SONAR/Brc.lna_hi.lts

[Derek Holzer <derek@xxxxxx>]

howdy all,

just a short list of notables from a week spent under the sun in Barcelona at 
SONAR and other related activities. enjoy...

1) Wrong Fest: before i even get to SONAR, i have to mention the Wrong fest as 
the perfect antidote to the big money schmoozoholic behavior of SONAR. 
organizers Jordan (Squinch) and Nacho (Once11/ex-WE) really worked their asses 
off to provide a good underground lineup of locals and internationals 
(especially in light of SONAR jealously demanding the cancellation of 6 artists 
also playing the big festival who appeared under psuedonyms at Wrong!). some 
key acts here were: Sutekh, Hrvatski, Greg Davis, Telco systems, Jaromil + 
Candida TV, NeoKinok, Sue Constable and Antoine Schmidt. and without cover at 
that! hats off, guys!

2) Hrvatski and Greg Davis (Wrong Fest): besides the big bummer of SONAR's 
enforced cancellations, Wrong fest also suffered from a very odd venue at the 
City Hall nightclub, which is otherwise known for tacky house DJs and aged 
strippers dancing the moulin rouge for a cabaret. case in point: Wrong fest 
offically ends at 1 am, drink prices double, and the mindless beats set in. 
greg davis took the stage shortly after midnight on wednesday, and quickly 
stirred up a batch of digital textures and oddstep ryhthms. greg could really 
be one to pay close attention to in the near future, just to see where his 
detailed approach might take him next. hrvatski took up where he left off, 
changing gear to overdrive and throwing more breaks than a gabberclone on Drain-
O. he didn't even flinch when the house lights came up. extra points for the 
laptop dance moves. always entertaining.

3) AGF/Fullswing (Orthlong Musork Showcase): after drifting around on a sea of 
boring beats half the day at SONAR, i was really looking forward to the 
Orthlong showcase... at last, something to really sink my ears into! Antye Grei-
Fuchs kicked the thing off in proper fashion with proper heavy granulation, 
proper vocals and (is it really?) a proper Red Hot Chili Peppers song somewhere 
in the mix. good, but not amazing. her sound is dense, but i am still looking 
for something in it that i haven't found yet. the fact that the bulk of the set 
(despite having TWO laptops on stage!) sounded **exactly** like the CD didn't 
really help matters too much for me. (some of the "I-Tunes factor" from her 
boyfriend vladislav, i suppose...)

next, stephan mattieu as fullswing lulled those of us with patince for no-beats 
into the land of pure tone. the showcase took place in a huge dome tent with a 
rock and roll light show overhead... and nothing could be less approprite for 
mattieu's delicate sounds, which i am convinced are most engaging in a more 
intimate setting. a up close headphone session with the new fullswing disk out 
on musork only reenforces this observation. mattieu takes the most minute 
elements of other works (laub, yo la tengo, ritornel labelmates ekkehard ehlers 
and akira rabelais or baroque compositions by handel) and creates magical 
minimalism out of them, totally reinventing the concept of 'remix' in the 
process.

4) Edwin van der Heide/Marnix de Nijs "Spatial Sounds (100dB At 100 km/h)" 
(installation): the list of artists working in the area of physically 
manifesting sound continues to grow: carsten nikolai, ryoji ikeda, mark bain, 
franz pomassl, tommi gronland + petteri nisunen .... this mechanical 
installation of heide and nijs ranks them high in this company. a robot arm 
tracks the visitor around the room using sonic feedback, making a menacing 
growl as it swings closer and closer. upon locating the visitor, the object 
simly goes mad... spinning faster and faster around while emitting a roar at 
100 decibels. not only did the sound fill up the room, it actually filled up 
the entire centre d' art santa monica building.

5) Janek Schaeffer and Christian Marclay (sonarcomplex): i would have liked to 
cover all the turntable artists this day by adding gcttcatt (matin ng and 
mathias gmachi of farmer's manual fame) to this list, but they played at one in 
the afternoon and i, well i slept in too late.... anyway... the beautiful thing 
i find in this experimental turntable thing right now is that absolute lack of 
that "i-tunes factor" we have much belaboured and berated around here. 
everything is not only live and direct, without presequencing or any of that 
other cheatin', but it is also completely visual and easy to follow. watching 
janek or christian queue, flip, scratch, bang, or otherwise molest and mutilate 
the vinyl gives a thrill no laptop can. 

for his part, janek's approach is the more gentle and meditative of the bunch. 
he builds shifting loops up out of his two arm turntable run through several 
FX. i suspect digital delay loops and a minidisk backup fill the parts where he 
is setting up the next section, but no one seems to mind. christian on the 
otherhand is a force of violent nature. i can only imagine that the damage his 
records suffer from every show give them more and more character, slowly 
replacing whatever music was cut in the grooves with the hiss of scratches, 
dents, paint and masking tape. if only hiphop DJs were even half so daring...

6) Goem and Massimo (Staalplaat showcase): i think this show really reordered a 
few of my previous conceptions. maybe i've never really seen 'obscure noise 
music' as a music for the masses, and even taken secret thrill in artists which 
drove crowds from the room instead of into it. perhaps it even is some sort of 
machismo... 'i can take more than these sissy ravers can', and more such 
nonsense. all this aside, i went to see goem expecting all kinds of things that 
go bump and scrape in the night. what i saw was a room packed full of several 
hundred people absolutely rocking out to what i had always considered (sorry 
frans!) to be an 'obscure dutch noise band'. there was simply nothing obscure 
about it. frans and the boys were tight, they were right there, they were with 
it. this was perhaps the only act at SONAR i felt like dancing to. so i did. 

goem might have reordered my sensibilities a bit, but massimo simply reordered 
my eardrums. his presence as a performer, or even simply as a human being, is 
unique and formidable. (actually, i just think that he is always on stage.. the 
night before, at Wrong, he had launched into a tirade about the SONAR 
organization... "they want massimo there at nine in the morning for a sound 
check! they're trying to fuck with massimo, and no one fucks with massimo!") 
his set was pure testosterone... all strobes, noise riffs, jet planes and 
pornos run amock. shades of old industrial-era ministry crossed with gibby 
haines from the butthole surfers, only without the psychedelics. i couldn't 
hear anything but ringing for hours after, and the next morning (i only wish i 
were exaggerating!) a yellow liquid was running out of my right ear. thank you 
mr. massimo...


----greetings to those i met and those i missed in barcelona, and let's all do 
it again sometime soon!

best,
derek