Announcement:
Tuesday, August 28: open wide for yet another dose of Toxic Spores (that's me) at Millvale Industrial Theater*, this time opening for Transient Stellar (members of Projekt artists Loveliescrushing), along with longtime Pittsburgh noise scenester Powder French and Telesys.

On the menu for this evening is another whack at "The Good Life" (for Bruce Naumann and Nam June Paik), a tasty bit of whirring, clicking, and dramatic 60-cycle hum featuring some new sounds from Our Nation's Capital. This time, in full-dimensional stereo! (I hope.) I'll be doing a new improvisation as well, and probably work in the frequency-rich "Tone Beating" as a palate cleanser.

Showtime is 8pm. I'm on first, so you can enjoy a course of Spores while you're still fresh, but I'll also recommend sticking around for the other sets as well.

Rumors of a Toxic Spores show on the 30th (of which I was the source) are, apparently, unfounded. Nevertheless, check out another Brendan Zepp-promoted show that evening at MIT; I'll be in the audience. More Unfinished Symphonies for your listening pleasure, the song stylings of Brendan Zepp himself, and lively drummer Ryan Sigesmund.
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* If you've never been to MIT, directions are at http://mit.telerama.com/dirs.html. Standard disclaimers apply: wear old clothes, don't expect to be able to order a drink or anything to eat, and if clean bathrooms matter deeply to you, consider arriving slightly dehydrated. If not, don't anticipate being able to wash your hands. On the plus side, most of the shows I've done to date have been sparsely populated, so the cigarette smoke should be manageable.

Report:
So the evening begins. I'm sitting in the parking lot of Millvale Industrial Theater. Today was busy, and having just got back from our trip, I was editing sounds up until 7:00, when I had to load the car and jam over to MIT to give myself a half hour setup before the 8:00 showtime. I leave at 7:15, and all the lights are with me. I pull in at 7:30 on the dot, and MIT is locked, with nobody around. Well, nobody except Powder French, who has a cell phone and has learned that Manny the promoter/proprietor is running late and is without a ride. OK, Powder French steps in and does his social duty of going to get Manny and bring him back here. It's 7:45 now, so we're not looking at getting into the building until 8:15 at the earliest.

All right! Off to a rousing start. I opt to use the time to generate some more sounds for the improv I'm considering sticking in the middle of the set.

Time passes. My friends Dawn and Steve show up, and...they've made Toxic Spores T-Shirts! Very, very cool. Steve's design is exquisite! Disturbing-looking spores all over the place. Dawn points out that I can't change my name for a while now. I'll have to wear one for the next show.

Eventually, Manny arrives, and I load in and set up. The audience...is Dawn, Steve, Powder French, and Manny. All-righty, then. Turns out that MIT has a new board, and the cable I bought specifically for recording off the board no longer works. I don't have the right adapters, naturally. Fortunately, I've brought the binaural mics, and can clip 'em to the bag. Unfortunately, as I find out shortly, there are monitoring issues.

The Naumann piece I keep trying to do is a tough one, since a lot of the sounds are based on 60-cycle hum, from Naumann's and Nam June Paik's sculptures. This muddies up the low end, and I can't hear the Powerbook in the monitors at all--I have to listen for the house speakers. I can hear the guitar just fine, since I'm sitting right next to the amp. Without a clear fix on what's going out to the house, I can't tell if I'm manipulating and layering the samples effectively. And, for that matter, it doesn't sound like I'm getting much level out of the Powerbook, even though it's turned up. Is there an impedance problem, or what? There's nothing I can do about it now...

Another problem is the rush job I did on putting the sample set back together. Without a lot of time to test how they blend, often I'm just triggering samples and hoping they work. At the time, it seems to me that they don't. I'm not unhappy with the middle section in which I unplug the guitar and just play the cable, however.

I can't be sure of how the Powerbook's coming through, so I skip the new improv and go right to the "Tone Beating" piece. (Probably better this way--next performance needs some significant prep time.) Again, I can't monitor the Powerbook very well, but I can at least hear the beats. It takes me a while to find the best way to work in the guitar--I reach for the ebow, and I never got it out of the bag. How about tremelo picking? Nope. Turns out that I can get good results with feedback, if I kick on the distortion and constantly vary the delay rate of the sampler pedal. This way it doesn't settle down into a fixed pitch, but gives me the interference pattern I want with this piece.

I consider stretching things out, but we started late, and I don't want to prolong the agony of not hearing half of my sound, so I cut it short. Just about 25 minutes, or so. Well, that's more space on the minidisc for next time. Surprise, Dawn and Steve felt that I was just warming up, and thought the set would be longer, as did Manny. Oh, well. Powder French thought that I had some good sounds going, and was reminded of Fripp and Eno on No Pussyfooting. One audience member later initiates a conversation about what I'm doing ("How common is this? What do you call it? Is it usually this empty here?"), and I snag his name and email for the email notification list.

Powder French is even better than the last time I saw him, with thick slabs of noise. (Why couldn't I have been that loud, huh?) Lots of different frequency bands, and he's using a combination of keyboards and prerecorded digital 8-track. His set's a short one, too, shorter than mine, it seems.

He's followed by No Doctor from the upper Midwest somewhere. 70s clothing, lots of soul-man moves, and...out of tune guitars that bear only casual timing relations with each other. The drummer doesn't really have a kit--he just stomps on the stage and bangs a cymbal, but he also plays sax. Simultaneously. Lots of impassioned screaming, with rock-star moves sitting oddly atop the chaos. I actually quite like them--there's a fun quality to all this, although I think the easiest way to describe it is "awful," but not without its charms. Some kinds of awful are more enjoyable than others, and this was the enjoyable kind. A couple times the lead singer's mic goes out, but he keeps on screaming anyway. All right! That's the spirit! They prove to be really nice guys, as well.

The headliners, Transient Stellar, also had some audio problems setting up, but turn in a pleasant atmospheric techno kind of set. Nice Jaguar and some kind of Guyatone. Lots of echo, prerecorded beats, and the longest set of the evening, but we're all out of there by around midnight.

On listening back, it turns out that the two pieces I did sound better than I thought, but I still need to get the Powerbook louder next time. Well, on to the next one. More varied frequencies guaranteed, and thanks to Dawn and Steve for showing up (and making the amazing T-shirts!)