Wow. Where to begin. I guess at the beginning. Entered the show at the start of Maryland-based Jeff Carey’s set. Carey is a solo electronic artist/ engineer who built his electro-noise “ instrument”. The instrument was a table that had a joystick, an Akai light up square keypad, and what looked like a push button phone pad. These were all connected to a computer that offered a real time feedback looping thing. His left hand used the keypads, while his right hand bent the “notes” with the joystick. The table had a single leg that Jeff straddled as if he was riding some futuristic electronic mechanical bull. In addition, Jeff designed two banks of piercing, pulsating, LED lights that eplileptically sputtered behind him that were also connected to the sound. The lights were so harsh it made it difficult to look straight at him. After his set, I chatted with Jeff about his truly original art. After my eye roll-inducing comment about his ability to play Minecraft and music simultaneously, we talked about the lighting, and how if I watched with my eyes closed, it lent a surreal trippy quality to the show.
Matmos, an electro-acoustic duo from Baltimore, have been occupying the fringes since the late 90s. MC Martin Schmidt was the lead man and audience engager, while Drew Daniel was the multi-laptop operating knob twiddler. Let’s start with the name, we learned that Matmos spelled backward sounds like a person with a drawl saying “sometime”. The set started with Martin speaking on the ills of plastic, he then produces a large plastic pill, a capsule, and begins to play it, pulling it apart and tapping it, while Drew looped and augmented the sound. The next “tune” started with Martin speaking on the ills of bad music, he then produces a vinyl album by the 70s soft rock purveyors Bread. I was more than happy to egg the crowd into a “Fuck Bread” chant. Martin proceeds to smash the record and then starts playing the shards by thumb pianoing them off his table under a contact mic. The next piece had them handing out two dozen egg shaker rattles to audience members (I was “lucky” enough to be a recipient), we then went back to our place in the crowd and were instructed to shake as we saw fit in response to the beats. The duo had hand held looping devices then snaked through the crowd recording shaker snippets as they passed by us. Next up was an experience in “six channel” sound with an excellent video backdrop and some recorded spoken word from a female polish electronic artist. The final tune, and premise of their new record, was their take on the works of Polish composer Boguslaw Schaeffer. Schaeffer, who died in 2019, left a body of work in the experimental classical realm. Fanboys Matmos were able to obtain the rights to his music (Drew said “who would have thought that the Polish government would pay two faggots from the US to interpret his music?) The result was a fascinating piece that had Martin on slide acoustic treated guitar and Drew on beats. A pastoral video backdrop gave off a Philip Glass vibe. At the end, Martin called out audience members and said “they were on the team” as if we were being picked to play in some futuristic kickball game….. on Mars.
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