http://mattin.org/

Noise and Capitalism

(Re-posted from Philadelphia Sound Forum)

October 20, 2009, 2:34pm

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/skc/noise/

Steven Connor: “Noise”

Thanks to a lead from a friend I just discovered this excellent little series of pieces on noise and sound by Steven Conner, Professor at Birkbeck College in London.  The format is something between lecture and radio-play— informative, clever, and captivating.  This is a great example of a fruitful hybridization of scholarship, art, and entertainment.

September 11, 2009, 6:10pm

Concert review: Tony Conrad and Keiji Haino

International House, Philadelphia, April 26 2009

The pair presented a striking visual contrast: the older, somewhat portly Conrad looking rather grandfatherly in a white suit and hat, and the diminutive Haino dressed in black and sporting distinctive long hair and bangs.

They changed instruments repeatedly over the course of the show.  Conrad began by bowing what looked like a lid to a cooking pot, creating an unbelievably abrasive amplified rubbing.  Later he moved on to a steel guitar and what looked like the world’s smallest violin.  But for the majority of the concert, Conrad sawed away at his fiddle, creating bright bands of sound that often stabilized Haino’s more frenetic contributions.  It may be bias on my part— I find the violin extremely obnoxious and over-valued— but I thought Conrad’s playing became monotonous about halfway through the set.  There’s only so much the instrument can do, even when it’s heavily amplified and run through a battery of effects.

Haino was even more versatile than Conrad.  For the first 15 minutes or so, he crouched out of sight behind a table, operating a bank of processers that were sampling and mangling Conrad’s horsehair-on-glass bowing.  Later he played drum machine, setting up a sparse and erratically funky percussion loop with which he accompanied himself as he shouted indecipherable interjections into the microphone.  For most of the second half of the show he played electric guitar, using his pedal bank to turn his spasmodic thrashing and noodling into sustained, ricocheting sound masses.  Toward the end, Haino sang slow, wordless, minor-key melodies like a demented songbird lost in a thicket of noise.

Overall, the show was an impressive feat of improvisatory noisemaking, but the chemistry between Conrad and Haino was tangibly lacking at times.  Conrad’s violin in particular was a drag on the sonic dynamism of the performance, and it dominated the mix, even against the incredible volume of Haino’s electronics— you could feel the hair cells in your inner ear withering under the onslaught.

April 28, 2009, 11:48am