Neon Marshmallow Fest 2011 - Bright Lights, Snacks Made From Hooves

By Chris Sienko

Neon Ball.jpg

Can it really have been a year already since the three-day Neon Marshmallow Festival last set fire to our ears and juiced our pain/pleasure receptors until our everyday life was just one big gray screen? Well, not quite. Last year's fest took place in late August; this year's event will be June 10-12, so it's more like 10 months. All the better!

This year's festival will be entirely more manageable for several reasons. One, it's three nights, with no daytime component (last year's noon - 3 a.m. trudge on Saturday was pretty brutal) and no two-stage system. Also, since it's at The Empty Bottle (1035 N. Western), all the action is centrally located. Here's the stage; just face in this direction and you'll be fine.

This year's event features a similarly well-rounded set of acts, with sonics ranging from sonorous/pretty to vengeful/remorseless, sometimes back to back. Something for everybody, but also nothing for everybody.

The name that's got everybody talking this year is a true legend, not just in "noise" circles, but in the history of all electronic music everywhere -- Morton Subotnick, creator of such timeless electronic works as The Wild Bull, Silver Apples of the Moon, The Key To Songs, Touch, Sidewinder, and A Sky of Cloudless Sulphur and early innovator on the Buchla synthesizer, will be performing on Sunday night. I don't care whether your taste in modern electronics leans toward Boards of Canada or Incapacitants, YOU OWE THIS MAN YOUR LIFE. Come thank him in person.

If genuflecting before the legends ain't your bag, perhaps there is something else here to entice you. For instance: the vicious, quick-cut noise of Sickness, distortion-pedal satori from The Rita, a lesson in primal frenzy from Sword Heaven, or Bill Orcutt's five-step plan to reduce a fully-functioning guitar to a pile of splinters. Rotating the coin to its opposite face, we find song-based ambient shimmer from Rene Hell, Dark-hued environmental despair from Khanate/Khlyst's James Plotkin, Emeralds spinoff Outer Space, dance-party trickster Leslie Keffer, Mike Shiflet's precise ear arousals, Oneohtrix Point Never's arcane cold-wave constructions, and the fugue-state synth meditations of Pulse Emitter. Each night also includes experimental film screenings and between-set DJing between sets.

Three-day passes costs $70, or you can buy single-day passes for $25. For all the info you require, go to the festival's website. Below the fold, you can check out the full daily lineup and a handful of clips from festival performers.

FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2011
Lucky Dragons
White Rainbow
Rene Hell
Mountains
James Plotkin
Michael Zerang | Michael Colligan | Jim Baker Trio
Spiral Joy Band
film: Experimental 1/2 Hour

SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 2011
Pelt
Oneohtrix Point Never
Bill Orcutt
Sickness
Outer Space
Sword Heaven
Dylan Ettinger
Leslie Keffer
film: Selected animated works of Alice Cohen

SUNDAY, JUNE 12, 2011
Morton Subotnick
The Rita
Pulse Emitter
Telecult Powers
Mike Shiflet
Sick Llama
Beau Wanzer
Tiger Hatchery
film: Selected works of Amy Ruhl

Morton Subotnick: