s h o w
t r i a l s




spit & smudge/vermish/sick llama/charlie draheim/?
15 april 2oo4
the gates of valhalla, ann arbor, michigan

arrived too late for the noise bbq, but just in time to see this duo project of greh's, who started out with some tape (manson?) and then featured some mics in tubes shoved into the ductwork of the basement (of valhalla?) & screamed into some... ok noise, a little tentative, but bonus points for the use of the tube-things and the metal ducts...

c.draheim made the journey down from indian river (when doing the infamous holding-up-yr-left-hand-to-represent-michigan thing, its somewhere around the last knuckle on yr ring finger) and did some serious damage... i myself sustained some slight bloodloss due to bad technique in cross-checking the careening charlie with a broom handle, but thats nothing compared to what he did to that poorslack-string hondo guitar, which ended up in pieces on the concrete floor... egged-on by the crowd, he slammed around the bodies, assaulted the two guitars he wore, abused a microphone thru his feeding-back stack, and also did some turntable mess somewhere out of the range of my vision... there were also some interesting backing samples/tapes, but while i believe mr. d. laments the loss of his hondo, he inspired much goodwill and appreciation here... well done enuff that he was exorted into doing encores until all of his equipment was totally dysfunctional... hopefully, he can salvage something and return soon...

sick llama started out pretty good, continuing the p.e.-correct mode of the night's noise... what i remember most was the casio demo sequence that turned up near the end and went on past the point, if there was one...

the next set (vermish? i got pretty confused who was who at times) started out very well, he had some good sounds, powerfull beats and mega-distorted noise... but the set went on way too long... would have been something memorable if he had done all his bits in less than 1o minutes & then stopped... instead it seemed like a jam session as he enjoyed the permutations of each different setting for... a ... long... long... time... ribbing ensued after the set about the duration... i think it's definitely a good idea to keep the noise sets shorter than this...

finishing up was spit & smudge (?) who did a set that was nice pedals & mic noise... didn't go on too long, had some nice analog synth sounding sounds in there... sounded a bit tame in comparison to the extremes of some of the earlier noise... and if this was s & s, didn't impress me nearly as much as the set i saw last year at detroit art space... respectably done, nonetheless...



wolf eyes/hair police/prurient/kites/s.p.?
17 april 2oo4
elbow room, ypsilanti, michigan

birthday celeb for mrs. connelly & end of the hp tour... starts out with another greh collab w/one of the guys from the thursday show at marshall st subbing for the rotbrain... analog synth stuff, in the hive mind vein, went ok with the crash & death explosion scenes on the teevees... quietest of the night by far...

kites continues to forward his uncompromising vision of intense self-made instruments & body sounds... it's seems to be about heavy concentration... if he's feeling it, it's gonna destroy... first part of the show foreshadowed the painfull frequencies at the high end that predominated this night... but about midway, he let it resolve into some more minimal sonics, allowing some space into the noise, with good effect... the rest of the set was very colorful-synaesthetic... picked up the tour cassette, always a treat...

prurient went on and played a long set of dual mic feedback almost entirely in the shrieking high freqs... seemed a bit muddy compared to the sinus clearing stuff i saw at das last year, but loud loud and harsh and started a bad trend towards near nudity...

hair police took the crown tonight, they started out fierce and thrashing all over the place 3-pieced together sounds, and skirted with total falling off the edge of the world the rest of the way, only to plow back on course... drums can come in handy, if only to be used as weapons by the band against the crowd or visa versa... a total trainwreck, tuned by the tour stress... a dynamo... more guys lost clothes... more lost their minds...

the wolfize did the ritual baiting the soundguy into turning everything up into a morass of indistinguishable squawks... the first 15 minutes were painful, a lot like a show i saw at the magic stick last year, where that one eventually resolved into some killer noise-near-melodic song interaction, this one just kept piling on the excess... after the whole night of ear-torturing high end, some slunk away for relief... i was doing ok, but grew nauseaus after one too many glimpses of black tent mark clad only in skivvies...



 ~ r e b e l   g r i s w o l d
contact
 d e s i d e r a t u m 2oo4 front | navigation aid (if you're lost) | previous set of reviews |