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SaltyJon View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: Sonic Circuits artists
    Posted: September 19 2010 at 21:53
Hi, this is a place for people to review anything they've seen at the Sonic Circuits Festival (9/18-9/25).  I'll start off with my full-weekend story soon.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 19 2010 at 21:56
I rode one bus for a while, then got off that one, then rode another bus for a while.  After that, I was in DC, where I met Raff and Micky.  There was great celebration.  Then, we rode on the metro for a while (I would have been completely lost alone, the metro system is a maze LOL) and eventually got some dinner at a great pizza place near their house.  Then, we got to their house, talked for a bit, then I fell asleep.  

OK, now I'll do Saturday morning.  I wasn't able to sleep in very long, not even until my alarm was set to go off (alarm was set for 8, I woke up at 7).  After we all got ready (and listened to UZ's Relaps and some other albums as well), we went on the "DC in several hours" tour.  Saw a lot of the "big sights" and then went to the restaurant Micky talks about on his status update on Facebook.  Good food was had, then we started on the trip through Georgetown to the French Embassy.

We got to the French Embassy and got inside.  They had some merch on sale, though only for the earlier four bands (and Magma shirts), so I picked up a couple Muffins albums and a Magma shirt.  Then, the music started.  First up was a one-man act, Pilesar.  He made tracks with a keyboard and a sampler and a loop pedal and his voice.  It was interesting and fun to see live, not sure if I'd want an album though.

Next, Vector Trio came on.  I was interested in them, as I liked the tracks on their myspace.  The performance, though, was a lot more free-form than I remembered, so it was basically well-constructed noise...still enjoyable, but I would have liked a bit more structure.

Next up was Hume, who were a pretty fun band.  They started off with two guitarists, drummer, cellist, and vibes player, which was the lineup for the first several tracks.  The cellist and vibes player were guests, though, so the last track was the basic trio.  Interesting again, and I was going to pick up their CD but I forgot to. LOL

Finally, the one we were waiting for from the earlier show:  The Muffins!  Needless to say, they were quite good.  They're definitely used to playing together, used to playing fun material, and used to being quite awesome, funny guys in general.

OH YEAH!  Between Vector Trio and Hume's sets, I was outside talking with Micky, when I saw this guy and got this picture taken (thanks Micky!):


First, something I forgot to mention about this portion of the day; for the first ~10 minutes of the Muffins' set, I stood and watched it with none other than Philippe Bussonnet!  I talked with him a bit before they started, but I don't think he speaks much English and I know I don't speak much French, so communication was difficult.  Nonetheless...epic.

After the Muffins set, we had some time off to relax and (for those people who were hungry) eat some food before the Magma concert.  I wasn't hungry, so I just relaxed.  Then Steve from Wayside showed up with all of the Magma merch, and I got really happy and my wallet got really sad.  See the Recent Purchases thread for my cumulative purchases for the day.

Another sidetrack:  I talked a lot with Dan Britton, the mind behind bands such as Birds and Buildings, Cerebus Effect, and Deleuge Grandeur;  he is, as should probably be expected, another truly awesome guy.  He's really down to earth, knows his stuff, and shares my enthusiasm for both Magma and the Cardiacs.  We chatted on and off throughout the day once Raff and Micky introduced us.  He didn't have any music with him, though. Disapprove

8:00 got close, so we all started to queue nicely (read: form a mob) around the entrance to the auditorium Magma was due to play in.  They opened the doors a bit before 8, and we all rushed in.  We got seats three rows back, on the right side of the stage.  I could see everyone on stage, though Vander's head was usually hidden by a cymbal.  We got to play the waiting game for a bit; the band didn't end up getting on stage until almost 8:30.

The first two pieces were the new pieces (I assume the ones James says are boring) which we all thought were pretty incredible.  The first one was generally in line with their darker stuff, while I like to think of the second one as almost a Kobaïan lullaby since it has some very dreamy parts to it (though be assured, still thundering parts as well).  They were both at least half an hour long, I'm sure.  After those two, we got Emehntehtt-Re.  It's at least as good live as it is studio, probably much better (since you're sitting there watching them play and it's at least as epic as the studio version.  Everyone was playing at the top of their game last night - by the way, James Mac Gaw wasn't there, and the guitarist who was with them has only been playing with them for three days.  Even after such a short amount of time, he pulled off everything very well.  My only (nearly non-existent) complaint about the whole show is that I think Bubu was mixed just a bit low - could have used some more monster bass.  After they powered their way through E-Re, we the crowd gave epic applause for several minutes after the band left the stage, so they came back and played a very rock/blues version of Kobaïa.  After rocking it out like crazy, they were finally done playing for the night. Cry

The adventure is not over yet, though!   Next was the post-concert reception.  I was under two main impressions about it - 1) the hors d'oevours wouldn't be very filling, and 2) the wine would be "pay by the glass".  Both were wrong.  The "hors d'oevours" turned out to be chicken marsala, some sort of salmon steaks, and various side dishes, so I was able to actually have some dinner.  The bigger surprise is that the wine was free.  LOL

Isabelle was the first of the members of the band to show up at the reception.  She didn't talk to very many people, but it was nice to see her there nonetheless.  After another 10 or so minutes, Stella showed up, then a bit later Christian.  The fanboy line started to mass up while he was eating, so I was nice and waited until he was done to ask him to sign an album for me (I got Retrospektiw III signed, because it had a red cover instead of black, so I can actually see his signature).  After getting the signature and thanking him for an amazing show, we left after a little while...it was already after midnight.

By the time we got back to Micky and Raff's place, it was about 2am, and I passed out pretty quickly.  Then, after some hours of sleep, today happened.  We listened to some more music and talked some more about the show, etc., then left to get me to the bus station "early" for my bus.  Turns out I thought the bus left half an hour later than it actually did, so I got there about...2 minutes before it left.  LOL  I got on that bus, later switched to another bus, then finally ended up back here at school.

fin


Edited by SaltyJon - September 19 2010 at 22:49
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 19 2010 at 22:26
Added details:  a couple of guys I spoke to after the show both said they had seen the band multiple times, and each said that this one was the best they had seen. 

Also, the "Zombies" section of E-Re was all sorts of INTENSE!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 19 2010 at 22:34
Awesome review there, Jon Clap I envy you for meeting all these musicians (particularly Dan Britton whom I've been following (not in a stalking way) since Cerebus Effect).
 
Thanks for posting this. I'll be at the Magma show in NYC tomorrow, with my wife; I'm sure it'll be a blast.


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 19 2010 at 22:44
I wish I could be at that show, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it.  They're so incredible!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 20 2010 at 00:03
Damn son.
 
All that sounds excellent. And your Vander pic makes me jealous. Tongue And Kobaïa?!!? Wow, Of all the songs I expected them to play, this wasn't one of them. Can't wait to see them tomorrow!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 20 2010 at 00:04
Originally posted by avestin avestin wrote:

Awesome review there, Jon Clap I envy you for meeting all these musicians (particularly Dan Britton whom I've been following (not in a stalking way) since Cerebus Effect).
 
Thanks for posting this. I'll be at the Magma show in NYC tomorrow, with my wife; I'm sure it'll be a blast.


 
I'll be looking for you. Wink 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 20 2010 at 06:32
Phil and Assaf, get ready for an evening of epic awesomeness of mind-blowing proportions! I've seen a lot of great concerts in my life, but Saturday evening was something special. Anyway, it seems that the opening piece (incredible!) is called "sl*g Tanz", and can be found on YouTube. As of yesterday, no one seemed to have any idea about the second number they played - the one which included a piano solo. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 20 2010 at 15:19
great review Jon Clap  and you all have fun at the show tonight!
The Pedro and Micky Experience - When one no longer requires psychotropics to trip
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 21 2010 at 00:13
We just arrived home from the NYC Magma show.

wow....


That'll do till I get to write a fuller impression for both my wife and I (which will take a while, as I have a busy week ahead).


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 21 2010 at 01:50
Damn I'm jealous Jon
And they played Kobaia!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 21 2010 at 09:24
Originally posted by avestin avestin wrote:

We just arrived home from the NYC Magma show.

wow....


That'll do till I get to write a fuller impression for both my wife and I (which will take a while, as I have a busy week ahead).



I'm glad you enjoyed the show, I knew you would. Clap
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 21 2010 at 17:51
Originally posted by avestin avestin wrote:

We just arrived home from the NYC Magma show.

wow....


That'll do till I get to write a fuller impression for both my wife and I (which will take a while, as I have a busy week ahead).


 
I have to agree. What a show. Raff...you were exactly right. It was damn magical inside that place last night. Incredible.
 
Once I regain my footing on Earth I'll try and write a review.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 22 2010 at 05:41
Nice to see so many new believers... Yeah! Cool
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2010 at 00:57
Originally posted by Raff Raff wrote:

Phil and Assaf, get ready for an evening of epic awesomeness of mind-blowing proportions! I've seen a lot of great concerts in my life, but Saturday evening was something special. Anyway, it seems that the opening piece (incredible!) is called "sl*g Tanz", and can be found on YouTube. As of yesterday, no one seemed to have any idea about the second number they played - the one which included a piano solo. 
 
According to a review the second piece is called "Felicite Thosz".
 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 23 2010 at 06:01
^ that is correct
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 26 2010 at 09:01
OK, I suppose that Gabriel will chime in once he's back in Montréal - it was great meeting him and his dad, even if for a short timeSmile! Anyway, yesterday's gig with Miriodor and Univers Zéro was nothing short of epic. The two bands play music that is similar, yet at the same time different - like darkness and light. UZ's compositions are positively riveting at times, and Daniel Denis is - simply put - a drum god. Next time I see people raving about Portnoy, I'll have a good laugh, remembering both Denis and Vander on stage. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 26 2010 at 22:02
Raff, was the UZ venue full? Once the festival started they announced student admission to UZ for $20, I probably would have gone if I had known that in advance but it was too late, I had to work. I was talking to somebody before Merzbow and he said that they also discounted Magma to $35 for both sets, I guess they didn't sell as many seats as they had hoped. 

I didn't feel the need to bring a camera to take pictures, but here are some words:

Sunday 19th Fairfax All Day
I went to see Ashley Paul and Eli Keszler, but their car broke down in NY so they didn't make it, which was a bummer. I overslept and came in late to walk in on some pretty good free improv by Colla Parte, which was a trio formed just for the festival. I wasn't too impressed with Corridors (dull expansive ambient music), Fuse Ensemble (chamber avant with pretensions of John Cage), and Nobu Stowe (piano/drums free jazz with a slightly irritating guitarist and a laptop guy was playing so loud at times I couldn't hear the piano), and I probably would have liked Astma but it was too loud for me and I left. Which, in hindsight is incredibly ironic since I sat through Fennesz. After that it was almost 8pm and I left because I had class the next day, so I missed a significant number of musicians both before and after I was there. Although I didn't end up doing any work or going to bed at a reasonable time so I might as well have stayed. The most interesting thing was when Nobu Stowe's guest electronics guy was warming up and he play some meowing and Nobu said "No cat sounds!" then a little bit later he played some barking and Nobu said "No dog sounds!" and the electronics guy said "You know, complaining about it is the most sure way that it's going to be in the set..." But it wasn't so I guess he was joking. Also, before Corridors I was trying to read some guy's shirt because the band logo was black metal gibberish and he said "What the f**k are you looking at!" and then started laughing. I should have told him that black metal sucks but I didn't really care. There was an old guy wearing a Progday 2009 shirt and I wanted to ask him he posted here but I didn't.

Tuesday 21st Strathmore Mansion
The room was really small, there couldn't have been more than 60-75 people there, and there were no chairs. However, the front guy was cool, and he let me in even though I had forgotten my ticket because he remembered me from Sunday. Opening was Low End String Quartet, who played sort of a mix of chamber rock and post-rock without drums, but the most interesting thing about them was that their cellist is a woman who looks like she's 75. They played a new song which had a really goofy section where they stopped, played a Bach prelude for 3 minutes with no modification (the guitarist who is also the leader of the band didn't even play then, I think he couldn't handle it) and then kept going with the rest of the song. I bought the CD anyway because I remembered liking the studio version online more and I felt like supporting them as a local avant band. Then after a break was Janel and Anthony playing a piece by Arturas Bumsteinas, which was some sort of ambient Fennesz-lite thing I found completely uninteresting in every way. Arturas played it with them, contributing some very amateur sounding piano and synths and annoying Moonchild-esque bell ringing. The guitarist was dressed like a hipster and kept playing the same riff over and over. The cellist was an attractive girl wearing fishnet stockings and a red dress, so she gets a pass. ;-) After about 10 minutes, every time the music got soft I was hoping it was going to trail off and end. This was not good when the piece was 50 minutes long and I was sitting on a hardwood floor. But everybody I talked to seemed to like it, I guess I'm just not enlightened enough, although I thought the audience looked bored, but maybe they were just in a trance state? After that Fennesz played, although only for around 35 minutes, but that was OK because it was absolutely the loudest thing I've ever heard. It was good, he was playing much more aggressively than the samples from Endless Summer, Black Sea, and Venice you can hear on Youtube, which is what I was hoping him to do because I'm not into ambient music. Fortunately, a woman behind me gave me some foam earplugs when she saw me cave and cover my ears, but my ears are shaped stupidly and I spent about half the set trying to get them in properly, so I really can't tell you much more about what he actually played. I tried occasionally to listen without the earplugs but there was so much sound I couldn't even process it. Even with my attempts at protection, I was so sensitive to sound afterwards that it temporarily slayed my tinnitus, and my ears slightly ached for 2 days.

Friday 24th French Embassy
It started half an hour late because they blew a fuse during soundcheck, which made me lol and infuriated the blind guy I was talking to because he had to get up for work the next day at 6am. Despite Merzbow's fearsome reputation, this was a fairly reasonable volume, I only felt I should use earplugs a few times. I heard them talking about the volume behind the merch booth, I think they told the sound guy to tone it down a bit after Fennesz. They opened with two local noise musicians, TL0741 and Blue Sausage Infant. Both were more on the quiet, hypnotic side of noise. TL0741 played in total darkness with only a small head lamp to see what he was doing, and Blue Sausage Infant played with a large screen of Tool-esque (but much tamer) disturbingly manipulated stock footage/pictures. I thought the video was kind of annoying because it was extremely repetitive since it was attempting to simulate a drug trip (in the beginning a female voice thanked us for participating in the test--the compound had already been administered through the seat fabric), but I bought both their albums to support local noise. Merzbow and Pinhas are easier to describe because it pretty much sounded like this. I've only recently gotten into noise, so while I've enjoyed some Merzbow I've heard, I found an hour of it all at once after the previous two acts kind of exhausting. Visually, it wasn't that exciting either, since as a laptop musician Merzbow just looked like he had an incredible amount of email to check, so much that he required two laptops to see it all, and Pinhas was fiddling more with his effects/loops box than playing the guitar. I think Merzbow got a new Mac, though, one had a different Meat is Murder sticker than the one I've seen on the internet, and the other didn't have a sticker at all. I said hi to him after the show, I was going to ask him what software he used but he really clearly did not want to talk to me so I didn't. I guess after 30 years of noise you just don't give a f**k anymore. The other funny thing was that Pinhas brough 19 CDs and 5 vinyls, which is about his whole discography solo and with Heldon, and Merzbow didn't bring anything, when he has hundreds of albums. I was hoping to get some of his albums at a good price, but oh well, I just got the Merzbow/Pinhas CD from 2008 and Pinhas' new CD from this year which has Merzbow and others on it. I'm probably going to add them to PA once I figure out how to format it.

If you didn't read all that, my tl;dr for this is that all these shows are a reminder what a narrow demographic sample we get as internet losers. The audience was solidly 30-40% female for every show, with at least half of the whole audience being over 35. There were even a few women with fully grey hair at Merzbow, which blew my mind. And there was a 10-12 year old boy sitting in the front row with me at Fennesz, he seemed to enjoy it. Now, almost all of the women there appeared to be there with a man, so I don't know how many of them actually wanted to be there (one middle-aged woman at Fairfax was knitting the entire time), but that can also be explained by fewer women being anti-social loons. I don't understand why you would take your SO to an event you know she is not going to like, unless it's as revenge for her dragging you to a concert you didn't want to go to. I would never go to a concert I would hate and I would never take someone to a concert she would hate, I can't see how your concert would not be more enjoyable without the other person silently fuming, but maybe I'm missing something in the finer points of human relationships...


Edited by Henry Plainview - September 26 2010 at 22:19
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 26 2010 at 22:09
Nice reviews Henry!  I still don't like Merzbow at all, but I'm glad you enjoyed the show.  I haven't heard any of Pinhas' material outside of Heldon yet, how is it?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: September 26 2010 at 22:14
I still would really like to have seen Merzbow. LOL
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