April 16, 2006

Curtis Roads with Brian O'Reilly, Yusuano Tone, and Florian Hecker at Recombinant Media Labs, April 15th.

To begin with, the blackbox at the Recombinant Media Labs were set up with wall to wall video projectors and 16 high end speakers. You can tell from the sound inputs in the wall the lobby (over by the piano) that RML have well prepared for multiple uses of their space.

Curtis Road's sounds seemed dominated by Brian O'Reilly's room encompassing video projections. Road's used a familiar vocabulary for computer/noise performance: initial quietude/build up to near climax but not quite/silence/repeat. O'Reilly's video looked good and gave just enough information to offer a read without being representational. Roads would shift his sonic elements when the video elements changed. The repetition of the video elements brought about a repetition in the sounds. Or at least this is how I was processing it.

Yasuano Tone's links to Fluxus among other important groups made his appearance in Bay a can't miss. It was hard to discern what exactly his set-up was (it looked like a radio maybe two and some electronics triggered by switches; Jorge says that Tone was using a tablet and writing caligraphy that went through a midi to trigger samples). The dynamic for his set was near constant with shifts in location of the sounds and the combinations of sounds providing the main drive. I don't know why, but I found myself thinking about Pauline Oliveros and her deep listening techniques; then about midpoint into Tone's set I realied that I really didn't need to (couldn't) listen to his set all that deeply, and that this was okay as all the music was already present.

Florian Hecker's set seemed shortish (RML had another show at 11, so this might have been a house decision). Hecker was more for the full frontal attack on the noise front. He used a lot of high pitches to top off the sheer body shaking volume of the mids and lows.

All the musicians' sets would each have been enough to carry a show. Having all three sets together in one evening had each set building on the next. This speaks well for RML's curatorial team, and has me waiting to see what acts they will be putting together inthe near future.