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Ludwig Wittgenstein writes: "It will often prove useful in philosophy to say to ourselves: naming something is like attaching a label to a thing." God has not inscribed on tablets what sound qualifies as music or as good, or that it is music only if it is poured into the molds of leitmotifs and movements or verses and refrains; there is only sound, label it how we will. so.cal.sonic, a six-day festival of "experimental and improvised music" held in various locations about Long Beach , is about sound, the sonic moment, the waves of air upon the eardrums before the brain begins its narrative. That in no way diminishes the designs of the artists involved—many of which were not improvisational at all, and none of which were simply random; instead, using instruments and equipment both traditional and not, they constructed pieces and soundscapes without rules or boundaries (except for those of their own choosing), the specific nuances of each performance dictated by the venue, the acoustics, the energy of the audience, the now. The following is an overview of the entire event. It is worth noting that the entire festival was free of charge due to the sponsorship of the Odyssey Project at CSU Long Beach.
Kraig Grady and the Ensemble of 31 Birds is a trio on xylophones that were set up directly under the dome. The fact that they asked for the dimmed lights to be brought back up so that they could read their sheet music instantly belied any preconception that this scene is simply monkeys banging on pianos and not producing Chopin. With deftness and lightness of touch, the threesome ebbed and flowed in a fluid (though not amorphous) manner, perfectly intermixing each player's individual overtones with his/her partners', bouncing combinations of notes off the dome to vibrate tympanic membranes in ways generally accomplished only by the unpleasantly loud. Albert Ortega began by doing something on a laptop computer on a low table on one side of the floor, then proceeded to place on the floor three large gourds that were connected to the laptop by wires that looked like chest electrodes. There was also a mini-gourd, which he handed to an audience member to hold. Initially sounding like a delicately-mic'd tin container of hyperactive Mexican jumping beans, Ortega moved the sound to whispered tones and whistles with occasional moments of gentle feedback—all of which emanated from the gourds. At one point he took one and put it over the head of an audience member sitting at the edge of the floor, who eventually (just as Ortega intended) passed it to another. (I regret that my diffidence prevented me from positioning myself to have this experience.) kadet was the first to use actual speakers, which broadcast her computer-manipulated guitar tone to the point that the sound was not readily identifiable as a string instrument. She generated a hodgepodge of texture that could very easily be a segment of the score for the next David Lynch film (as long as it's more Blue Velvet than The Straight Story ), which eventually ceased suddenly, giving way to understated electronic percussive pops and blips. I feared Spastic Colon because (of course) of their name. It turns out that (presumably) their moniker is intentionally ironic, as this duo exhibited the most delicate and masterful control in the manipulation of their loops and samples of voices, chimes, wind, and analog signals. Their performance seemed tailor-made for the Dome Room, exploiting its architecture to the fullest, so much so that I felt compelled to take the liberty of moving about the space in a variety of ways, as even a nod of the head yielded a change in dynamics. The first segment of Liam Mooney 's performance was executed with small industrial vacuum-cleaners set on reverse and set to use in a variety of ways, including through corrugated plastic tubes. I had my fingers in my ears, but that was what I was supposed to do, as part of the experience was to participate, to make the sound—which decidedly wasn't just the uncontrolled roar of machinery—personal, each listener creating for himself the final sound-product received. All at once the vacuum-cleaners gave way to a single, quiet electric fan on "low" being made to breathe over a number of two-liter bottles filled with water to create precise tones, resulting in a harmonized bass thrush with a lead on top. Missincinatti is a duo on electric guitar and cello who intertwined muted plucks and tender pizzicato with delicately-controlled effects loops and feedback to create a concentration of sound somehow both prominent and barely breaking through the threshold of dead silence. This was a perfect opening of an evening of sound so closely enmeshed with the audience and the space that the creaking of a chair or the cavitation of a body part could be heard by all. When I breathed, I felt as if I were breathing on the music itself—which I was, considering what sound really is. It just takes a special kind of setting and art to feel the literalness of that. The horn duo The Choir Boys opened with an explosive scat of trumpet into an effects loop, which shortly gave way to the tone manipulation that would be the bill of fare. A saxophone was added, first playing organically to the trumpet's electronic transfigurings, then being subjected to mostly clean reverberative permutations. The piece the two played seemed to move through segments, at one time being gently led by the sax over what was, in effect, a tonal ground bass laid down by the trumpet by way of its looping effects, at another moving into the type of feedback familiar to most only via guitar. Seemingly every horn-playing technique was employed at one time or another—not gratuitously, but in the spirit of expansion, of quest. Noah Thomas used a laptop and not much else to weave a gentle soundscape of pristine clarity. I felt it as an electronic interpretation of standing at the seaside, with all of its heterogeneous elements: wind and waves, birds and buoys, voices calling to each other below the level at which you can understand what's being said. Is the beach beautiful to the blind? I can't say I had ever really considered this, but now I think it must be. Jeffrey Roden played nothing more than a standard electric bass guitar through amplification that lacked any effects whatsoever. His mostly simple playing spun quietly dark movements and motifs, his silences every bit as important and intentional as the notes that he sounded. This was a contemporary chamber music of the Jazz Age, and it helped underline the eclectic nature of the entire festival. SLaB is six-string bass and 12-string guitar (each with its possibilities augmented by pedals galore) interwoven with a laptop manned by festival curator Glenn Bach. Soft, swooping, airy textures hovered in the gallery darkness. Paint brushes and metal bars were taken to strings; all sound was effused with delicate control: a swoosh, a gentle jangle; chimes from a next-door dimension, something presently in submission, hypogeal. . . . Jim Haynes began by extending an open invitation for anyone who was interested to view what he was doing to come forward and do so. Upon a couple of minutes of something that I thought might have been the warped amplification of the soft grinding of glass (more musical than abrasive, a sabulous tinkling), damned if I was going to give in again to what denied me the gourd ( vide supra ). A warm smile greeted me as Haynes continued to work a program of either jars or porcelain tea cups (I'm still not sure which) on a surface like a tray of some sort, with sand and a speaker, little boxes and gizmos, pedals, delay. Electromagnetism was involved, was invoked, was fed back on itself, was made flesh by the air. The sonic flow went uninterrupted as a type of unidirectional microphone was brought by Haynes across the divide between performance and viewing space. He strode from one spot to another, the keys on his belt now as much of an instrument as the bell he would toll to turn resonances into whistles of harmony with adjustments of his body in relation to the mic. The Ivytree is Glenn Donaldson, who performed the first vocal of the festival. It was a cappella for moments but generally lay atop chords left open and projected with synth-like sustain, giving forth semblances of accordion and chimes. There was a background of a sibilant buzzing of bees and looping rainforest chirpings and calls. This piece might be a clue to the riddle of what a cross-pollination of Dinosaur Jr and transitional Pink Floyd would sound like if they eschewed the guitar. Amplified somewhat too strongly for the space; a bit of clarity was lost. Steve Roden 's work was all about electronic sound manipulation. There was something aurally reminiscent of a music box but with more space; its notes were sequenced, repeated over themselves. The quietude and subtlety encompassed what may have been a treated sampling of a dirtbike; soft and long intonations; subtle manipulations of sustain, repeat, and feedback rates; electronic rattlings of a metallic nature. He crept into the gallery space and seemed to hover about the floor like gases heavier than air. The duo smgsap (one half of which is Shea M Gauer, co-owner of Open) employed samples, effects, and mixers to quietly move inside a foreboding of something storm-like, through a metallic pipe drone, down into a semi-pulsation of low-end with lacings with signal-processed bird samples, and over the top of metallic rattlings, jackhammers, soft buzzes like buzzsaws, voices—all with a sleight/slightness of hand, gentle, darkly fey, something not reminiscent of our waking life, even with its apparent borrowings from the background of the quotidian world. Brad Dutz's Obliteration Quartet spread out on the floor a wide variety of objects to be percussed: hand drums , storage drums, bells of all sorts, metal trashcans, cookie tins, a thermos, a tambourine, etc. The group moved through three pieces played with the obvious precision generally expected from musicians following sheet music. "Handles of the Rotating Penguins" was for four miniature music boxes (each designed to play its own music-box classic) cranked and strummed, placed on top of this surface and that. "Rumbles and Screams Through Twilight" was realized through eight stick fascicles deployed as if John Cage had guest-composed for Stomp. "Birdies Dispel Gravity" (for toy birds, birdcalls, and bells) averred the players' expertise and lack of randomness by together moving the sound from the organic-seeming to the unnatural and back again at will. A toddler in attendance squealed with glee. The Bruce Friedman/Scott Fraser Duo is trumpet and effect-rich guitar. A guitar is no longer confined to sounding like the general concept of "guitar" (something still married to what the original designers had in mind), as Fraser spun looping tones and airy swoops, upon which Friedman painted modally. This was improvisation without mess. I feel that this is terrain Miles Davis would be exploring were he alive today and interested in playing in smaller groups, having by now grown accustomed to the concept of musical technological revolution and so having toned down his decadent indulgence. Marcos Fernandes pushed field recordings and a sampler thorough an effects processor and mixer to extemporize an aural blanket with a logic of movement reminiscent of a dreamscape. A bit of swirly breeze and rain, the leaves being taken up and brushed against the ground, a warping of massif chimes, wind-elicited pops and bangs from trash cans, metal storage facilities . . . A machine is chugging, the rhythm of printing press or an elevated heart-rate (a kinship here with Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine") . . . A man's voice that may be backwards, that may be uttering the drawn-out "yeahs" and "whoas" of someone digging a roller-coaster ride, mixing itself in with what might be a vacuuming or jet engine . . . Cycles come and go, appear and fade . . . This the fabrication of the natural, not simply a replaying of a recording of nature, but a visceral mythologizing of it, a re-creation, emulation and not mimesis, a recasting of its components—with two results: a frame through which to consider the selected "natural" elements, and a sonic experience that stands independent of them and in relation only to the hearer. The three members of hop-frog walked on in single file to pre-programmed electric-piano-like tones playing a spare, jerky sequence. On the wall behind them was a frame-by-frame video projection of a flyover of Arabian topography apparently related to oil refineries. Once seated, they began to cut beats to go with the programmed syncopation, manufacturing electronic rhythms like a DJ might spin with records. Synthesizer tones layered a Middle Eastern melody line, upon which one of the trio began to pipe. New, more aggressive rhythms were brought to the fore, upon which another member began to bow a kamanche in a phrase that would ground the piece music for a good while. Samples of voices were brought into the mix. The piper moved on to electric bass, by now the electronic sounds reduced to background textures. The video was of people (a child, his mother); the beats had slipped away. Some warbling sound loops, and the beats inched their way forward again. A belly dancer came on from the wings and began to slowly gyrate as the tempo became more intense. A new bass groove brought things into a basic four of accumulating speed and buzzing, jangling, frenetic, warped whirrings, winding to a low pulsating buzz, then silence. I Heart Lung is a guitarist and a drummer who played a sort of free (though not completely improvised) jazz rock. Though both exhibited solid technical ability, it seemed to me that their four pieces would have been of greater interest and sonic depth were a bassist weaving himself into the fabric. A possible exception to this was their third piece, which somehow built an eerie opening timbre into a cut-beat, circular rhythm, upon which low, delayed feedback tones (the aural equivalent of shimmering heat off desert sand) made way for a buzzing that intensified into a slow, dramatic, transporting wailing. Bach introduced soundCommons Orchestra by explaining that it was the issue of an experiment in online community-building of mostly SoCal musical artists. This was the first time these 10 people (on computers, guitars, strings, and horns) had been together; there had been no rehearsals. For their first piece, Bach numbered the performers 1–10 and placed their numbers in a hat. He then proceeded to draw the numbers at random. The first artist would solo, then the second would join him/her. Eventually, Bach indicated for the first to cease, leaving the second to solo until a third was ushered in, and so on until all 10 had both soloed and played as part of a duo. Being that the luck of the draw went laptop-viola-manipulated samples-laptop, the result was the expected textures, tones, whispers, and drawn-out notes. About halfway through, one of the guitarists cut against the grain with an explosion of smooth, flanged distortion, a change of pace which the rest of the players exploited (bursts and scratches of amplified cello, squawks and screams of sax) that in the end lent the work a varied life story that it easily might not have had. The second work began with high-pitched woodwinds and brass developing a theme, which was soon picked up by the strings. A snippet of a talk that sounded like something from C-SPAN's Booknotes moved in and out, laptops and samples suffusing the whole with texture(s). A slowly soaring tone was brought forth, while avalanches of dying falls abounded. Everywhere one bit of sound-making could be heard responding to another, finding a way to work with it or laying down a repeated phrase available to be followed. Each permutation changed the whole, not just as a component but also as what the others had to work with. Tug on the web in one place and the resonance of the entire nexus is altered. The resulting breathing soundscape would have made John Zorn proud. I would have liked to have seen The Ivytree (from Day 3) in this spot and Sumako in his, because Sumako laid out a delicate tissue of texture in which the slightest metallic flutterings and tonal alterations were central. His quiet hums and figures were their own ambience; all other sound was noticeable interference. He exhibited lightness of touch in all of his actions to evoke his particular aesthetic. It's easy to imagine Sumako scoring a film with the same effectiveness that Neil Young achieved with Dead Man . the moon and mars are a drummer and guy who, basically, switches between guitar and bass, laying down a line on one and looping the whole thing, then laying down a line on the other and looping that, then picking up his original instrument and playing a sort of simple, repetitive lead. Although instrumental (aside from an audio recording of Krishnamurti or somebody reciting some new-agey spiritual stuff that was used in the intro of three of the duo's four songs), their music was very standard. It was not the most out-of-keeping with my personal taste (their formula of rolling drum cycles with sometimes tribal rhythm and sliding lead lines on top of spiraled layers was generally very reminiscent of one of my favorite bands, The Cure), but they seemed a bit out of place in so.cal.sonic. The end of their fourth song was the highlight, as the guitarist hopped onto a set of toms and the duo produced a rousing rhythmic interplay. I don't know if the Kris Tiner/Noah Phillips/Nathan Hubbard Trio (trumpet, electric guitar, and idiosyncratic drum set with a gaggle of metallic percussion) is to be a permanent unit (this was their first time playing together), but the best word I have to express my feeling during their two improvisations is delight. All three exhibited the most meticulous attention to detail in both the sounds they coaxed from their respective instruments and their part in the whole being created moment by moment. Their constant and frenetic alterations (the constant maneuverings of trumpet bell, the specific makeup of a distortion wash, the pressing and bowing of a splash pressed against the head and rim of a floor tom) were always playful scurries, no matter how unorthodox and jagged. I wouldn't need a wider range of diversity from these guys any more than I do from The Strokes. If the so.cal.sonic press release did not say that the Emily Hay/Michael Intriere/Anthony Shadduck Trio (flute, cello, contrabass) was improv, for the most part I would not have guessed, as their tightness, precision, and ability to cohesively steer their music down tortuous paths became all the more impressive the farther a piece progressed; and their intuition of where and for how long to go was dead on. The Kronos Quartet is probably the most well-known group to produce work in this vein. A precious component of their work was the vocalization of Hay, who seemed to scat in a manner half-Sarah Vaughn, half-Hopelandic (i.e., the ad-hoc "language" of Sigur Ros), doing so with complete conviction, truly using her voice as an instrument—all while continuing to deploy her fingerings, even in moments when the flute was barely in range of her insufflations. Aaron Ximm (Quiet American) is a sound-collection artist, gracefully sculpting one pristine, untreated field recordings into another through an immaculately clear sound system. The result is far more striking than the description indicates, as the result is that everyday sounds—the dripping of water, the hum of machinery, the strike and ring of a bell, the pops of a burning log—become recontextualized and demand to be reconsidered as the sounds themselves and not the sources from which they emanate. The outdoor location for his piece was perfect, as the interaction of other everyday sounds—a breeze, the scrape of leaves against pavement, the Dopplering of an airplane overhead—seemed choreographed to those broadcast by the speakers, for a moment pure sonic entities and no longer wind, flora, transportation. A protracted, steadily wavering pure tone went from being unusual and in the foreground to something backgrounded, familiar, completely standardized, eventually coming to lend the commonplace sounds of the outdoors (shouts from afar, a truck engine, that wind again) a salience they don't usually hold for us, bringing them centerstage in our hearing. This festival could not have had a more perfect closing. Words cannot convey more than a shadow of the auditory. There are people of uncommon skill, dedication, and vision creating musics that will never resemble anything played on MTV or commercial radio. Many people who might enjoy them may not be aware that this kind of thing is even out there to encountered. For those seeking it out, so.cal.sonic aptly demonstrated that Long Beach is an epicenter of this shifting, churning, living ground.
A blurb from festival curator Glenn Bach (adapted from an e-mail to Arrissia Owen Turner at the OC Weekly): So.cal.sonic has its roots in a house concert series I ran a few years ago called Quiet, which featured local and touring musicians/composers whose work falls on the quieter end of the spectrum, or those who were interested in showcasing some of their quieter work in an intimate setting. Many of the performers featured in so.cal.sonic performed at Quiet, or were in the queue when I ended the series. Since this new festival is not bound by those earlier restrictions on noise levels, I was able to branch out and invite performers and groups that might not have worked in the smaller space (like soundCommons Orchestra, for example, an ensemble of 15-25 musicians performing completely unrehearsed free-improvisations). Even with this new openness, the performers chosen, on the whole, still lean toward (or at least point to) the sparser, more minimal side of things rather than the all-out sonic assault of noise music, or the wild skronk of some free jazz. Both of which I admire; both of which have their place; but with this festival I wanted to provide more opportunities for deeper, closer listening. With this festival, while not officially associated with the Music Department at CSULB, I hope to build a bridge between the campus and the (re)burgeoning scene in downtown Long Beach. There is a lot going on here, much of it in the East Village, particularly centered around the intersection of Broadway and Linden. In addition to being the focal point of the annual Soundwalk, the neighborhood is the home of noted arts center Koo's. Shea M. Gauer and Scott A. Peterson (also known as smgsap) run an experimental music series called The Sounds Around at The Dome Room, the ballroom in the old Lafayette building. As the name suggests, The Dome Room features a domed parabolic ceiling above the "dance floor," so that when you sit or stand directly beneath the dome the sound reverberates and resonates all around you. Pictures of past performances can be found at the Parabolic Productions website. The Dome Room houses the first night of so.cal.sonic, Tuesday, April 19th, with microtonal drones and soundscapes from Kraig Grady and the Ensemble of 31 Birds, minimal electronics from Spastic Colon ("It's not as bad as it sounds") and Albert Ortega, abstract sounds and projected video from multimedia artist kadet, and finally Liam Mooney 's sounds generated from amplified everyday objects (popcorn, drinking straws, styrofoam, electric fans, soap, etc.). On the second night we walk around the corner to Open, Shea Gauer's bookstore/gallery, with the hauntingly sparse solo bass guitar of Jeffrey Roden, the dual horns of The Choir Boys (Jeff Kaiser and Andrew Pask), the electric guitar/cello combo of Missincinnati (Jeremy Drake and Jessica Catron), and solo laptop/electronics from Noah Thomas. Thursday we head down the street a few blocks to 2nd City Council, an art gallery in the historic building that once housed Wille's Tin Shop. That night we hear internationally recognized sound/visual artist Steve Roden's hypnotic soundscapes, solo sets from Northern California artists The Ivytree (Glenn Donaldson, also of Thuja and The Blithe Sons) and Jim Haynes, along with the free improv experiments of SLaB (noted L.A. free guitarist G.E. Stinson, versatile contrabassist Steuart Liebig, and festival curator Glenn Bach on laptop). We leave the East Village for a Friday evening in Belmont Heights, enjoying the storefront space of CSULB alum Tom Miller's Viento y Agua Gallery. Sipping almond-cut Mexican hot chocolate, we hear the dense drones of Marcos Fernandes from San Diego 's noted Trummerflora Collective, the moving and primal percussive work of Brad Dutz and his Obliteration Quartet, free-improv trumpet and electronics from Bruce Friedman and Scott Fraser, and the ever-shifting soundscapes of smgsap. On Saturday we head back to The Dome Room for the world premiere of soundCommons Orchestra, performing several loosely structured improvisational pieces and one totally free improvisation; the drone-rock free jazz of I Heart Lung; the collective theatrics of hop-frog; and Chicago curator/sound artist/visual artist John Kannenberg (performing Two Cities, a collaboration with Glenn Bach). We close the festival with a generous afternoon of free music, featuring the untreated field recordings of San Francisco's Aaron Ximm (Quiet American); an idiosyncratic free improv trio of flutist/vocalist Emily Hay, cellist Michael Intriere, and contrabassist Anthony Shadduck; another driving trio of trumpeter Kris Tiner, guitarist Noah Phillips, and percussionist Nathan Hubbard; the instrumental & loops post-rock of the moon and mars, and the ambient guitar analog of Long Beach composer Sumako. After the music is over, we celebrate with food and drink during the closing reception from 5-8 PM . Generously funded by the Odyssey Project at CSULB, we are proud to present all of the festival concerts free of charge and open to all ages. I hope that because of this, we will be able to draw a large, diverse group of listeners, who, although differing in their knowledge and experience of these forms of music, will share an eagerness to listen and open mind to take it all in.
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