraid of overdoing it. This musical monologue tells a story about life. Life, represented by the guitar, is delicate yet beautiful. Rich in emotion and evocative of tales that are barely comprehensible in their complexity and detail, life tries to survive against a hostile universe – here represented by the feedback, the nasty crackle of the speakers.

This is an opera for solo guitar that contains the basic narrative of existence. It’s mysterious, frail, frightening. I’m loath to call the universe of noise that tries to subjugate the melody godless (the guitarist might be God, anyway), but it is in some sort of conflict with the guitar’s life.

However, the sources of the sounds that threaten are also the reasons that the guitar is audible. The universe may sound tough, but it is also sustaining. The music is a duet between guitar and PA.

The actual melody has traces of heavy metal exhibitionism and folk refrains. This might well be the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. And I bet I would have called it doodling if I were not trying to write about it.

I was not expecting music to need as music thought as performance.  

Damn. Eric noticed that the style was very blues. He has beaten me. That is what this is: not delta blues, but the blues of the universe, which makes the noise that eventually will destroy it. 

Live Blog from New Projects Weekend (3)

Eric just asked me whether I felt that the question “what is music?” was valid. Personally, I’m not that interested in it, since it has been asked often enough during my lifetime (and before). But that’s a function of my being an old fart. The reason that I spend so much time comparing one artist to another is because I have had twenty odd years to read up about them. And Wikipedia made that even easier.

Eric recognised that Caries was perhaps more about the artist’s aims than the audience experience but, as a critic, I am supposed to be writing about the audience experience.

Supposed to be… what else can I do? I don’t know what the artist experiences, unless I read something about their experience and then it’s just a critique of a critique.

Still Graham Mack looks like he’s my age. A guitar, some drums, some pedals wait while the musician has nipped off to the bar.

The problem with the Live Blog is that it has to be fast. I have enjoyed the two musicians so far, but the tumult of experience, and the conflict of trying to write down thoughts as they occur makes the usual clarity of expression difficult. Best to think of this as being like a version of automatic writing. It isn’t what it appears to be. It’s gibberish and the meaning is in the subtext.

I am sneaking a peak over Eric’s shoulder. He is asking questions about noise and art. I might have a little chat with him. But Graham Mack’s is strolling past. He is wearing a beard and a flat cap. He is preparing himself.

Eric is asking questions about the meaning of the music. I have replied that the meaning happens at that point where the audience and artist touch.

“Isn’t that what got you kicked out of the lap-dancing club,” answered Eric.

“I mean metaphorically. What you feel is what the artist is communicating to you.”

“So I just felt annoyance.”

“Maybe that is what he wanted to communicate. There’s plenty to be annoyed about.”

“I understand that with punk.”

“Punk tends to evangelise about itself, saying you ought to be angry at certain things. But Caries might be encouraging the audience to go to a certain emotional space and see what is there. If music evokes emotions, the listener can give that emotion content. For you, Caries was rage. For me, it was melancholic but also grand. A story of lost love…”

“Maybe you had that emotion already and Caries just soundtracked it.”

Live Blog From the New Projects Weekend (2)

Over to The Art School for Caries. It sounds like mating elephants down there as we make our way in: inside, it is more delicate. It’s one man and his guitar, toying with feedback and distortion in the time-honoured style. Rudimentary melodies feed over the loudspeakers, moaning and howling at themselves. This is not unpleasant. Obviously, the volume is a feature, and there’s no attempt to develop song structure. Given that it’s an event that is all about the emerging artist, there will be a fair amount of experimentation. Caries is sat on stage, testing what happens if he uses this pedal at that volume…

Sonic Youth were up to this, long before they became Sonic Adults and divided their output between contemporary classical and alternative rock. It’s questionable whether music with a strong lineage can be really experimental – this interrogation of the guitar’s potential is well documented already. The format of the gig is deceptive. Caries is making meditative soundscapes. It’s desolate, lonely but warm: the guitar provides a humanity that laptops can’t, even when they are sampling guitars.

There ought to be enough absurdity in that sentence to inspire someone to deconstruct my assumptions. Perhaps it is the lack of percussion, but Caries is easier on the ear than Princess NRG.

I just remembered that Eric likes jazz, and I have dragged him into a day of noise and provocations. Do I have a moral responsibility to him as a collaborator, or is it okay for me to throw this at him? Equally, what about the artists? Writing live reviews is a bit of a challenge for me, but does it do justice to the art? I am not giving myself time to recollect in peace.

Caries has gone very early 1980s Sonic Youth now. He’s picking his way through a tentative solo, plenty of harmonics, clashing and clanging unfamiliar chords. The feedback follows his lead, like a cloak dragging behind the music.

This is very beautiful. I suppose experimental music is all about imagining other worlds where this is played in a more public arena. Princess NRG was in a science fiction future – we probably live in one of those now – while this is the chamber music of a melancholy court, their hero was sent into battle and died when he saved the city.

Hey Eric: I am going upstairs to get a coffee and a signal for the net…

Live Blog from New Projects Weekend (1)

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Welcome to the VileArts’ Live blogging session for The New Projects Weekend. Co-conspirator Eric Karoulla will be over on his blog, sharing his experiences from a day of wild music and perfomance action.

We are side-by-side in the basement of Nice’n’Sleazy and there’s the first act: plenty of strobe action from Princess NRG. It might be one man and his laptop, but I am heading to epilepsy through the light show.

Nice used of washes here – not too heavy and not too melodic, but certainly emotive and forceful. It has that sweet isolationist quality: music not too fussed whether it explains itself. But now he’s breaking up into a drum versus sampled vocal battle.

He’s got a microphone and the voice is rattling right through me. The drum sample is very metal, the voice is almost jazzy, maybe r’n’b. Maybe Eric’s got something on it – he’s the one with the knowledge of languages.

Princess NRG has got what appears to be a massive fluorescent bong next to his laptop. The impact of the strobe is starting to wear off now. The sound of scraping metal he’s just unleashed takes us into darker, raw territory. “It’s just a loud of bloody noise,” and considerably less interesting than the previous mash-up.

Ah. The computer just shut down, and he’s had to start again. It’s difficult to tell, but I think that he’s just realigning the samples…

Bulgarian voice choir: very topical. And now a more jittering beat arrives with orchestral wash. Princess NRG is picking up on the eclectic potential of the sample, showing little respect for sources but emphasising the juxtaposition of different geographies. That’s a fairly eastern groove he’s dropping now.

For first up on a Saturday afternoon, the boy is doing well. There is a consistency to his sound: the volume makes it aggressive despite the pop sensibility and the judicious use of samples. He’s letting the bit play itself out, rotating the variations of the melody over a rhythm that wouldn’t shame a bhangra banger. I’d argue that this isn’t the perfect time and place: it’s disco music from a scene in Bladerunner. Harsh, almost militaristic and diverse: he holds the beat long enough to make this dance music, but rough enough to be evocative.

The fact that Eric and I sitting in the corner typing is probably as much of a show as the performance isn’t wasted on me.

Let’s see how Eric is getting on…