Announcement
Saturday, 7/24, at 7PM, the Eye on Penn Avenue in Garfield hosts Rare Electronics Night, consisting of live electronics--improv, IDM, noise, DJs, and more! I'll be bringing out some beat-oriented work, struggling to realize the Platonic ideal performance of the next piece in my election year series, and doing at least one guitar cloud. And maybe something else, too--who knows? Not me, yet, anyway. The rest of the lineup:

Syne.Lapse.Variate will rock the twitchy IDM, while Rowark and Shadowdancer bring their own particular approaches to MIDI box chaos and order. Manherringbone will either lull you with washes of tonal noise, or drill new holes in your eye sockets...and there's only one way to find out which it is! DJs Darkfader and Cutups will supply the turntablism, and there will be assorted madness between sets. (Although everyone will be set up in advance, so changeovers will be quick.)

Things start around 7 or 7:30 with Cutups, so I'm likely to go on somewhere between 8 and 9. The whole evening will run from 7 to 2, so stick around! It's all ages, and only 5! Measly! Dollars! See you there.

Saturday, July 24, 7PM. The Eye, 4814 Penn Avenue, Garfield. (A bit closer to town than the Garfield Artworks, and across the street.) All Ages.

Report
A decent enough set with some good moments, but at the time I didn't think I was hitting the kind of level of concentration I'd like to hit. In a way, this was another set like the Garfield Artworks one--something's in transition, and I'm not going to be producing results I'm completely happy with until I'm through the change.

Chris (Shadow Dancer) set this one up, as a bit of a showcase with more performers. It promises to be a late one, but I wouldn't be able to stay the whole time, as Patricia's job this summer requires her to be in the house at 7 the next morning. (On a Sunday, no less.) For this reason also, I'd be going on early.

I'd found a parking place around the corner, but something right out front opened up, and I moved to snag that one, only to learn that those spaces weren't cool for the whole evening. Eventually, though, Chris would be heading out to get more people, so I'd be able to snag his spot.

The Eye itself is an interesting venue, essentially a large, open warehouse. Big stage, set way back, lots of tables, a private party area behind drywall, a curio/vintage clothing store, and a restaurant. Gradually our people started filtering in. Cutups got his turntables set up, and Rowark staked out a space for his MIDI box. I moved a desk behind Cutups and set up there--there was no real need for me to be at the front of the stage, and this made changeovers a lot easier. I soundchecked with a bit of the belly dance piece, and liked what I was playing, so I felt pretty good about this set.

Cutups started spinning, and the PA was quite beefy--lots of volume in that room. We didn't have much audience and the evening was quite young--lots of light outside, so I went out front for some air and conversation. Eventually, though, we had enough people, and Cutups had put in a full first set, so I took the plunge.

There were a number of people I'd not seen before, so I began with the poem. Unlike the Garfield Artworks show, however, the audience was a bit far away, and I couldn't hear much reaction. Possibly the details were being lost in the room, or the volume was too high. After that ended, I thought I'd get more beat-oriented, so I did the belly dance piece, which suffered from a lack of ideas in the solo, unfortunately. Apparently I'd lost touch with what I was doing in the soundcheck, and couldn't get back to that. Or I'd exhausted my store of ideas. Next up I went with the new W piece, and while at the time I let some segments go on way too long ("I went to the United Nations, and I told them...'I flew fighters. And I enjoyed it.'"), with some editing this performance isn't half bad. (So now you can check it out here.)

I opted to ratchet things down for the end of the set, and did two guitar clouds, the first another version of that dissonant B I've been doing, which did work rather well, particularly with the new percussion style I've been using. I'm getting better results with the delay modulation now that I'm more familiar with the G interface. The second piece was based on tritone relationships with a separate channel for clean soloing. The first time I did this second cloud (back in May), I thought I'd wandered a bit, but this one worked better, and the improv seemed to go somewhere. I closed with "Red Fiber," although it was hard to tell how it was received, with the audience so far away.

No CD sales, but I did hang out a bit out front and talked with Manherringbone while the other sets were going on. Some very nice performances from Syne Lapse and Rowark, and at that point I had to split. Overall, not a bad night.