NO-CORE blog

On Saturday I dragged myself out to Outpost, a place around the corner from the Silent Barn, for the panel discussion with Phill Niblock, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Al Margolis, Katherine Liberovskaya, AMK, Rat Bastard, Gen Ken Montgomery, Damion Romero, and of course Ende Tymes organizer and long-time noisemaker himself, Bob Bellerue. The subject of the discussion was listed as “Street-level experimental music and the evolution of technology and culture.” That does sound like it could be a stuffy snooze-fest, but it was actually very UN-like some of the pretentious art school events I’ve seen. I almost forgot what it was like just to listen to artists talking about why they like doing what they do, without trying to convince anyone that they’re brilliant and totally deserve that grant or gallery show. Rat Bastard’s opinions also kept things lively, as he disagreed with the other panel members on most points.

John Mannion at Ende Tymes Fest

I didn’t catch the video screening on any of the days, but I did get back in time to catch John Mannion kicking off Saturday night. Speaking of doing a lot with a little, Mannion’s main instrument is an open box fan, to which he applies an amplified screwdriver and subway pass. A laptop and effects also play a role, but still, it’s fun seeing the noises being produced by the fan-playing.

KILT filled the room with some thick wall-to-wall sound. Phil Niblock was one of the more famous performers (I gathered) and had one of the bigger crowds. However, he really only sat at his laptop so there was nothing to see. The sounds were a thick and constantly shifting river of tones. It sounded cool, but I felt like it would be more appropriate in an art installation setting where people come and go, as there was no big change in the sound at any point and little to watch.

Sick Llama at Ende Tymes Fest

Sick Llama I’ve also never seen but heard the name pretty often. He made slow-motion echoed sounds sort of like… well, not entirely unlike a sick llama. GX Jupitter-Larsen, of Haters fame (a band which is sometimes just him so I’m not sure what the distinction is) did something or other with a suitcase that resulted in a heavy rumbling noise. The sound was nicely gritty and physical, but I do wish I could have gotten a better idea of how it was created.

Kyle Clyde at Ende Tymes Fest

Kyle Clyde had a simple set-up and sonic palette compared to some, but really sold it with a gripping performance. Then at the other end of the spectrum, and closing out Saturday night, Yellow Tears had the most elaborate set-up with TVs, remote video, bowls of water, keyboards, etc. I couldn’t quite tell if their performance-art-like show, which seemed to be all about … drinking pee? … was supposed to be dark and disturbing or just a goof. It did end with someone getting a pie in the face though.

My resolve and health were deteriorating by night 3, though the quality of the acts didn’t slip. But the heat and hours of breathing cigarette smoke were starting to make me ill, so I made Sunday a shorter night and probably missed some great stuff. I was told that Gen Ken Montgomery was awesome.

Mike Shiflet created a varied range of textured sounds, almost peaceful but never boring. Damian Romero somehow made the walls, floor, and ceiling vibrate with some intense frequencies. It felt like he’d turned the whole Silent Barn into a speaker which we were all inside of. I was really, really glad I caught the set by I’D M Thfft Able (that spelling might be close to correct…) which turned out to be another one of my favorites.

I'D M Thfft Able at Ende Tymes Fest

Much like Crank Sturgeon or john Mannion, I’D M has an approach where you can see how all the sounds are made. It’s simply contact-miked objects and improvised vocal sounds. But from that basic starting point, I’D M went way, way outside the box with his performance, creating some of the oddest, most surprising, and harshest sounds (his amplified scratching down a chalkboard made one audience member cover her ears and run to the back of the room). At various points he stumbled around, dropping and rolling bowling and billiard balls while singing stream-of-consciousness phrases. I wasn’t the only one impressed and I think he got the wildest cheers and applause of all the acts.

ID M Thfft Able at Ende Tymes

This overview is seriously incomplete, but this YouTube user, mathgrind, got far more and better videos than anything I got. I’m embedding a playlist of his Ende Tymes videos below, in no particular order. Please feel free to add other links in the comments.

The weekend before last I caught a good portion of the epic Ende Tymes Fest at the Silent Barn in Queens. This is far from a complete overview, but I did catch most of the acts and got a few good photos and videos, so I’m going to post them up in parts. This was a 3-day, all-noise event with several long-time veterans of the noise scene represented. And when I say noise, I don’t mean just the “anything goes” stuff, but specifically the rhythm-free, note-free, harsh sound variety.

Twisty Cat at Ende Tymes Fest

When I got there on Friday evening, TwistyCat were going on. They’re locals who do cool free-horns through effects sounds. It’s not the harsh skronk of Borbetomagus, but it’s also not drone stuff. Somewhere in between. Vertonen did a fun set that ended with a feedback noise jam over Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” which (I’m pretty sure) just happened to start coming through his radio.

Crank Sturgeon at Ende Tymes Fest

Crank Sturgeon is one of the scene veterans and someone I’d never seen before, so this was a real treat for me. My personal tastes also lean toward the absurdist/low-brow/dada, which had a smaller representation at the Ende Tymes, so this performance was very welcome. In addition to all that, I am always impressed when someone can do a LOT with a LITTLE. Sure, you can make some mean noise with a laptop, table full of effects pedals, modular synth and mixer – but can you put on an amazing noise show with TWO TIN CANS AND A STRING?

After the above segment, Crank Sturgeon proceeded to stretch packing tape across the venue and back (contact miked, which sounded amazing), strung up a violin from the center and did some kind of performance piece that seemed to be about him ejaculating cotton ball “clouds” onto a packing tape “sky.”

MV Carbon put in a good set of mutant sounds made with effects and a cello. (Was that instrument a cello? I don’t even know.) Bran (…) Pos was really cool to watch, creating noise from processed vocal sounds along with processed video of himself making the vocal sounds.

The Rat Bastard Experience also brought the low-brow in a big way. The Experience was comprised of all of the members of Cellular Chaos with Rat on guitar, C Lavender on a radio or something, and Nondor Nevai on “vocals.” And by “vocals” I mean freaking out and tackling people while sometimes holding a microphone.

Rat Bastard Experience at Ende Tymes Fest

ISA Christ actually did bring a strong rhythmic element in, but run through a suitcase-of-noise-gear. And Hex Breaker Quartet closed out Friday night with their heavy psych-drone. Filling the position in the NYC scene vacant since Double Leopards?

Part 2 coming soon!

I caught this super-cold and super-booked show at the Silent Barn Friday evening. I saw everyone at the upstairs show, but missed a bunch of the downstairs going-ons unfortunately.

keeping warm at Silent Barn

Did I mention it was cold? I guess the Silent Barn crew is living without heat this winter. Hardcore. Above you see Neg-Fi and Doldrums watching another act and trying to keep warm.

Neg-Fi at Silent Barn

Neg-Fi did their tight and punctual No Wave two-step thing. Got the crowd moving without a single drumbeat.

unknown band in Silent Barn basement

Then I headed downstairs to see what was going on at the more avant/weird-noise show. This band played, and it sounded pretty awesome when they actually played and weren’t just chatting with their 5 friends who were there. I know that seems like the natural thing to do when you feel like your 5 friends are the only ones paying attention, but hey, that’s why I always advocate selling it like you’re playing for thousands no matter what. Because maybe that kid in the back corner is actually really, really into it despite appearances and would have been your fan for life until you let the song trail off and started rambling… Also not into the hunched over facing away from any audience style. But like I said, the sounds were great. Rhythmic mechanical-death-throes noises.

Doldrums at Silent Barn

Up next was Doldrums (who came down from Canada) which started out as some serious post-Narwhalz/Kyle H Mabson thing. Pop song sampling interspersed with short bursts of noises, heckler-baiting, and stand-up comedy. It went on like this for the bulk of their time and was pretty entertaining. Not quite on Narwhalz’ level but still. Then at the very end the Doldrums dude decided to play a couple of songs.

Doldrums encore

The drummer only decided to play after the crowd demanded one more song, and this was by far the highlight. Hard to believe they almost ended without playing this, after setting up the drums at the beginning and all. Melodic but noisy but spooky but edgy. Real nice, and it doubled my positive impression of them.

Cat with Nat Roe at Silent Barn

Back downstairs, this performance was going on. Nat Roe lured a couple of the silent Barn resident cats down with the promise of food and then tested their determination with escalating noise, music, and a vacuum cleaner. Honestly, I’ve got a soft spot for animals and felt kind of bad for the cats here, though they certainly weren’t harmed and were free to leave the scene at any time. I’m pretty impressed with that cat’s willingness to continue finishing its meal even when the vacuum cleaner started up – most household pets’ most-hated appliance.

Wharton Tiers Ensemble at Silent Barn

Wharton Tiers is a long-time NYC music dude, best-known for recording some pretty legendary bands and albums. Here he plays drums along with a bassist, saxophonist, and FIVE guitarists. I don’t know if the knowledge of Mr. Tiers’ CV colored my impression, but this came across to me as a totally classic NYC-flavored experience, part Branca/Live Skull/Sonic Youth, part Television/New York Dolls.

Sediment Club at Silent Barn

I think The Sediment Club are one of my favorite bands going right now, doing a fully old-school No Wave, but also fully vital and now-sounding thing. Some of the songs come out swinging with a double-time Contortions attack, others have a more slow-burn approach. But always the rhythm section is tight, the keyboard sounds kinda messed up, and singer/guitarist Austin plays guitar exactly like any dedicated No Waver would: whammy bar in hand, slide on finger, and treble turned up.

The Sediment Club in contact mic madness

The Sediment Club "No More Earth"

The last act of the night (although I lost track of what was going on downstairs) was Knife City, an all-out chiptune dance attack. Here’s a video of Knife City’s hands and his biggest fan’s feet.

So I went to the recent Teenage Jesus & the Jerks reunion show at the Knitting Factory. I know, I was fully expecting that I might be paying $25 for 10 minutes (or less?) of disappointment. But heck, I went to the Contortions reunion show and it turned out to be pretty damn good. Turns out this show was pretty damn good too. I’d even say really good.

This show was celebrating the release of some No-Wave Book. I thought I already knew about this book, which came out a few months back, but it turns out this is ANOTHER No-Wave book. I have no idea why 2 different books came out at the same time, or how exactly they differ, but maybe once I get some extra money and buy them both I can do a compare and contrast book review for everyone. I’m going to assume that any readers of this are familiar with the original No-Wave bands, and if you’re not, well there are now TWO books on the subject which you could refer to.

The opening band was a group of original No-Wavers called Information who, I’ll be honest, wasn’t familiar to me. Apparently Information was a short-lived group which played alongside all the No New York bands. Members were in several other bands and Informationeers Chris Nelson and Philip Dray formed The Scene is Now, a band which has been in existence ever since. (This article tells some of the story) They sounded fantastic, absolutely nailing that rough/complex, untrained/brilliant dichotomy that sounds exactly like what you’d hope to hear at a No-Wave reunion show. Drums that thump right along with guitars doing things that shouldn’t go together but sound amazing together anyway, and hey, that exact electric organ (?) sound from the Contortions record.

There were lots of older folks in the audience, fans and friends from the original days it seemed. Then some music nerds and most heartening of all, some younger kids, including some cool dudes rocking flannel and the classic Mudhoney Big Muff T-shirt. The kids are alright! Very few hipster 20-somethings, but you know, I was at the early show (8:00) and maybe the scene was different at the 11:00 show.

Teenage Jesus and The Jerks go on at 9:30 sharp. As it turns out, this performance was pretty much everything you could have wanted. Lydia Lunch was a fireball of spite, the guitar sound was just as shrill and dissonant as it should be, and I’m pretty sure they played every single song. (Except for the early ones with James Chance. I suppose you could have wanted a guest appearance by him too, but no such luck.) The drummer, Jim Sclavunos (who originally played bass with the band), and Thurston Moore who was filling in on bass (of course?) tried very hard to stand perfectly still with permanent scowls on their faces throughout the set.

I say “tried” because while all the No-Wave hate was in place, it was clear that tonight it was all in good fun. The “hecklers” in the audience were in on it and laughed and cheered at Ms. Lunch’s comebacks. Sample: “Fuck you!” LL: “You’d like to fuck me but you STILL couldn’t afford it.” TJ&J were known for their brief sets and military-like discipline. When the band were a slight bit off on the beginning of a song it was immediately halted and Lydia shouted “Again!” When the song was cut short a third time and she simply shot a deathly glare at Thurston, he and Mr. Sclavunos couldn’t quite suppress their grins. When Thurston’s guitar strap broke later on, Lydia said “This is what happens when we let a member of Sonic Youth join the band. Fumble!” But then even she cracked under the good vibes and had to say, although in a sarcastic tone “No… I love Sonic Youth.”

Despite a closing comment of “Less is more, get over it,” I have actually seen many much shorter sets in recent days. I guess the standards have changed since ’78 thanks to groups like Cock ESP and the whole International Noise Conference scene, and of course Teenage Jesus in the first place. No complaints though, TJ&J still wrapped up in 30 minutes max, way before anyone could get bored.

photos by Georgia Kral