The Null Device

This evening, I went to the last What Is Music? show, at the Empress Hotel; it was more enjoyable than some of the previous ones I saw. Mostly because it wasn't comprised of people generating harsh noise/aimless burblings on their PowerBooks and relying on the fact that (a) if they don't explain, it must be profound, and (b) if you don't get it, you're too dependent on conventions (never mind, just go home and listen to your Britney Spears CDs), and instead had some listenable music. (Listenable experimental music; what next, you ask?)

I came in a bit late, and only caught the end of Rhizome's set, but the other sets seemed good. The highlights would probably have been David Haines' ambient-electronic set (done with Reactor on a PowerBook) and Minit's lovely ambient performance at the end (all done on an Akai S1000 with 2Mb of RAM, impressively enough). Oren Ambarchi was quite impressive in coaxing weird soundscapes out of a guitar, a bunch of pedals and a sampler-like gadget of sorts. Then there was Dworzec, which consisted of a guy playing an analogue synth, a woman abusing an accordion and another guy fiddling with a bunch of effects connected to a stationary guitar. In between sets, a guy named Private Benjamin scratched records through a delay, never letting them spin for too long, and at one stage did evil things to a Van Halen guitar solo and a Sesame Street songs record.

All in all, a fun night. Made me want to go home and play around with audio effects and synth patches. (Now if only I had more time for that kind of thing.)

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