Experimental Noise After Dark
The (Richard Nickle) Transaction Ensemble/Ed Reardon, 3030 Cortland, Chicago, 11/21/03.
Reardon came on first. He went up to the front of the little room, where my five friends and I made up two-thirds of the audience, sprawled over long wooden pews. He introduced himself: "Hi, I'm Ed Reardon, I know some of you but not most of you." (The unknowns were me and my friends). "I hope you're not too bored." Ed's performance was solo instrumental Moog keyboard, distorted and fuzzy. He did something almost melodic with the feedback coursing through his amps, and that gave his playing a pretty compelling undertone. It was interesting "music" but there wasn't a lot of variety, and the noise in the feedback was as melodic as it got. Eisa tried to bop her head to it at one point and failed because there was nothing to bop to . After 15 minutes or so, Ed left his fuzzy noises behind and tried to shatter our eardrums with som high-pitched thrumming. The guy two pews in front of us put his scarf in his ears, and later when congratulating Ed, appended "...except for the part where you tried to kill me" after Ed had passed out of earshot.
The main act came on next. I was there because my friend Jason was playing bass. The six-piece band ambled up to the front of the room. We were in a cool space in a remote neighborgood in an old church with red walls and a disco ball and soft lighting and a liberal liquor policy. Jason started playing a bass riff, and eventually the others joine in, we stopped talking, and the show was on. The bandleader clicked on a vido projector, which put some fuzzy images up on the wall behind the band. The band faced the screen, not out towards us in our pews, and we all watched as the blurrly slides changed into black-and-white closeups of architectural details -- cornices and gables and other things I don't know the words for. Lots of zooming in and out. The music started out with a funky chilled-out composed piece, where a nice counterpoint between the bass and one of the guitars underlay some trombone and trumpet squawking. It (de)volved from there. The lead guitarist chimed in with some avant-garde Ken Vandermark style loud and discordant phrases. I may have dozed off during some of that, but the beat came back, and it ended on a high note.
Was it the best event I ever attended? No. Was it fun to go to a little room in a terrifying neighborhood and hear weird music played by funny new people, yes. I'm not so busy that I would have spent my 10 PM to 12 AM hours any better way. The pop music in the car on the way home was seriously refreshing, though.
Reardon came on first. He went up to the front of the little room, where my five friends and I made up two-thirds of the audience, sprawled over long wooden pews. He introduced himself: "Hi, I'm Ed Reardon, I know some of you but not most of you." (The unknowns were me and my friends). "I hope you're not too bored." Ed's performance was solo instrumental Moog keyboard, distorted and fuzzy. He did something almost melodic with the feedback coursing through his amps, and that gave his playing a pretty compelling undertone. It was interesting "music" but there wasn't a lot of variety, and the noise in the feedback was as melodic as it got. Eisa tried to bop her head to it at one point and failed because there was nothing to bop to . After 15 minutes or so, Ed left his fuzzy noises behind and tried to shatter our eardrums with som high-pitched thrumming. The guy two pews in front of us put his scarf in his ears, and later when congratulating Ed, appended "...except for the part where you tried to kill me" after Ed had passed out of earshot.
The main act came on next. I was there because my friend Jason was playing bass. The six-piece band ambled up to the front of the room. We were in a cool space in a remote neighborgood in an old church with red walls and a disco ball and soft lighting and a liberal liquor policy. Jason started playing a bass riff, and eventually the others joine in, we stopped talking, and the show was on. The bandleader clicked on a vido projector, which put some fuzzy images up on the wall behind the band. The band faced the screen, not out towards us in our pews, and we all watched as the blurrly slides changed into black-and-white closeups of architectural details -- cornices and gables and other things I don't know the words for. Lots of zooming in and out. The music started out with a funky chilled-out composed piece, where a nice counterpoint between the bass and one of the guitars underlay some trombone and trumpet squawking. It (de)volved from there. The lead guitarist chimed in with some avant-garde Ken Vandermark style loud and discordant phrases. I may have dozed off during some of that, but the beat came back, and it ended on a high note.
Was it the best event I ever attended? No. Was it fun to go to a little room in a terrifying neighborhood and hear weird music played by funny new people, yes. I'm not so busy that I would have spent my 10 PM to 12 AM hours any better way. The pop music in the car on the way home was seriously refreshing, though.
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