Surprise Apocalypse Music

(photo c/o G. M.)

This is me, in all my backlit, high-contrast, hyper-saturated glory, opening for Twine at the Windup Space last Saturday night. Due to the combination of unintentional and intentional image distortion, this makes my performance seem a lot more shamanistic than reality, when in actuality I'm armed with little more than headphones and a what-would-Fennesz-do? mindset, and spend half my stage time wondering where my mouse cursor went, or which one of a half-dozen feedbacking delay plugins is generating that incessant howl. The blinding white square is pretty representative of what my live set sounds like.

I played a set at the Hexagon the night before the Windup show as well, sort of as a rehearsal for the following night. These are the first two sets I have performed solo, without anyone else onstage. I learned a lot in just two performances. For example, I seriously need to get rid of a lot of the boring "textural," atonal loops I have; the ones with harmonic content sound way more interesting, and live, the subtle crackles and pops get lost. That would probably also clean up the sound more, which would be nice. I also need to make longer samples that don't simply loop the same few bars. I need to make up my mind beforehand what samples I will use instead of choosing them on the fly. I need to use fewer plugins live; probably almost all of the distortion should be pre-processed, although bitcrushing post-delay or post-reverb still works well. I need to be less reliant on guitar or put it through more chaotic delay or looping effects, because it leaves a big hole in the sound when I stop playing. Speaking of guitar, the jazzy arpeggios I like don't fit well into the wall of sound nearly as well as the massively reverbed strummed chords. Speaking of walls of sound, they seem to work better than the quieter transitions I tried, and I think the Hexagon set might have been more effective than the Windup set due to the fact that I was less in control, so the sound went everywhere with less restraint. Making everything more saturated would probably work to my advantage, although simultaneously render my performances less inconspicuous and Cuddle Party-friendly. Oh well.

Maybe I will perform more; certainly not in the near future, but playing out in this format is actually decently stress-free and relaxed, even if I don't have a car. No hauling amps, no waiting for other band members to show up, no remembering songs...all of which probably indicates I'm just a lazy musician.

Lazy, but fortunate. Apparently some guy hit on M. at the bar while I was playing and she gently told him, when he asked, "so do you like this type of music?" that "I kind of have to, my boyfriend's the opener." Not many dilettante drone-ambient musicians out there can say that, I don't think.