Altered Zones

[James Ferraro at Neon Marshmallow Fest 2011 NYC, October 14th; photo by Erez Avissar]

By Max Burke

Day One

Earlier this year, I attended the Chicago edition of the Neon Marshmallow Festival. Across the country, it seems that every weekend there is a gathering of musicians joined under a loose aesthetic banner with filmmakers, fine artists, and DJs to round out a bill that is “curated” by an organization or individual. The story that the bottom has completely dropped out from recorded music sales is as tired as it is true, and as live performance increases, organizers, institutions, and promoters are more in demand to fill up the cultural calendar. It seems that every blogger with a modest following can launch their own "festival" by the seat of their pants.

In this climate, a festival like Neon Marshmallow becomes even more valuable. Organizers Matt Kimmel and Daniel Smith are guided by a particular vision, and their line-ups draw surprising connections between artists spanning generations. The opening act of the festival proper was James Ferraro, a signal figure in the current debate over the place of "hypnagogic pop" in the development of experimental music practice. Ferraro's previous group Skaters, a duo with Spencer Clark, was part of a loose collection of early aughts operators, including Yellow Swans and Axolotl, who pushed pure noise into the realms of the psychedelic. As a solo artist, his music is as diverse as it is abundant, ranging from abstract noise collages to half-formed, ultra lo-fi synth experiments. His set at Neon Marshmallow, however, was relatively subdued. Any concern that Ferraro trading in his signature denim jacket for a leather jacket indicated a return to a noisier past was quelled by the rudimentary click track rhythm and uncomplicated, Juno Di keyboard riffs. In a premonition of his foray into high resolution with his upcoming Far Side Virtual LP, there was even a laptop on stage.

As soon as Ferraro's performance concluded, Phill Niblock began his aural assault on the audience. The septuagenarian composer sat placidly behind the glow of a MacBook while manipulating dense washes of sound -- microtones apart -- and putting the more-than-adequate sound system through its paces. Accompanying his performance was a beautiful film -- Niblock's own, entitled Thir, shot in 1970. The images of rushing water against ice, bees, and rolling landscapes provided a perfect accompaniment to the hefty bass tones crashing against the rafters of Public Assembly, like so many waves against the shore.

Kevin Drumm's solo set was perhaps my most anticipated performance of the entire weekend. The Chicago-based artist helped to define the art noise scene that coalesced around labels like Hanson, Mego, and Erstwhile records at the turn of the century. Drumm sat out most of the last decade, however, with just a trickle of collaborative albums and public performances nearly non-existent. In 2008 he released Imperial Distortion on Dominick Fernow's influential Hospital Productions, a 2xCD slow-burn epic that was surprisingly pleasant in comparison to seminal patience-testers like Sheer Hellish Miasma or Land of Lurches. Drumm was a non-entity on stage, wearing all black against a black background with no stage lighting. After an abrupt squeel form the PA, he pushed the high-pitched chirping crickets from Hell tones to their limit while triggering otherworldly moans of distortion, suggesting a Lovecraftian rift in the fabric of reality. The set ended as quickly as it had begun, Drumm having made good on modern noise’s promise to offer the same transgressive appeal as aesthetic forebears like punk and black metal.

Contemporary experimental music can too often feel like a boys' club, so a headlining appearance by Liz Harris, who records under the name Grouper, offered a nice rebuke to the testosterone-dominated proceedings. Harris' slow-building compositions, characterized by undulating waves of processed guitar and the layering of pre-recorded cassette samples atop her haunting voice, were less effective on Public Assembly's booming system. Noise-bleed from the dance party in the adjacent room, as well as the back-bar chattering of disinterested punters, conspired to muffle the set's impact, which veered between ambient excursions and more song-based work without sacrificing the emotional directness which is the central appeal of Harris' sound.

Day Two

Day two of Neon Marshmallow had a narrow focus: namely, men and their gear, beginning with No Fun Productions founder Carlos Giffoni's opening set, which wove together harsh noise with acid loops, recalling work under his recent No Fun Acid moniker. One of the attractions of Neon Marshmallow, indeed, is seeing established artists branch out into unfamiliar modes of expression. Such was also the case with Les Savy Fav front man Tim Harrington's first ever solo performance. As a lead singer, Harrington is an attention hog. I've seen him mount a precarious stepladder and cruise down a Slip'n'Slide between the crowd. Accompanied by video projections and utilizing a modular synth, vox, and a sampler, he began the set tentatively, requesting that the audience "Please be gentle." The warning was necessary, as the warts-and-all presentation included video of him cutting a beard made of un-spooled cassette tape while narrating about his enjoyment of bad demo tapes, and concluded with treated home video of (presumably) Harrington's young sons that stopped and stuttered in a glitchy, disconcerting manner. At one point a punter blurted out, "You suck!," and Harrington replied, "I know."

Crouched unassumingly behind his laptop with a baseball cap and glasses, Mark Fell unleashed the most irresistible set of the night, a relentless, maximal assault of clipped dance music gestures arranged into an abrasive symphony of jackhammer beats. It wasn't possible to dance to, exactly, but there was an inexorable pull to his sound that resulted in rampant toe-tapping and head-bobbing. Seemingly over before it started, Fell's pummeling set transcended the high-minded theory, and left the crowd giddy and breathless.

[Tim Hecker at Neon Marshmallow Fest 2011 NYC, October 15th; photo by Erez Avissar]

Tim Hecker's closing set was a nice summation of the evening's focus on the manipulation of sound as an end in itself. The Montreal-based musician’s dense soundscapes swarmed around the room, inviting listeners to lean their heads back and exult in his high-decibel command. The experience of sharing Hecker's unique take on sound art in a crowded, blacked-out room was like seeing a film in a darkened theater with a captive audience; he's got a remarkable knack for taking layers of digital noise and shaping them into a rough narrative that you can follow from the top of its high-pitched peaks to the pit of its low, rumbling valleys, like perfectly paced slice of cinema.

For the late night set, Jeff Witscher (AKA Rene Hell) exerts total control over on-the-fly keyboard manipulations inspiring a rousing response from the small, dedicated (and, it must be said, rather drunk) crowd. Witscher's dedication to a specific aesthetic as well as his striking appearance and ability to get an audience off with the briefest of gestures (his set lasted barely 15 minutes) put in sharp relief the primal expressiveness that remains the core appeal of so much abstract music.

Day Three: Afternoon

The second night of Neon Marshmallow was all about guys and their various electronic gear, while the following day's Sunday matinee set was a celebration of the guitar. Following a quick set by wide-eyed 22-year-old Chicagoan Ryley Walker on 12-string and standard acoustic, experimental mainstay Alan Licht unleashed a series of expertly played riffs, working their way down the guitar neck and through an intimidating chain of pedals. Licht's solo work has a tendency to err on the side of the clinical or academic -- indeed, he is an accomplished author on sound art and music theory. There is also a casualness to his execution that can obscure his creative compositional mind and startling technical ability. His understated afternoon performance was a solid effort, but failed to undermine any of my preconceived notions about the limitations of his approach.

In a career that has spanned over three decades, guitarist Loren Connors has achieved that rarest of artistic distinctions: he has pioneered a completely singular style. His idiosyncratic approach is utterly lacking in pretense -- a heartrending and intimate form of unpredictable moments, veering from storms of feedback to barely audible strumming and everything in between (including silence). His afternoon performance transformed the darkened belly of Public Assembly into something resembling a chapel; the small, transfixed group of worshipers mostly stood mute, and I heard rumblings of "set of the weekend" as they filed out.

The afternoon headliner Rhys Chatham was another practitioner with an intimidating CV that spans avant-rock, minimalism, electronica, and jazz. Earlier in the day, Chatham confided in me that he wasn't sure exactly what he would do on stage. Speaking to the audience with an endearing gregariousness, he introduced not just the pieces he would play, but also that afternoon's sound person and bartender. Beginning with Untitled 25^th February 2011 for cornet, and reading from an iPad score, Chatham looped a variety of minimal horn gestures, concluding with a series of low "pedal tones" (more plainly, farting noises). There was an intentionally humorous aspect to Chatham's performance, although his brief, raucous second piece for e-bowed guitar (16^th October 2011 for Phill Niblock) was a heartfelt tribute to the sound art innovator who had performed earlier in the day. Chatham’s final piece, for trumpet, was also dedicated to another towering experimental figure in the audience, video art pioneer Steina Vasulka. Chatham's willingness to suit his set to the circumstances and his personal whims was a testament to the spirit of Neon Marshmallow-- ever pushing ahead into new territory, no matter the risks.

Day Three: Evening

Sunday night's closing show opened with a set of unclassifiable but entrancing grooves from Date Palms, the duo of Marielle Jakobsons and noted electronics whiz Gregg Kowalsky, here appearing with a live bassist. The Oakland-based group's sound is a bit bouncier than drone but dronier than rock, and includes unexpected instrumental flourishes such as flute. It's what might have been called post-rock ten years ago. My enjoyment of their set was tempered by realization that I was seeing only the second woman on stage of the entire weekend. Neon Marshmallow's shortcomings are few and far between, but this gender disparity struck me as incongruous with the event's progressive focus.

Masterminded by Mark Dwinell, Sophie Lam, and George Bennett, Forma is a vintage synth ensemble that has gained an effusive following in the Bushwick electronic music scene and its satellites worldwide over the past year or so -- a cult band in a cult scene whose appeal can be summarized as "cut to the chase." Rather than dwelling in the outer reaches of atmospheric noise, preferred by some of their peers, the band issues forth throbbing, Kosmiche-inspired jams that might be termed "headbanger synth" in tribute to Emerald's John Elliott and his distinctively engaged live playing style.

Although many of the weekend's acts flirted with techno, it took Philadelphia's Joe Lentini to bring a full-on dance set, complete with on-stage groupies. The focus of dance floor-ready electronic music is transitions: the moments between tracks when one beat magically transforms into another. Lentini is a master of these moments, and his physical engagement with his equipment resulted in no small visceral rewards. Public Assembly's back room is regularly home to all-night dance parties, including flagship New York techno party The Bunker, and Lentini's harnessing of this spirit in the midst of what was ostensibly an experimental music festival was admirable and refreshing. As one fan exclaimed, “Bring back that beat!”

Mandelbrot & Skyy is the duo of Darren Ho (AKA Driphouse) and Jeff Witscher (Rene Hell). Eschewing the occasional pop impulses of their sole extant recording OD-Axis (Digitalis), the group unloaded a flurry of tightly clustered packets of digital noise, with Ho stoically focused on his impressive gear rack while Witscher tossed off snatches of feedback and noise scree like a bored suburban teenager lighting off bottle rockets. Their second, shorter piece of the night was even more successful, gathering momentum as it sped down a trail long traveled by early electronics innovators, but still rich with countless possibilities for dedicated explorers. In that sense, it was a fitting end to a 72-hour marathon of music that successfully charted the space between challenge and inspiration.