Gig: No Age

No Age (Lucky Dragon / John Milner You're So Boss / Henri Fabergé and his Naval Academy Marching Band)

The Great Hall. Thursday, November 18, 2010.

Even though it might have been at odds with the tone of some of the music being presented, there was an enthusiastically celebratory vibe at The Great Hall on this night. As I entered, an actual DJ was playing actual dance music, and though there weren't too many takers, it helped to provide a relaxed vibe as the room began to fill.

Taking things even further into the realm of spectacle was Henri Fabergé and his Naval Academy Marching Band, whose name was wholly self-descriptive. Not being of a temperament to let his musical ambitions be constrained by the normal method of being a guy in a band — his self-titled album with the Adorables came out back in '06 and there's been nothing since in the way of conventional releases — Henri Fabergé (the nom de guerre of Henry Fletcher) has instead channelled his energies into such avenues as wildly extravagant pageants celebrating his fictional life story¹. This particular project is an offshoot of that, as far as I can tell, and before the show, I didn't know how literal this name was — but I learned quickly.

Hanging out near the front of the room, I heard the roll of drums in the distance. Then, a shout of "make way!" as the head of the column entered from the doors at the back of the room. Armed with a bullhorn, the leader of the march issued a steady stream of shouted instructions and authoritarian asides ("Do not trust your instincts! Do not believe in your impulses! Society's rules and regulations have been put in place for a reason.") through a cacophony of horns and drums as the band marched a few circles around the edge of the room before settling in in front of the stage.

Introduced as the naval academy's most promising student, Fletcher manifested himself and quickly whipped up the crowd. Contradicting the authoritarian edicts of the bandleader, an electric guitar kicked in and the parade band was suddenly a large-format rock'n'roll combo as he sang a song about the virtues of pleasing oneself, all the horns and marching drums amping it up. And when the song was complete, the band marched back out the room — the whole thing here and gone in under ten minutes in a burst of, "wha'happened?"

Listen to the "song" part of this performance here.

That would be followed by another spasm of similarly short duration by John Milner You're So Boss, playing on the floor in front of the stage. Vocalist Danielle LeBlanc was a bit more archly amusing than I recalled, joking at the outset, "after this show we're gonna break up, because what else are you gonna do after playing with fucking No Age?" Having been previously exposed to the band's brand of noiseburst chaos, I was perhaps less taken aback this time round, so either I was getting used to what they were doing or the band was actually stretching out a little, leading off with an "extended" (read: two-minute long) burst of swirling noise before the songs began. Or at least I think so, going by when the drumming and shouting started.

It was sometimes hard to tell when the songs started and ended but they were quick. There was one discrete burst of shouting that was less than twenty seconds — but why devote thirty seconds to saying "fuck you!" when you can do it in fifteen? Some stretched out into slightly longer bursts of noise diddling. Topics included "weak dicks" (it was alleged that you have one) and taquitos (sample lyrics: "Taquitos! Taquitos! Taquitos! Taquitos! Taquitos!"). All told, not the sort of thing you want to analyze too deeply — but somewhat entertaining when compressed into such a quick burst.

Listen to a song from this set here.

After JMYSB cleared their gear from their space on the floor, people were quickly pushing forward, jockeying for position near the stage. Such linear thinking actually put them further away from Lucky Dragons, who were setting up right in the middle of the floor. A lot of people didn't even seem to notice the preparations, or even when the music began with quiet glittering oscillations. Normally a duo, the band was performing as a singular dragon on this night, with Luke Fischbeck on his own.

My first encounter with the band was quite truly memorable for the innovative way that the musicians got the crowd involved in the most literal way, using audience members as circuit paths to create ever-shifting musical patterns triggered by physical contact. Bringing a different bag of tricks, the interactive element this time involved a projector at floor level pointed toward the back of the room, casting a shifting light pattern. Fischbeck handed out old CD's for audience members to hold in front of the projector, creating reflected beams of light dancing across the ceiling while he used his laptop and thumb piano to guide the music's slow build. After ten minutes, a beat slowly rose up, as well as more glitchy noises at the fringes of the sound.

This felt like less of a phenomenon than that last time. It's harder to be as surprised the second time around, I suppose, but more crucially here the crowd was less into it. Far from being a unifying experience that pulled everyone in, this was very much just background noise for most of the audience. I was right up close, in about the second rank of people watching, and by the end, there were conversations going on on both sides of me — not just of the "what's going on?" variety, but mostly general chitchat. So this was nice enough, but there was a failure to engage compared to what I had seen before.

I also had pretty fond memories of the first time I had seen No Age, at Lee's almost exactly two years previous. I left that show impressed with the duo's entertaining physicality and ability to suggest an intense presence while still having fun. To their credit, I should think, the band has evolved in the interim, transforming themselves into something more forward-thinking than bashing out punkish songbursts, instead becoming more interested in Everything in Between (as their new album is called) — most notably the spaces between the songs, filled with ambient loops and samples. Fittingly, ensuring that that more elaborate sonic sensibility wasn't left at the door of their live show, they'd enlisted a third touring member (William Kai Strangeland-Menchaca, from what I could find online) who worked in front of a table of samplers and other electronic gear off to one side of the stage. That meant that guitarist Randy Randall and drummer/vocalist Dean Spunt could focus on their instruments.

With abstract, melty visuals being projected behind the band, they took the stage with a hazy instrumental that segued into "Life Prowler", the first cut off the new one. That was followed by a shouty "Teen Creeps" (arguably as close as the band has gotten to a pop hit), "You're a Target" (from the Losing Feeling EP) and "Every Artist Needs a Tragedy" from 2007's Weirdo Rippers. That was all in one burst before the band paused to say hello to the crowd. The more extended gaps between songs (where Randall built up guitar loops) were filled in by segues of sample-based collage-y loops, and one got the notion that the band took those as seriously as the songs.

Mind you, tearing into "Fever Dreaming", the band showed they can still toss off something relatively catchy when they want to. And not beholden to the songs' recorded arrangements, there was a run through of "Common Heat" that was much more ripping and aggressive than the album presentation. "Valley Hump Crash" would also get a more snarling re-versioning later on.

This all worked out well enough, but for whatever reason, there wasn't the same lift as when I saw 'em before. Even beyond the success or not of particular songs — "Cappo" felt kind of flat, but it lurched into "Glitter" which was far more spirited — there were less fireworks here. Perhaps the band is just more invested in the newer, textured stuff — or even the very idea of textures. When Randall broke a guitar string and was out of action for a couple minutes, I thought the set might lose all momentum, but Spunt tossed off a couple "Night of the Living Rednecks" riffs while noodling on a little drum/loop improv to pass the time. And that pause actually led to a relatively energetic finale, including the still-fresh "Sleeper Hold", with Randall climbing up on the tall speakers at the edge of the stage to power things along.

"No encores," warned Spunt before "Miner", which the band closed with. Like most the of hour-long set, they thrashed away at it with vigour to but it didn't lift. Which I guess is an apt metaphor for the whole set. On the whole, not a bad night, but not pushed out of the realm of competent entertainment.

Listen to a song from this set here.

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¹The final monthly instalment of his Feint of Hart "serialization" will be running at Hart House on April 7. I've heard that these are quite the spectacle to behold.

Recording: Lucky Dragons

Artist: Lucky Dragons

Song: excerpt^*

Recorded at Centre of Gravity, November 21, 2009. Bite Your Tongue #2.

Lucky Dragons - excerpt

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* An excerpt from a spontaneous piece, though I wonder if the group has a title for this "method" of creating music. Leave a comment if you know!

Gig: Bite Your Tongue 2

Bite Your Tongue 2 (feat. Lucky Dragons, Corpusse, Nif-D, Feuermusik, Castlemusic)

Centre of Gravity. Saturday, November 21, 2009.

The furthest east I've been for a gig since... well, since the last Bite Yr Tongue. That lovely affair came with more headlining starpower. This time I was buying more out of trust for the organizers' curatorial skills. And headed to... a circus training school?

Indeed. The venue turned out to be a large, high-ceilinged room that gave the impression that it might have been a theatre once, long ago. A stage at the far end, with plenty open space in front and the floor sloping up a bit towards the back, where there was a sitting area across from the beer-dispensing bar. Circus equipment — unicycles, juggling balls, hula hoops — was stowed along the walls¹. A large plastic sculpture by Jon McCurley, looking like an enormous fruit roll-up, was suspended over the stage. I rolled in a bit before nine-thirty, a few people scattered loosely around, listening to a cool mix of tunes.

Without much in the way of introduction, Jennifer Castle (who operates under the bandonym Castlemusic) launched into her set, sitting casually at the lip of the stage and slowly building up a guitar groove before unfurling her admirable pipes. The smallish early crowd hunched forward some and largely sat down — some of us up front on the cold concrete floor — and generally listened attentively. Gorgeous stuff, as always — as if the McGarrigle sisters went down to the crossroads at midnight, guitars in hand, waiting for the devil to make that deal to be the best guitar player in the world, only to get bored and settle for some brown acid from a passing mendicant. Her last album ('08's You Can't Take Anyone) was a pretty lovely bit of work, and accompanied by a string of fine performances before pausing for some parental leave. It seems like Castle is returning to live duty, and is quite worth checking out. Here, she played the bulk of her set as one continuous piece, hypnotically weaving one song into the next for over twenty minutes before pausing to chat with the crowd. A couple songs were performed a capella, her voice filling up the big room nicely. Ended with a nice diptych, the no-joy-in-here "For My Friends" (it begins "for my friend there is no sunny days", and things go downhill from there) was countered by a closing cover of Janis Joplin's "Get It While You Can".

Listen to a part of this performance here.

Next up was Feuermusik, the longstanding duo of Gus Weinkauf (plastic buckets used as drums) and Jeremy Strachan on sax. I'd seen Strachan playing in a couple different contexts recently, but this was the unit that brought him most sharply into the public eye. The stripped-down format gives the music² a raw immediacy, like street-corner buskers that aren't going to mess around too much with abstraction until they've caught your attention with a tune. After an opening number (that included some jaunty Ayler riffs) the pair were joined by dancer Abbe Findley (visiting from Kansas City) — appropriately enough starting with the aptly-titled "Holding - Sway". Now, there's a whole lot that I don't know about "The Dance", so I'm hardly qualified to offer much in the way of insight, but it was interesting to see a different kind of improvisation tossed into the mix. During "Tyranny of Appearances", Findley definitely did seem to catch an idea, playing off the differences between the textures of the two players — moving more smoothly to the saxophone's flow while moving in a clockwork-like mechanical rhythm³ to the drumming. The pair closed out the set with a rousing run through the supremely catchy "Doppelspiel".

Listen to a track from this set here.

"It's okay to clap — and it's okay to dance," said Matt Smith (a.k.a Nifty and/or Nif-D) as he started his set. Some folks were milling around, some still sitting on the floor as he flicked the switch and starting stitching his loops together, bent over his laptop and case full of electronics. He let things build up for about five minutes before a big beat kicked in and suddenly the place was full of people dancing. After a few minutes the track ended and he started another, this one kicking right into dance mode — and holding the groove for about ten minutes. Rhythmically intense, there were vocals buried back in the mix, but they were very much just one more flavour until the drums loops fell out and he eased things back with a one-man chorus of voices building up until the beat kicked back in. Effective in a get-the-floor-moving kind of way — not the sort of thing that's suited for over-thinking. Not especially my thing, but I will say this: I have seen Smith play three or four times in different contexts at different kinds of shows, and he always does a good job of melding his sound to suit the crowd and the environment. So even if I wasn't totally moved, I can report it was a great success.

Listen to an excerpt from this performance here.

And then — oh my — Corpusse.⁴ The music, provided by an unspeaking accomplice standing behind a raised dais, kicked in — synthesizers and a drum machine, what we woulda called, back in my day, minimalist industrial. But under Corpusse's presence, it was pure metal. Metal... as irony-free performance art. Dressed in black, with tattooed arms, kabuki raccoon eyes, a feather boa and hair spiked a foot high above his forehead. And lyrics spat out in an angry demon voice: "Wake up Suzanne Sommers! Wake up Lindsey Buckingham! Wake up... Kevin Costner! It's time! It's time! It's time! It's time... to... die!" Most of his lyrics were equally quotable, the next one beginning: "I have a feeling... tonight.... will be HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRD!" This song turned out to be about panties.

Y'know how, in regards to some vaguely transgressive things, people will say, "I didn't think he'd go there, but he went there!" Well, Corpusse went there, drooled on it, keeled over, and started humping the air before crawling around the stage. Singing all the while. Which is to say that the show was a mind-blowing spectacle on several levels all at once. Lyrically, the closest kin that I can think of would be Steve Albini's deadpan investigations of some of the lower emotional urges, but at operatic pitch. And physically, Corpusse was one hundred per cent into it, meaning the whole thing was hilarious, absurd. And yet — dare I say it? — poignant. In our day-to-day world, to just get by, you gotta compromise a little bit on pretty much everything. This is one man not compromising.⁵ Kinda awesome, kinda alarming.

Sound alone doesn't do it full justice, but check out a track from this set here.

That was such a weirdly immersive experience that it seemed unlikely anything would top it. And I had no knowledge whatsoever of the night's final band, Lucky Dragons out of Los Angeles, who were soon busily setting up in the middle of the floor. Their equipment actually looked something like a campfire, with a ring of gear including a laptop, some other electronic gear, a pile of stones, and a bunch of... sticks wrapped in fabric? The crowd loosely gathered about the pair in a circle, those up front sitting on the floor as the music began. With Sarah Rara adding etherial vocal loops, it was a chill sort of beginning — blurred slo-mo projections creeping across the blank wall across from the bar. Luke Fischbeck added some percussion and played a recorder, controlling things on his laptop. That classic slow build, I thought to myself, I've seen bands do this before.

But soon, the band wasn't doing it. Fischbeck picked up a rock from the pile and held it over what I'd taken to be some sort of effect pedal. It turned out to be a proximity sensor, and as he moved the rock over it, it triggered a pleasing oscillating noise. He repeated the action a couple times, passing the rock over on different directions and getting different noises... and then passed the rock on to someone sitting in the front rank of the crowd. So they tentatively passed the rock over the sensor as Fischbeck indicated that the rocks were there for the crowd's use. So, soon there were plenty of blurbling noises. And a couple enterprising types started banging rocks together to accompany Rara on percussion. Then Fischbeck started handing out the stick-things, with cords that led back to a patchboard in the centre of everything. They were drumsticks, or transmitting drumsticks in some manner, and as the people they were handed to started tapping the floor with them, their rhythms were added to the mix. The band were crowdsourcing their musical inputs!

But then came the ne plus ultra. Fischbeck handed out another stick connected to the patchboard, but this one with a bare metal end that he indicated the crowdmember should wrap their fist around, while he did the same thing with another stick. Then, he touched their fist with his other hand, completing the circuit and setting off a noise. He handed out more of the leads and reached from one person to another, setting off "their" noises. If that made the audience members smile with delight, it was nothing compared to the moments of realization — and I saw some expressions that looked straight out of the first part of 2001 — when the people with the probes realized they could complete the circuits by touching each other.

Soon Fischbeck's interventions weren't required as the crowdmembers spontaneously experimented with different connections and circuit bridges, creating an ever-evolving soundscape. Meanwhile, there were more cymbals and percussion instruments being passed around to add to the rhythm as Fischbeck subtly guided the process, shaping the envelope on his laptop and adding different elements of the live performance into the mix. It was a half-hour performance, and it was rather incredible, that simple caveman pleasure of making music together being enough to make it into a transformative experience. I left feeling a warm glow and amazed by what I'd just seen — even if I didn't actually remember what the music sounded like afterwards.

Hear the ending part of this experience here.

All told, an excellent night. Again, a superb job by the crew behind this — not only smoothly executed, but obviously very well thought out. Like crate diggers finding cool, obscure tracks to present to the public, this lot are digging out new spaces and new situations and I feel richer for having attended. Bring on Bite Your Tongue #3!

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¹ And it's a mark of credit that I didn't see any of the attendees try and play with any of the equipment close at hand. In fact, all things told, this was a rather good audience — attentive during a range of pretty diverse acts, there wasn't a single jabbering jerk that needed a good glaring at.

² Er, or should that be the musik?

³ Bringing to mind, say, shades of Hoffmann's Olympia.

⁴ Pronounced corpus.

⁵ Corpusse's philosphy, as outlined on his website, underlines this: "Stay true to yourself./ Do whatever you want./ Don't let anyone tell you what to do./ Where there's a will, there's a way./ Fuck the banking job./ This is what I'm going to do./ This is what has to support me./ It has to be done./ There is no alternative./ This is it. This is my life./ I'll die doing this."