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Concert Sat Mar 31 2012
Everyone Else Has A Festival...
...so why can't we? So asserts Enemy curator Jason Soliday of his two day fest, called simply "A Fest." This two-night festival of experimental and noise music concludes tonight (you're absolutely right, I should have informed you about yesterday's show) at Enemy, 1550 N. Milwaukee Ave., 3rd Floor. Donation suggested, starts promptly at 9 p.m. Lots of acts to get on, so no Rock O'clock for these folks.
Tonight's acts:
Bokeh (Mykel Boyd of Somnimage Recordings fame, along with Mandy Matz on violin)
Battleship (marvelous Hafler-ish subaquatic drone and shortwave)
Quicksails (Ben Billington of Tiger Hatchery and ex-Druids of Huge)
Jason Soliday (Enemy honcho on Sidrassi Organ and hellish mayhem; possibly something completely different)
Hex Breaker Quartet (Telecult Powers + Grasshopper match up -- live streaming from NYC!)
Bile & Horseman (Dog Lady + Tar Pit collaboration)
Startless (Jason Zeh + Vertonen collaboration)
Mike Shiflet (astringent electronic chemtrails all the way from Columbus)
After the jump, a bit about what went down last night:
Last night's event covered a lot of ground and went deep into the night (deeper than I could endure...my regards to Dog Lady and DAATH Valley, who went on after Old Man Sienko's bedtime). Plastic Boner Band (PBB) gave us the firehose approach, a pressurized blast of blizzard noise that changes internally at long intervals. FanLab is a duo version of the trio Green Pasture Happiness, and works in a similar form -- oscillator-based electronics activated by touch-sensitive keypads achieve maximum contrast from moment to moment (apologies to Erik Lindgren), guaranteeing whiplash of your ear's neck. Your ears do have a neck, you know. Don't argue with me. Neil Jendon's dark synth mazes were thoroughly righteous, transitioning between ferocious and calmly ominous with a lot of panache. If you've seen as many shows as I have, you've seen loud go to quiet in every awkward way you can imagine, but Jendon brought his elemental beasts to attention and to rest with considerable elan. (Check out his new CD, Corporate Laughter) Reptile Worship looked a little pissed at their equipment at times (or maybe I was projecting), but their varied set brought the sleazy industrialists (not talking about J.P. Morgan here) to the front of the crowd. Jason Zeh did the kind of big, chromatic drone that bends and changes as you walk around the room, ending with a heap of tape crackle from a host of walkmen. Michigan's Tar Pit was the revelation of the night for me, a tape-blorked mess of metallic clanking and smashing, grody sounds dragged unlubricated through unsympathetic tape heads.
