"This is a sound collage of Cheapfest V. It occurred Oct 17+18 2014 in
Richmond VA at Strange Matter. I recorded roughly 5 seconds of crowd
banter and noise followed by roughly 30 seconds of each performer. Not
all performers were recorded. I believe theres about 40 or so performers
all together. This is the cheap version of Cheapfest V."
The problem I have with electronic music these days is that
most of what I hear sucks. It’s like sexless disco, lazy and inert, with
your proclivity for drug use in direct correlation to your appreciation
of the form. One notable exception is Container, the one-man,
Nintendo-techno freak-out of Ren Schofield. His is a brew of Krautrock
yearning, oppressive bass-booming propulsions and melodic noise.
“Adhesive,” the four-track EP that Schofield released this year on
Liberation Technologies, is my favorite electronic release since
Squarepusher’s 1997 EP “Big Loada,” and every time I put it on, I hear
something new. Container brings the noise to Sediment Arts on Friday,
Aug. 29. Timeghost from Providence, R.I., and Richmond’s own Mutwawa and
Flesh Control open. Doors open at 208 E. Grace St. at 7 p.m. Admission
is a suggested donation of $10-$15. sedimentarts.org.
Over the next couple of weeks, Sediment Arts Gallery
will be partnering with RVA Noise to bring two different performances
featuring some of the leading creators of experimental noise currently
working in the scene today. This will begin on Friday, August 29 with a
performance from Providence, RI's Container, followed by an evening with
Jason Lescalleet on Sunday, September 7.
Container has
origins the basement noise ghetto, playing raw bare bones pulsing techno
through a drum machine “groovebox” with spacefuckery feedback coming
from a Tascam cassette 4-track recorder--the basement noise ghetto’s
omnipresent consumer electronic home studio. Since his first 12”,
Container tracks have resembled early Chicago acid house and Detroit
techno dance cuts; think Ca$hmere’s “The Percolator”, melted down to
Black Dice level.
Container’s “Acclimator” and “Perforate”
are totally in the acid house zone, almost fitting into that Psychic TV
fantasy--the “Jack the Tab” mirage, where warehouse industrial zone
drowns in psychedelic techno repetition. Basic is brutal. Relentless
disco drum machine beats, constant simple bass groove, and live
feedback. Container is actually super danceable, much moreso than most
of what circulates in the noise crowd these days. This is why Container
has been able to transcend the warehouse/basement noise ghetto and make
the festival circuit, playing actual European danceclubs, sealed with
the approval of a set at Boiler Room, the UK based barometer of DJs
worth partying with.
Last time he was in town, Container played the cramped Auxiliary
basement space. This time, he’s getting the special event treatment in
the clean, white-walled, high-ceilinged Sediment Gallery space at 208 E.
Grace St in the Arts District. How many other downtown galleries will
host Boiler Room-approved raw noise techno gigs?
Also coming down from Container’s hometown will be the freaky performance art/dark analog techno of Timeghost. Reason for anticipation of Timeghost’s performance aesthetic can be found in his quote to the Boston Hassle site:
“I have new devices to run electrical current through my body and
synthesizers. I had my face pierced to create port holes for a
mouth-controlled voltage attenuator I built.” Container plays with the
most appropriate local support, Mutwawa,
who jam an even more melted down, bad-acid-trip, Chrome-ish take on
noise dudes playing techno. Their recent Balliceaux gig included
stretches of horror-movie-soundtrack synth lines and the metal-on-metal
abuse of some sort of Stargate-y copper cymbal sphere. The show will
have a proper sound system for sure; the vibe will be good. The whole
thing starts on Friday, August 29 at 7 PM. There is a suggested donation
of $10-15. For more info, click here.
Then, on September 7, Jason Lescalleet
returns to Richmond for another performance of meticulous loops and
electronic manipulation. This longtime New England experimental musician
(his remix/collage skills were even on the closing track of Bane's 1999 LP It All Comes Down To This,
for those who always need some reference to 90s hardcore) plays long,
seemingly endless sets of ambient drone and field recordings. The sets
also feature moments of harsh noise, and usually incorporate a joke
where the maestro subtly (or not so subtly) sinks a pop song or hip hop
hook into the layers.
Alongside vintage Walkmans and a laptop, the awesome centerpieces of
Lescalleet’s sprawling table of gear are two reel-to-reel tape machines
stretched across the table, with what looks like almost twenty feet of
recording tape stretched into one loop between the machines. You’ll see
Lescalleet expertly stretch and manipulate the tape’s length and speed,
and hear it--not always instantly--play into the set’s loops and drones.
Sometimes the magnetic tape abuse is like a loose thunderclap. At other
times its an abrupt switch to DJ Screw tempo. Lescalleet is seriously
into tape loops--his email address is tapeloops@hotmail and his Facebook name is Tape Loops.
Lescalleet even goes so far as to destroy parts of the tape, causing
the sounds to deteriorate moreso with each cycle of the reel-to-reel
machines. This gives the performance the same taste of unique
impermanence that you might also get from a loose Christian Marclay
record or a less tragic version of Disintegration Loops by
William Basinski. Lescalleet’s last two performances in Richmond were
seated shows, definitely not for those who lack patience, given the
sprawl and often glacial pace of Lescalleet’s material. A seated
audience can definitely meditate in the drifts of low-end drone and
masterful layers of looping and heady primitive analog phasing.
Lescalleet will precede his performance with a screening of his film Trophy Tape, a collection of videos for songs from his 2012 album, Songs About Nothing.
The film is curated by Lescalleet and includes contributions from a
stable of Midwest noise big names like former Wolf Eyes madman Aaron
Dilloway, Hair Police’s Robert Beatty, and No Fun Fest star C. Spencer
Yeh, along with modern video artists Ellen Frances (NYC) and Heidi
Alasuvanto (Finland).
The sole local support for Lescalleet’s acts will be Photoblaster,
aka Broadcastatic, the multimedia/noise performance handle for Tommy
Birchett, wherein audio and video inputs feedback into another, and
walls of harsh tones interact with stacks of televisions and
surveillance video monitors. The result is a meeting of no-input noise
manipulation/confusion with the high concept cathode ray patterns Nam
June Paik’s video installations. This event will start at 7 PM on
Sunday, September 7. Suggested donation is $7-15. For more info, click here.
