Everything moves. Vibration runs through everything…

These ideas are central to Ron Rege Jr.’s Cymatic Theremapy performances. In a fusion of science, visual art, and sound, Rege (often with the assistance of Diva Dompe) creates a truly interactive, often magical experience. The set up is relatively simple: a liquid (usually water, or water and corn starch) rests in a plastic bed in the center of a speaker. When Rege’s theremin kicks into gear, the liquid gradually starts to vibrate as the sound waves coarse through it. Over time, these movements become more and more visible, and as the audio reaches its peak, the liquids often take on absurd shapes, giving them the appearance of living organisms.

While it is easy to fantasize that Rege is some sort of Frankenstein-like mad scientist in this equation, he often seems just as startled by the way sound morphs the liquids as we are. These performances, which have taken place mostly at small art galleries and bookstores in the Los Angeles area thus far, feel much more like participatory teach-ins than demonstrations. Participants are often able to pass speakers around as the liquids dance, their minds widening with wonder as they internalize the vibration themselves. While Rege has not reinvented the wheel with these experiments, he has brought to light the undeniable and often wondrous relationship between sound and motion.

Words: Samantha Cornwell

As the year winds down, talk turns to year-end lists and best records, tracks, music videos, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Everyone from major publications to the avid music fan wants to talk about the year in music as an event that can be summarized and critiqued objectively. I feel an obligation to form well-reasoned opinions about records I could care less about even hearing. The new music I spent the most time listening this year was a specific brand of drone and contemporary experimental ambient music. This music appears on established labels such as Type and the vinyl division of the Foxy Digitalis empire, but also smaller outfits that only put out a few releases a year like California’s Emerald Cocoon, Massachusetts’ Barge and the charmingly low-key DNT Records have all made crucial contributions to my personal experience of new music over the past year.

The year began with the final missive of a duo who loomed as large as any over the preceding decade, Yellow Swans. Going Places, Yellow Swans’ final full-length released on Type nearly two years after the group’s disillusion set a very high standard for billowing, psychedelic drone with noise and electronic flourishes. It’s always easy to credit a posthumous release with more meaning than it might deserve in a different context, but Going Places is a near perfect swan song. A distillation of the group’s distinctive approach that combines harsh feedback with beautiful melodies and a judicious use of processed vocals. The record bridges the gap between trailblazing psych-noise veterans of the British school like Skullflower and Ashtray Navigations and the daunting legacy of defunct 00s operators Double Leopards while showing the way forward for some of the fresh-faced (and not so fresh-faced) drone upstarts I would spend the rest of the year listening to.

Richard Skelton

Also arriving on Type at the beginning of the year was Richard Skelton’s Landings. This magisterial record, a tribute to the haunting terrain of Northern England, utilizes traditional string instruments, field recordings, and electronic processes to conjure a deeply felt atmosphere of strong, arch emotions. Landings is a classical record in certain formal aspects, but is immediately accessible to anyone with even a passing interest in drone, ambient, or deep listening music of all kinds. Both Yellow Swans’ and Skelton’s records demand attention and focus. The easy pull of pop music is absent, and in its place is a stark, subjective appeal. This appeal is rooted in the musicians themselves. Yellow Swans is a direct reflection of the chemistry that exists between Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman. Likewise, Landings puts some of Skelton’s innermost thoughts, hopes and longings to music (an artist’s edition of the record features a book of poems and essays by Skelton). Enjoyment of this music presupposes the desire for a genuine personal connection with the artist. I find myself drawn again and again to these records not just because of their sonic qualities, although they are uniformly compelling, but because the force of artistic personality comes through so strongly and creates a galvanizing feeling of affection toward the performers. It’s impossible to enjoy Skelton’s tour of the fraught geographical and psychological landscapes of Northern England without having a personal curiosity about it. When so much of indie rock, once revered for its thoughtfulness and sensitivity, feels like a po-mo put-on filled with recycled riffs, this idiosyncratic and occasionally pretentious music makes for a convincing antidote.

Next up: The sound galaxies of Emeralds and Expo ‘70

Yellow Swans, “New Life” (from Going Places)
New Life by _type

Richard Skelton, “Noon Hill Wood” (from Landings)
Noon Hill Wood by _type
Words: Max Burke

“The Delicacy of Rock-and-Roll.” Sometimes it’s the most counterintuitive statements that point us to what we’ve been intuiting all along. “Delicacy” is not a word I would ever use to describe what critic Dave Hickey calls the “dominant art form of this American century”– his, the 20th.  But in its playful untruth, its insouciant “fuck you” to anyone who ever said rock was just a question of amplification and cheap chord changes, the title of his 1997 essay is rock-and-roll enough to grab anyone who really cares. The song Hickey sings here isn’t just about rock music; it’s about the relationship between art and politics, and it’s sweeping and ambitious and convoluted enough to recall the quixotic excesses of prog. It jumps from memoir to critical commentary, words like “contingency” to thoughts on why “order sucks”. It touches on everything from experimental film to the abstract expressionists to jazz, and it doesn’t satisfy with a melodic resolution until the last page or so– when Hickey actually starts talking about rock.

But his language is so grounded in the everyday, so free of virtuosity for virtuosity’s sake, that Yes and King Crimson would probably be insulted. If “The Delicacy of Rock- and-Roll” locates the political character of art in a certain will to freedom, and tries to show how different types of art embody that will in different ways, Hickey speaks from the place where that freedom begins, and probably also ends– from the heart of the individual subject, recalling a particularly memorable encounter with art in a particular time and place. The essay begins with a story from his college days in Austin, TX.  The young Hickey is attending “Underground Flick Nite” at a local YMCA; he is a member of a left-wing political group that meets there that same day, and he and his comrades are hoping for an evening of explosions and group sex. What they get is anything but earth-shattering: an abstract montage of colors by Stan Brackage, and a film by Andy Warhol, consisting entirely of a static shot of a man getting his hair cut.

Hickey’s tenderly mocking portrait of these would-be revolutionaries makes us smile; perhaps we recognize them in ourselves, in people we have met, from films on the ’68 era. We can sense the boredom of the crowd in the rings of smoke Hickey notices curling upward in the theatre, laugh at the naive urgency of the discussion that follows over beers on the porch (“there has got to be some political application”).  When he explains the “paradigm shift” he experienced while watching the Warhol film, he doesn’t speak as an expert on Marxist theory, but someone who has been slapped in the face. “His film,” Hickey remembers, “had totally recalibrated the perceptions of a roomful of sex-crazed adolescent revolutionaries into a field of tiny increments.” Haircut was so terrifically dull, so restricted within the humdrum confines of modern life, that when its subject lit up a cigarette, it felt as though the entire theater had exploded. It was the small moments of variation and imperfection in Warhol’s film that seemed to offer a way out of all the monotony– and that shocked Hickey into recognizing that a work of art doesn’t need to slash or rend or incinerate the fabric of society in order to discover a bit of freedom within it it. It just needs to look a little closer.

Never 100% liberated from narrative and figuration, Brackage’s abstractions “told us what we already knew as children of the Cold War,” Hickey says: “that no matter how hard we tried, we could not be free [...]. Warhol’s film, on the other hand, told us what we needed to know, that no matter how hard we tried, we could not be ordered– that insofar as we were tiny, raggedy, damaged and disorganized human beings, we probably were free, in some small degree.” Ironically, it is from this high art experience– one of our narrator’s first– that he, already a rock and roll kid, learns why it moves him so much.

“Rock-and-roll works because we’re all a bunch of flakes,” he says, dipping into the vernacular of the world he is now trying to describe, though he’s been skirting its peripheries from the beginning. Classic verse-chorus rock songs may be simple as ABC, 123, but somehow in their simplicity they become repositories for everything that is not simple about the people who create them. Rock music, Hickey writes, “presumes that the four of us — as damaged and anti-social as we are– might possibly get it to-fucking-gether man, and play this simple song.  [...] But we can’t. [...] We try like hell, but the guitars distort, the intonation bends, and the beat just moves, imperceptibly, against our formal expectations. [...] Just because we’re breathing, man.” Sometimes it feels like Hickey’s prose, as lovingly crafted as it is, operates according to the same principle.

Words: Emilie Friedlander

Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy is available via Amazon

Why did you start Leaving Records?

While I was working at dublab (for non-profit internet radio posse out of Los Angeles), there were daily encounters of untapped musicians from many scenes. I presented the label idea to my favorite artist Jesselisa, and she agreed to head all visual direction. We had been entirely dialed-in to the Los Angeles music and art scene at Florida State University, being head-on immersed in a wonderful art department and college radio station.

It was something that we started in our living room, cutting and pasting away at our new homie dak’s debut release. The silk screening, the tape-dubbing, it was all done as an art project. It wasn’t long until we realized the project was one we could let others see and hear through the pipelines of dublab, sort of re-injecting all of the amazing music we had come across through that very same community of world-wide listenership and art.

Nothing would have happened without the other, having complete confidence in Jesselisa’s craft and design being visual director of the label, and her having trust in my curation of unheard music, we began… It’s so valuable working closely with our artists to develop their first records, to develop the album art, it’s all an intensely personal experience for us, everything is seeming made together. we learned a lot from dublab, they exposed us to a lot of the artists we have and are currently working with.

Would you say there is a specific “sound” that could be associated with your releases? If so, tell me a bit about that.

The sound is a reflection of the Los Angeles music scene, and what’s happening here artistically as a whole. Jesse and I have similar interests but are always challenging one another, dragging each other out to random venues, exposing and being inspired by the many scenes in LA. It’s amazing.

It seems like there are lots of smaller, specific labels emerging these days. How do you feel this has effected the way music is distributed, and where do you see Leaving Records in all of it?

Nowadays, all someone needs to start a label is some confidence and and wi-fi. Back in early tape-culture days within punk and experimental music, accessibility was through obscure small-scale media like ‘zines, weirdo label subscription series, and shows. We utilize the internet everyday, but we feel it is important to practice a certain distance from technology.

Although the internet is becoming increasingly saturated, one of our main goals is to retain a human quality in our aesthetic whether it’s releasing the music on physical format, or directly involving organic sonic matter in the music, in someway we’re always hoping to achieve an organic sensibility. In many ways, we feel this effects how our output is received by the new music community of our generation.

What is something going on in music currently that really excites you?

Tapes.

Back to the above, we have always been totally inspired by DIY recording media, tapes have always been the answer to that, and of course this was before computers. Manufacturing, duplication, and selling tapes are relatively easy given the cost, but still a format that the average music-listener would disregard. What excites us is how the new label can translate tape culture directly to the music. A lot of artists on LR record and experiment with cassettes, so we naturally thought of releasing their work on this format.

In no way are we adverse to the vinyl format, tapes were the easiest and most effective way to start our label with physical product. We’re currently working the finishing touches to our first vinyl project from a mysterious rap+producer combo titled Usual (silk-screened, hand packaged one-sided 12″ vinyl at 45 rpm!).

One of the most inspiring discoveries we are finding over the course of our activity has been the wild, effective experimentation with recording audio (dak’s mastering “standthis” audio to VHS, Oscar’s micro-recording with only an SP303, etc.). Much influence has been passed back and forth between artists, and is endlessly exciting to see where this will creatively lead our roster in the future.

What is an older jam that you often revisit?

There are two!

Julia Holter live Arthur Russel tribute

Bootlegged at a part-time-punks / Arthur Russel show on a cassette recorder that I only had for the weekend, then lost, it was the best recorder I ever had. Julia finished her set with a beautiful ballad, never to be witnessed again.

Ras G – Brotha There

Classic hip-hop instrumentals bent sideways on a lean towards future free-jazz, organic melodies, and cray-cray crunch.

… and that is the story, or at least one version of it. Below are two tracks from the Leaving Records collection. The first is a track from organic sampler Oscar McClure called Seaweed. The second is an electronic song of worship by yuk called greenflash(ritual).

Oscar McClure, “Seaweed”

yuk, “greenflash(ritual)”

Interview by Samantha Cornwell

Ask any 20-something indie rock lover in New York what they’re doing this weekend, and they’re bound to rattle off names of North Brooklyn concert venues that aren’t technically supposed to exist: Monster Island Basement, Secret Project Robot, Death by Audio, Silent Barn, Shea Stadium, Party Expo. Check the show recommendations in The Village Voice, The Times, and even The New Yorker, and you will discover these cartoonish monikers sprinkled alongside trusty Manhattan standbys like Bowery Ballroom and Webster Hall.

Semi-legal concert spaces in Williamsburg and Bushwick are evolving from niche attractions to popular above-ground destinations. And yet they seem to have everything working against them, aside from their underground cachét: no budget, no liquor licenses, NOISE, far-flung geographical locations, and the passionate belief that quality live music should be accessible to everyone — even those too young to drink. So how are New York’s DIY venues staying open, despite all the economic and legal obstacles?

Truth be told, not all of these venues do stay open. Market Hotel, a dilapidated old bank building in Bushwick that once attracted up to 600 concert-goers at a time, closed its doors to the public last April after being raided by cops two nights in a row. Over on the Williamsburg waterfront, Paris London West Nile shut down this summer when its landlords increased the rent; neighboring venue Glasslands, meanwhile, became so popular that its owners decided to purchase a liquor license, weed out minors at the door, and go legit.

The fate of any individual underground venue hinges on a variety of geographical and budgetary incidentals, but the ones that do survive hold a surprising number of these incidentals in common. Some might even call it a DIY “business model” deriving from a set of practices established by longtime independent music promoter Todd P, founder of Market Hotel and many other semi-legal establishments that have come and gone over the years.

Location is paramount to a venue’s success, and but within extraordinarily specific parameters. All of the spots that remain open for more than a year are located either in extremely low-density areas (along the waterfront, in the East Williamsburg Industrial Park) or along high-traffic commercial thoroughfares that boast a great deal of noise pollution to begin with (by the above-ground JMZ line in Bushwick, Wyckoff Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens). Venues must nevertheless be within convenient walking distance of the subway, and have a capacity similar to that of competing commercial nightclubs. They must also be in neighborhoods were the rent is still cheap.

But unlike their legal competitors, no single existing DIY venue relies exclusively on door and bar sales to pay the bills. In fact, the majority of them double up as live/work spaces. Ranging from two to eight per space, residents pay low rent in exchange for studio space and opportunities to subsidize their income by working in-house events. Some venues, like Shea Stadium, generate additional income as recording studios; Monster Island Basement and Secret Project Robot are part of a collectively run commercial complex that includes no fewer than two art galleries, a surf shop, a dojo, a screen-printing studio, a recording studio, art studio rentals, and rehearsal spaces.

Keeping costs low enables DIY spaces to compete with professional venues by paying larger acts more money. It also allows promoters to take more creative risks, nurturing artists that are too challenging to have obvious commercial appeal and scouting marketable young talent before other professional venues take notice. When popular indie bands like Woods and Real Estate swing through town, they return to the venues that supported them from the get-go– and thank them by playing sold-out shows.

As private homes and work spaces, DIY venues exist within a precarious legal loophole that enables them to operate under the auspices of the private party. Though they collect money at the door and sell alcohol at the bar, these costs are typically presented as “donations”. Naturally, even minors have the right to attend “private parties” where alcohol is being consumed — as long as the minors do not drink, which is why every DIY venue enlists a worker or volunteer to check IDs and mark off the hands of spectators under 21. As long as the crowds do not get to large for their own good, and evenings progress without noise complaints, the NYPD have no pretext for interrupting the fun. As for whether the neighborhood cops are aware of what is truly going on inside these musty basements and leaky warehouses, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” generally prevails over curiosity.

Words: Emilie Friedlander

Special thanks to Todd P, Ric Leichtung of Market Hotel and International Tapes, Etienne Pierre Duguay of Market Hotel and Vibes Management, & Adam Reich of Shea Stadium

In his choice of subject matter alone, Director David Fincher gambles on two basic assumptions, both asking that we suspend disbelief. First, he presumes that it is possible to recreate the past foibles and feuds of public figures — individuals who are still very much alive — and somehow resist the dual pitfalls of biased storytelling and historical inaccuracy. (According to Zuckerberg and other witnesses, he failed.) Second, The Social Network departs from the premise that it is possible — even desirable — to take stock in a massive social and cultural transformation when that transformation, to date, is still in its infancy. Mark Zuckerberg’s accidental brainchild may have a whopping 500 million friends and counting, but its ultimate impact on the quotidian of its subscribers — like the Facebook interface itself — remains as open to determination as it was in 2003, when the idea took seed.

Errors and distortions in the historical particulars of The Social Network are as inevitable and forgivable as in any biopic — especially where the story’s real-life protagonists do not necessarily concur. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who combined testimonies from court depositions and the research of The Accidental Billionaires author Ben Mezrich, structured the narrative as a non-linear back-and-forth between the conflicting recollections of Zuckerman (played by Jesse Eisenberg), founding partner Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), and Harvard athletes Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (both played by Arnie Hammer). The film’s script is “honest” in that it rides on the assumption that the real truth behind Facebook’s origins will never — and can never — be known. And if all truth is relative, who is to say that there is anything wrong with subjecting the facts to the requirements of narrative arc, characterization, and good old-fashioned entertainment? Sorkin, whose past accomplishments include credits on “The West Wing” and A Few Good Men, spoke frankly to this effect to New York Magazine: “I don’t want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling.”

But is precisely in its attempt to tell a distinctly generational story that The Social Network becomes, if not entirely dishonest, then content to fall short of the challenges of such an undertaking. Even as we bounce eagerly from one narrative perspective to the next, we cannot help noticing that Fincher and Sorkin seem to be belaboring the minute details of a story that nobody seems to agree upon anyway — even, in the court room sequences, descending into over-scripted battles between immobile talking heads.

The Social Network is positively overflowing with research — but curiously very little when it comes to the specific cultural and social landscape in which this rags-to-riches tale takes place. By 2003, As Slate’s Nathan Heller points out, the Harvard of final clubs and cocktails with Prince Albert of Monaco that we encounter in the film survived as little more than a nostalgic nod to tradition. Despite the presence of scholarship brainiacs like Zuckerman, campus life remains mysteriously frozen in a world of static social hierarchies and old-world WASP aesthetics — as though nothing had changed at the university since financial aid and affirmative action, and social and professional mobility were still entirely contingent upon bloodlines and blond hair.

We encounter a lie similar to the one George Orwell describes in his 1939 essay on Boys’ Weeklies, fiction magazines that upheld the romantic past of the British public school (read: private high school) as an unchanging reality when the majority of its subscribers were living on rations: “The Year is 1910 — Or 1940, but it is all the same [...] There is a cozy fire in the study, and outside the wind is whistling. The ivy clusters thickly round the old grey stones. The King is on his throne and the pound is worth a pound [...] Everything is safe and solid and unquestionable.” Fincher’s Harvard is equally untrue, but with a few cursory differences: our hero is a computer programmer and there are half-naked girls dropping ecstasy and dancing to electronic music between these wood-paneled walls. We are not in 1910, or 1940, but in a hybrid between the digital era and the early years of the last great social revolution in memory, one which eroded the stodgy social conventions of Ivy League, or at least made them terribly unfashionable: rock n’ roll.

Instead of presenting a story of our time, Fincher and Sorkin deliver a classic rock n’ roll tragedy — a cautionary tale of a young, misunderstood genius who blasts open the social fabric of his generation when a hair-brain idea of his manages to strike a chord with a critical mass of young people. Hopelessly impractical — like any true artist — he gets swept away by promises of fame, money, and sex made by people looking to capitalize on his genius (here, Napster founder Sean Parker), and “sells out” to the big guys. As in any textbook rock and roll story, cash and two-dimensional college girls seem to be the only thing at stake here, criminally overshadowing even the slightest inkling that Zuckberg may have been onto something much wider in scope than a campus popularity contest.

After losing his closest collaborators (read: bandmates) to money-driven legal disputes, Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire alive — but even more alone than he was at the outset. The final shot of The Social Network — followed, not surprisingly, by The Beatles’ “Baby You’re A Rich Man” in the exit music — is the film’s most poignant. Jessie Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg signs onto the site he created and submits a friend request to his ex-girlfriend, Erica Albright, whose decision to break up with him at the beginning of the film is the implied motivation for his entire career

Peter Travers captures the sentiment of this moment, and the thesis of the entire film, all too well: The Social Network “uses the tangled roots of Facebook [...] to show how technology is winning the battle against actual human contact, creating a nation of narcissists shaping their own reality like a Facebook page.” The trouble is, like Travers — but unlike Facebook itself — Fincher’s film stops there.

Words: Emilie Friedlander

The discussion is taking place during an episode of Underwater Visitations and features Chris Cantalini of Gorilla Vs. Bear/Forest Family Records, Ryan Schreiber, founder of Pitchfork Media, Michael McGregor of Chocolate Bobka/The Curatorial Club, Mark Schoneveld of Yvynyl/Trig Club and Sam Hockley-Smith of the FADER/Group Tightener. Emilie Friedlander of Visitation Rites, myself and Ari Stern of Underwater Peoples will also join in.

We encourage you to listen and call in with questions and comments! 347-725-4163.

Below is a basic outline of the discussion put together by myself and Friedlander of Visitation Rites. Questions we want to address come after a summary of why we are talking about this.

Why we’re having this forum:

We all know that media, music and criticism will soon live primarily online. This is both exciting and daunting because the Internet is currently a free zone where anything goes and boundaries have yet to be drawn. Because we are all actively shaping the shape of music publishing, we are responsible for making it as ethical and equitable as it can possibly be.

We begin this conversation by using the subject of blogger run labels as a jumping-off point for understanding the role of the blogger and the ethics of music writing online.

It goes without saying that we aim for this to be a constructive conversation. Everyone involved is in it for love, not hate.

Questions:

What is the difference between what a blogger does and what a traditional music journalist and/or critic does? How do you define what you do?

Who do you write or blog for? Readers, bands, your community/friends?

Up until very recently, blogs would write about bands and then labels would see that they had press and potentially pick them up. Its obvious that you love the music you write about and want to make it accessible to the public, but why take the next step and release it on a physical format as well?

Is it ethical to sell something that you created the demand for? Do you think you could possibly lose the trust of your audience as well as your authority as a tastemaker if people know that you stand to possibly profit (either monetarily or though social capital) off the content of your opinions? Conversely, does it strenghten your reputation?

If a print music writer starts a label, that person has an obligation to refrain from writing about the artist he/she is releasing. Example: Hockley-Smith of the FADER/Group Tightener has clearly stated that he will not cover the artists he releases. Why is it that when we switch from print to online, these rules suddenly no longer apply? Is it really just the medium?

How do you distinguish between your label and a more traditional one? Are some smaller labels you admire put at a disadvantage because as a blog, you are already getting into the game with a built in PR outlet?

Many comments from online forums at Tiny Mix Tapes, Drowned in Sound, YVYNYL, have said that if the blogger is clear about his/her affiliations with the music being written about, everything is copacetic. Is transparency enough?

Is there an ethical or unethical kind of blogger run label? What would constitute going too far?

What are some rules that maybe we can agree are necessary to ensure that ethics in online music writing are valued? Should there be rules at all?

Words by Georgia Kral, Microphone Memory Emotion

Photo via flickr

Free vinyl comp with Excepter, Aa, Talbam! at the door.
4:07 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Just realized I confused Loose Limbs and Twin Stumps – Classic NY Eye & Ear faux pas! Loose Limbs kicking things off for a fortunate few now.
4:18 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Small crowd 4 C. Lavender’s exemplary solo noise, most taking pics. “Overdocumented & Underattended” comes to mind as flippant commentary.
4:45 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Population 1280’s guitar sound is the harshest thing I’ve heard so far today. Making me feel like a weakling. 5:44 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Pop 1280 embraced the hardcore matinee vibe of their 5:30 PM time slot, wrecked it like junior high 1996.
6:06 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

DubKnowDub currently offering total liberation via shopping cart, distortion effects. #nyeye&ear
6:19 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

If you’re suspicious of too much polish on your jams, Human Resources might be your new favorite one-man band. #nyeye&ear
6:53 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Despite technical hiccups early on, Follower are delivering a fierce set of dual vocal, percussion-heavy, tunes.#nyeye&ear
7:34 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Hex Breaker Quintet playing their latest Top 40 single, “Step 1. Scratch skin Step 2. Reveal cosmic light” to a partially seated audience.
8:03 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

@lldeloreans about to play the last show of their current incarnation.
8:20 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Do it! RT: @pendupendu get out to NY EYE & EAR FEST many bands yet to play like Passions, Liturgy, Blank Dogs, +more. KNITTING FACTORY
8:47 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Just drank a beer and talked to some people. Can’t watch music all the time. I’m only human. Might push my luck & eat some food.
10:01 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Konnichiwa audience evenly split between sitters and standers – What side are you on??? #nyeye&ear
10:05 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Just had a nice chat with Adam from legendary avant label ESP-Disk. VR loves ESP-Disk and you should too! 10:22 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Full on headbanger crowd in the first row for Liturgy – well deserved.
10:31 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

This picture is only worth a couple hundred words. #Liturgy #nyeye&earfest
10:43 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Just broke down and got some pizza, my integrity forever compromised. Back to #nyeye&ear shortly for Twin Stumps!
10:55 PM May 22nd via OpenBeak

Twin Stumps feels like Whitehouse meets stoner doom meets a Dali film. Like the microphone cord whiplash antics.
11:27 PM May 22nd via Social Beat

Passions have a great idea: synth pop with live percussion. Dig it.
12:21 AM May 23rd via OpenBeak

Pendu medicine bags, containing tiny illustrated scrolls
12:25 AM May 23rd via OpenBeak

Living Days are like The Cure fronted by Karen O. They’ll probably be huge.
12:50 AM May 23rd via OpenBeak

Heard a rumor I would like Mirror Mirror. The rumors are true.
1:21 AM May 23rd via OpenBeak

Need to find a word for excitement and exhaustion at the same time heading into hour 10 of #nyeye&ear.
1:40 AM May 23rd via OpenBeak

Not even the most obvious aspects of Effi Briest’s appeal work for me. #sexdoesntsell.
2:09 AM May 23rd via OpenBeak

White Ring’s penultimate set of the night a nice reward for the truly dedicated. Down a deep, dark hole of processed vocals + distortion.
2:43 AM May 23rd via OpenBeak

Blank Dogs 3 AM: Strictly Hardcore. Signing off for tonight.
3:22 AM May 23rd via OpenBeak

RT @MaxBurke Remember to follow @VisitationRites all day today – I will be live tweeting New York Eye & Ear Fest III all day again!
3:01 PM May 23rd via Social Beat

Back on site for NY Eye & Ear, crowd is sparse for Source of Yellow but they don’t mind – sax inflected jams to kick off day 2!
4:13 PM May 23rd via OpenBeak

Memorial Gore tried to break the table, nearly succeeded. Unhinged noise classicists good for a 5 PM wake up call.
5:32 PM May 23rd via OpenBeak

GDFX set the mood with a blistering, well attended set on the floor – tightly focused excursions into heavy zones…
6:57 PM May 23rd via OpenBeak

…Diablo followed suit with a captivating solo exploration of the limits of the electric guitar’s potential for abstract noise.
6:59 PM May 23rd via OpenBeak

The man, the myth, the legend Todd Pendu conjuring deeply as Chaos*Majik.
7:13 PM May 23rd via OpenBeak

I like Lost as much as the next guy, but Figure Study is straight killing it right now. #nyeyeandear
9:34 PM May 23rd via OpenBeak

#therealvisitationrites is filming Laurel Halo, loving every second of it.
10:44 PM May 23rd via OpenBeak

@0pn and @carlosgiffoni straight chilling watching the Lost finale right now. #nyeyeandearfest
23:03 PM May 23rd via OpenBeak

Naam was an easy groove. I slid right in, didn’t think twice about it.
12:24 AM May 24th via OpenBeak

Just ate this banana for sustenance and energy. #glamorousbloggerlife #nyeyeandearfest
12:46 AM May 24th via OpenBeak

Blondes were in complete control. Roused me from my near slumber.
1:50 AM May 24th via OpenBeak

No Fun Acid = no disappointment. @carlosgiffoni ’s take on primitive techno is an absolute pleasure. #nyeyeandear
2:22 AM May 24th via OpenBeak

Xeno & Oaklander playing out #nyeyeandearfest to a captive audience.
2:55 AM May 24th via OpenBeak

And that will it do it for @MaxBurke. We now return to your regularly scheduled tweeting. Hope you enjoyed #nyeyeandearfest tweetathon.
2:57 AM May 24th via OpenBeak

Words: Max Burke
Blackberry Photos: Max Burke

In contrast to the younger, hip-looking crowd at the night’s previous Woods/MV EE show, the audience for the Oneida/Silver Apples bill was a bit older, with the air of serious-minded music fans. Due in large part to Mr. Silver Apples himself (Simeon Coxe), the theater was sold out for the evening. Oneida took the stage to expectant applause from the audience as wunderkind drummer Kid Millions sat behind his kit and kicked off his signature percussive assault in rare form. Drawing heavily on their single-track monster Preteen Weaponry from 2008 — while leaving plenty of room for improvised digressions and the organized chaos that defines their sound — the five-piece group were complemented by a light show that felt more frantic than the previous night’s. The strobe effect was generously deployed, and Oneida — minus regular member Bobby Matador, but with the rare addition of founding former member Papa Crazee — didn’t hesitate to respond by laying down a weighty wall of sound, complimented by a droning rhythm section.

The set proceeded through a series of distinct movements, with the light show responding to each shift in tone. First up was a hellish underworld, with cascading sheets of feedback and Millions’ propulsive drumming setting the scene as the screen flickered with dark reds and oranges. Gradually, Oneida ascended to an earthier plane, settling into a more brooding, downbeat mode as the harsh colors gave way to a lush green. Instead of cascading in all directions, the jam became more focused, steadily gaining momentum. Oneida’s career-long engagement with the possibilities of repetition in its various guises took center stage as loops of feedback ebbed and flowed, stretching and contracting time. Audience members’ heads bobbed in unison as the band locked into a psychic groove of monumental proportions.

Oneida, Live at The Joshua Light Show Fest, May 18, 2010

After ascending from the depths of the underworld to a lush forest landscape, it was time to leave earth altogether. Appropriately, the light show transformed to the blue of a brilliant sky, a strobing white circle dead center. Oneida provided the soundtrack to breaking free from gravity’s constraints, the light effects perfectly complementing the group’s eruptions of feedback, virtuosic percussion, and locked-in grooving. Seemingly over before it even started, Oneida ended their set with a confident denouement and were rewarded with a roar from the audience. Leaving their gear on stage, they shuffled off quickly.

After a brief intermission, Simeon Coxe III — the last remaining Silver Apple — appeared on stage to much audience fanfare. He tested out his signature primitive synthesizer/oscillator, and loaded up some 3.5” floppy disks. Since breaking his neck in a terrible accident while on tour in 1999, Simeon has been unable to play with as much movement as before, but this has resulted in a more direct performance style. Simeon set the mood immediately, opening with “Dust” from Silver Apples’ eponymous 1967 debut. The light projections showed more restraint than in Oneida’s sensory overload set, with wisps of red liquid percolating overhead as Simeon invoked an otherworldly atmosphere, using only his voice and his primitive synthesizer set-up.

Simeon Coxe III

As the set continued, Simeon began delivering older tracks like “Misty Mountain” and “A Pox on You,” and the light show’s sophistication increased. A young woman appeared wielding a video camera to transmit images of Simeon wrangling his equipment in real time to the screen behind. Instead of the typical arena rock tactic of displaying a blown up image of a performer onscreen, however, the light show took a more creative approach: although Simeon was filmed throughout the performance, the image was only intermittently displayed, flickering in and out, integrating distorting video effects into the constantly shifting elements of the traditional light show. The effect kept the performance visually dynamic, and avoided a static, traditional stage setup.

When Silver Apples’ first two recordings were rediscovered in the 1990s, their music came as a revelation — both to ’60s pop/rock excavators and students of Krautrock and early electronic music. What Simeon and late drummer Danny Taylor achieved was something out of time that split the difference between early electronic music and an off-kilter pop rock sensibility. Simeon’s current live performance approach is more spartan and direct than those early records. Consisting solely of Simeon’s inimitable vocals and offhand manipulations of vintage electronic sounds — via his proprietary oscillator — he achieves what might be called “electro blues.” His occasionally spoken or shouted vocals are backed up by synth loops and ambient noise that unspool into infinity. Throw in a bit more dissonance, and replace Simeon with a fresh-faced urban artist, and Silver Apples could be mistaken for any number of solo operators from the Not Not Fun/Olde English Spelling Bee axis of American primitives and sonic manipulators.

Silver Apples with Oneida

Simeon concluded the set proper with “I Don’t Care What The People Say” – a statement of purpose from The Garden, the group’s long-lost third LP; here, Simeon’s manic vocals and increasingly frantic instrumentation built to a fever pitch, the light show exploding behind him. The track ended abruptly, and Simeon left the stage to thundering applause. The house lights still turned down and the applause showing no signs of abating, he returned to the stage with Oneida drummer Kid Millions, eliciting a roar from the audience. Simeon deadpanned, “You asked for it,” and began playing “Oscillations” (according to Simeon, the first song he ever wrote) as Millions launched into a percussive assault. They were quickly joined by the rest of Oneida, turning the song into a roaring free-form jam that merged the former group’s repetition-obsessed aesthetic with Simeon’s penchant for synth manipulation. It was an exhilarating collaboration that capped a night of profound musical and artistic collaboration.

During the two nights I was fortunate enough to attend, the Joshua Light Show Fest veered away from any hackneyed notion of psychedelic revival or hippy-dippy pandering. Instead, the acts ran the gamut of psychedelic forms, from MV EE’s open-ended interpretation of American folk and blues to Woods’ singularly twisted bedroom pop sensibility, from Oneida’s impenetrably heavy excursions into feedback to Silver Apples’ ragged electronic maneuvers. The take-home message of the Joshua Light Festival wasn’t that psychedelic music has returned in any obvious fashion, but that the inspiration of the original psych groups of the early 1960s has persisted in the consciousness of a diversity of musicians — subsequently spilling out in a startling variety of permutations.

Words: Max Burke
All Photos: Lori Baily, via Brooklyn Vegan

After the scene faded, White moved into professional television production. Although his trippy visuals were forever immortalized in the memories of clued-in boomers and the freaky party scene from Midnight Cowboy, White would not revisit his light show past for nearly 40 years. In 2004, he teamed with artist Gary Panter to recreate some of the light shows for a one-off at Anthology Film Archives. Renewed interest in the classic light shows has peaked in recent years, and White has been performing regularly with his ensemble of visual alchemists and artists to accompany acts like Yo La Tengo, as well as various iterations of the Darmstadt New Music series and one-offs at the Whitney Museum and Lincoln Center.

The Joshua Light Show Festival, which premiered last week in New York, is a festival of contemporary psychedelic music, curated by Nick Hallett and paired with the light show’s distinctive visual component. The festival ran for over consecutive nights (the opening night with Steve Moore and itsnotyouitsme, and closing night with Dean & Britta and Spectrum) at the Abrons Art Center, a community center at the Henry Street Settlement, which has its own history as an incubator of avant-garde practice, including big name past associates like John Cage, Jackson Pollock, and Martha Graham.

A young Joshua White

The theater is modestly sized with a stately, classic design — a bit rough around the edges, but certainly a change of pace from the DIY spaces and grungy clubs and bars where you’d usually expect to find acts like Woods and MV EE. The thrill of seeing them in a classier, more traditional venue — with all of the attendant legitimacy that the Joshua Light Show implies — was central to the evening’s appeal. Woods and MV EE have a longstanding association, centered around the friendship between Matt Valentine (MV) and Jeremy Earl, Woods’ lead singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter. The similarities between the two groups are not immediately apparent, but once you scratch the surface, their artistic kinship begins to make sense: both forge their own unique universe of sound, populated with intimate and personal references.

Woods’ debut, At Rear House, was named after the small Brooklyn studio where they record, while MV EE records are brimming with allusions to recording locales like “Maximum Arousal Farm” or “Privacy Mountain.” Within these private spaces, both hone a craft that is singularly spooky and fragile, but compulsively listenable. Woods’ uncanny knack for hummable melodies and finely tuned sense of how to play noise and pop elements against one other to sustain tension make for an arresting combination. MV EE tend to prefer dissonant instrumental passages, always threatening to dissolve into complete cacophony — until they deploy that perfect folk-pop vocal hook or momentum-building guitar lick, that is, pushing the track into overdrive.

MV EE, the core duo of Erika Elder and Matt Valentine — here augmented by backing group The Golden Road, consisting of John Moloney on drums and Ron Schneiderman on bass, long-time associates of freewheeling psych collective Sunburned Hand of the Man — kicked off the night with “Satisfied,” a set staple that has appeared in numerous guises throughout the years. This particular rendition was unually straightforward and down-tuned, perfectly in line with the blue hues of the light show backdrop.

When the group transitioned into “Easy Livin’,” a classic rock tune dedicated by Valentine to the late Jack Rose (presumably with the hope that the sorely missed Rose is living the easy life somewhere better), the light show began to reflect the performers’ increasingly lively musicianship, transitioning to a bright orange and red color scheme. Suddenly, Valentine let loose with a devastating guitar solo. This virtuosic attack set the tone for the rest of the set, with each tune beginning as a head-bopping country rock piece and slowly careening into a full-on freak-out. The light show kept pace, vesting each successive piece with a dominant visual theme — liquid bubbles floating in space, for example, or even a vintage marionette, which flickered briefly into view during one particularly fuzzy passage. Whenever the group took a hard left into abstract territory, Valentine would refer to the resulting cacophony as “nukin’ it.” As an apt description as any.

After exploring nearly every side of their sound — including a pretty, but unexpectedly faithful take on Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” — the band decided to end on “Tea Devil,” with Valentine welcoming the audience to “roll in as they roll out.” After a tentative start, the tune saw Valentine bring out his modified banjo for some free-form jamming, his instrument sounding more like a sitar than a bluegrass mainstay. Valentine beat the banjo pickups into submission while drummer Moloney came into his own on the track, laying down a confident percussive backdrop.

The group eventually ended up at “Get Right Church,” a tune that has been percolating in the MV EE catalog for years, and that appears to change drastically from one performance to another. Just a month ago, the group played to a packed house at Silent Barn — with Michael Flower sitting in on bass — and delivered a “Get Right Church” as wild and ragged as they come. This evening’s take was more reserved, but hit upon a new fragile beauty, with MV EE closing out the set trading a capella verses as Valentine reluctantly squeezed the last few notes from his guitar. The result, when coupled with the dynamic light show, was a watershed set from the duo.

Woods, live at the Joshua Light Show Festival on May 13, 2010

On record, Woods are a lo-fi pop band who occasionally dabble in noise and extended jamming, but are usually a showcase for the song craft of Jeremy Earl and Jarvis Taveniere. Live, however, Woods’ sound can be more unpredictable, as the group expands to four members including G. Lucas Crane, whose custom tapedeck/audio manipulation rig is responsible for the variety of cracks, creaks, and howls that interrupt Woods’ straightforward pop musings.

As Woods filed on stage in silhouette against a green backdrop, Crane lit an incense stick to set the mood and the group took off, jamming on a riff from “From The Horn,” the brief instrumental passage that closes out the first half of their latest LP, At Echo Lake. Next to to G. Lucas Crane’s unwieldy and manic sound-manipulating ways, Kevin Morby’s boyish good looks, focused stance, and retro bass stylings made Woods suddenly feel like a house band for a self-styled hip variety show from the mid-60s. You could almost imagine Ed Sullivan announcing, “And now ladies and gentlemen…Woods!” and the camera panning over to these four dapper gents.

The set was a judicious balance of focused jamming and pop numbers, including a number of tunes from Echo Lake. “Blood Dries Darker,” “Suffering Season,” and “Time Fading Lines” were all given convincing airings. Divorced from the rough home-recorded sound that Woods prefer for their albums — and given the full band treatment with a solid sound system — Woods proved that although they achieve greater acclaim and popularity with each new record, they are more than ready for the big time, and are undoubtedly one of the defining rock bands of the moment.

As the set barreled along, the background expanded from its initial primary color scheme into an active field of suggestive imagery, spilling acid on one of Thomas Kinkade’s bucolic fantasies of America. The contrast between the muscular instrumental passages provided by the Morby and Tarveniere’s solid rhythm section, the fragility of Earl’s echo-laden vocals, and Crane’s unpredictable sonic embellishments was reflected in the light show imagery, which settled into a red and green color palette, suggestive of classic notions of pscyhedelia. Woods reached the home stretch of their set with Crane wielding a trumpet and Earl executing a precise, lengthy guitar solo. He seemed as hesitant as Valentine had been to let the moment end, but eventually relented. As the lights came up, and both bands returned to the stage for a well deserved ovation, Valentine high-fived and shared a valedictory hug with Earl — a charming moment that summed up the collaborative and mutually respectful nature of the evening.

Words: Max Burke
Photos (in the order in which they appear): John Ruscher, EardrumNYC; The Joshua Light Show website; Woods’ MySpace