Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 18:09:16 -0700 From: Peter Conheim Subject: "like smoking a joint..." This is from the Spockmorgue music list today. This guy has been on the Wet Gate list for quite a few years now, actually.... PC >Anyone who went to the "illegal art" plunderphonix music show last night >was treated to an ELECTRIFYING performance by Wobbly. > >Show starts around 8:30 in a yuppie loft in SOMA. Our MC, Mr. Meridies, >makes announcements about the series and the art exhibit at Fort Mason. [ >www.illegal-art.org ] > >Mr. Meridies warms up the crowd of about 50 peeps by playing a subversive >DJ act. He has one of those super high tech Pioneer CD players with vinyl >emulation and lots of buttons. Puts in one CD at a time and starts fucking >with it, scratch scratch chunk chunk. Feeds signal through some FX at >times. First it's Tone-Loc, then something random, then a CD of local >preschool kids singing "Take the A Train" by Duke Ellington. Overall a >fairly minimalist approach, tasteful and sensitive but not mind-blowing. > >Next up is Steev Hise, the guy behind the detritus.net site, which hosts >all sorts of cool shit. Steev has a Mac laptop that looks like it's made >out of porcelain. He's running MAX/MSP+Jitter, controlling parameters with >one of those cheap MIDI sliderboxes and projecting a really compressed >video image on the wall. It's all political stuff, Bush bashing, >anti-globalization, Adbusters, cartoons and educational shorts that most >certainly must have come from the Prelinger archive [ >www.archive.org/movies/prelinger.php ] Steev's aesthetic is markedly >different from Mr. Meridies, Steev has much higher sample density. Humorous >clips such as Dubya saying "Go home and die." This is more along the lines >of what I expected to see at this show. It was interesting to see that he >felt no remorse about stealing from Adbusters, I guess anything is fair use >when you're an outlaw. > >After an intermission, Wobbly takes the stage. He is nervous and >uncomfortable. Way too self-conscious and self-critical. He has four >samplers, two CD players, and a mini syntheziser that he hardly uses. He >does pretty much everything on three Dr. Sample boxes, punching buttons and >tweaking knobs with the virtuosity of a concert pianist. > >When he starts up we are HAMMERED by a wall of sound. At first the timbre >world sounds like hardcore techno, but he does not bore us with repetitive >"beatz". He only plays a few bars of each rhythm before switching quickly >and effortlessly to something else. It's almost like a jazz drummer, >shifting and changing constantly, but not like a jazz drummer because there >are radical tempo breaks. He builds up layer upon layer of rhythms and >beds, but knows instinctively when to pull back from the brink of overload. >At times he plays intense cut up polyrhythms, other times he lets us >recover with rich ambient textures. Not ambient in the Eno sense, it's more >engaging than that... but I can't think of another word for it. During one >of the fast and dense sections, he does an expertly phrased caesura. I >think everyone's heart skips 1.666 beats during that precise silence. > >Last on the bill is Wet Gate, the All-Projector Ensemble. Three guys with >16mm projectors, film loops of weird old found footage. Images are rear >projected onto a panoramic sheet of vellum. Gels, lenses, and mirrors are >manipulated in the light cone to distort and color the images. Sounds from >the films are piped through FX, mainly delays. It's much more >meditative/contemplative than anything else at the show. A nice way to end >the show, like smoking a joint while coming down from a speedy acid high. > >Afterward, myself and others give our props to Wobbly. He doesn't seem to >realize that he has broken the light speed barrier, leaving us all standing >on terra firma wishing we could come along. We all want to know if the set >was recorded and when it will be released. Yes, he recorded it, and he >promises to put it up on his website. [ www.detritus.net/wobbly ] He gives >me a free CD-R of his group, the Chopping Channel, to put on my radio station. > >I chat with Peter Conheim from Wet Gate and congratulate him. I mention my >admiration for Crack:WAR and tell him he did a great job recording their CD >EP. He says the CD somehow has the wrong mixes, and the forthcoming vinyl >release of "Silent Fantasy" is much better. I'm skeptical about this, >thinking to myself, "How can you improve on perfection?" But in the end I >know I cannot resist Crack, and a vinyl copy will be in my possession in >the near future. > >Show and after-show chatting is over by 11:30. I leave happy and satisfied, >definitely worth the five bucks and substantially better than goofing off >in my room. > >Aaron > >-------------------------------------------------------------- > > Aaron Ross, Electronic Artist > www.dr-yo.com > > Dr. Yo Internet Radio: eclectic, avant garde & punk > www.dr-yo.com/radio > > Computer graphics education resources > www.cglearn.com