| « Mike Reed Holds The Umbrella Over Chicago | OK Go's Last Leaf » |
Concert Fri Nov 05 2010
The Tape of Only Eric
There are two facets of experimental ("noise" if you will) music that were once integral to the experience, but now seem like an afterthought, if they're considered at all. I'm speaking about claustrophobia and theory. After noise began to be codified in the early '90s and role-models outnumbered fans, the idea of noise as release, as pure id, an ecstatic liberation of repressed self was the dominant narrative; similarly, the noise-making equipment was something that you harnessed to your own ends, rather than the meat/machine melds of yore. When I think of the '80s for experimental music, it's all about the degenerating of Industrial music from fear-ridden, muffled cacophony to club music's punchy roommate, but those early acts that broke out of the rhythmic Industrial model, projects and performers like Illusion of Safety, Schloss Tegal, John Duncan, and Thomas Dimuzio treated electronics with an element of paranoia, building images of Cold War supercomputers crunching numbers, printing bomb schematics, wheels of tape spinning back and forth, accessing data. Also, it seemed like so many more industrial/experimental records were "about" something, whether it was the Hafler Trio's funhouse mirror philosophy, Zoviet-France's tactile electro-shamanism, or....this guy.
A founder of the seminal Midwest industrial project Boy Dirt Car, Lunde's primary obsessions include audio tape, the spoken word, and the destruction of the latter via the former. Initially utilizing strategies from William S. Burroughs as well as 'audio war' devices used by the U.S. military (sound canons, scrambled audio signals), Lunde's many albums and tapes cross continents of data, pulling dingy, tape-mangled voice readings through the aperture of theory, using strategies of "reduplication" to wear down a sound or image's characteristics into new forms. His books, including titles like Music Is Meat, Art and Its Other(s), and The Commonplace of the Transfigurative break apart amorphous concepts like "art," "noise," and "counterculture," applying art criticism's tools against itself. Similarly, recent recording output has split between more "album" oriented CDs, such as CandyhOle (Freak Animal) and Ootheka vs. more process-driven recordings like Suite for Solo Analogue Recorders, in which a variety of analogue tape recorders are miced and placed in sound-proofed boxes, recording only their own machinery, and XCHDX, a reissue of some VHS-era tape decay that even carries a warning from its creator about the decay levels.
Tomorrow (Nov. 6), Eric Lunde will perform in Chicago for the first time in 20 years. The performance will be at Enemy (1550 N. Milwaukee, 3rd Floor) at 8 p.m. sharp. I don't see it listed, but I'd bring at least $10 to cover the out of towners.
Also on the bill:
Karl Paloucek, a former member of Boy Dirt Car and Fuckface; his sound palette includes clattering metal (think tin foil played with brushsticks rather than lead pipe on sheet metal), piano both played and on tape, and amplified sewing machines.
Peter J. Woods started in a sort of power electronic (noise + lyrical screaming) style with his project Raperies (Like Draperies), but has since pushed his craft into disorienting new realms. Each new album is a significant jump further into terra incognita.
Vertonen keeps fear alive, his recent pieces incorporating chopped up samples, degraded turntable loops, white noise, and a heart murmur-inducing hubbub of conflicting signals.
