Recording: Fleshtone Aura

Artist: Fleshtone Aura

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Ratio (Decreation – Night 4), June 10, 2017.

Fleshtone Aura - [excerpt]

Given the internal and external pressures that come to bear, it's no surprise that no DIY space lasts forever. It still made it a sad occasion to learn that Ratio was winding down its active presence, news leavened slightly with the corresponding announcement of a series of farewell shows, with many artists making a final return to the space. Over the past year or so, I've been noting that some of Andrew Zukerman's musical collaborations have pushed him into more musical and less provocateur-ish territory than Fleshtone Aura used to inhabit. That continued in this set, which came with a different sort of collaboration with dancer Julia Male. Instead of passive-aggressive stop-starts, this set found Zukerman offering slurpy rhythms with little mouth-bursts. Male still caught onto his musical sensibility, however, with her movements suggesting someone caught in a loop, repeating gesture-fragments until jarred out of stasis. The set ended with Zukerman's musical distortions pulling themselves back to reveal Madonna's "Live to Tell" playing underneath — at least briefly, as the blipscape took over again until the plug was pulled.