July 2023
The Rossi Bar
A New Question, a chime, mangled voices reversed electronics and strings. Speaking the effected version seems to irrupt before the words leave the lips. The artist wears a Venetian (?) mask and parka. It’s July before the suns come. Twin aerials of a hidden television seem unused. Suddenly a clatter of interruption, an improv cascade of percussion. Then speaking again over juddering bursts of static. Click and scrape and very creepy breathing. The string riff returns to do Tuxedomoon-esque battle with a backwards organ. Is that some machine starting up. Running water, but not in a relaxing way. Stop. Start. There is an incident where the laptop goes flying and everything stops, but a quick recovery to cheers, and it’s a fairly brutal return. Devil voices. Back-masked. Nice. It’s still a somewhat truncated set, ending abruptly not too long after.
Sonaura follows up, starting with a high pitched whistling off his multi cassette deck just about my tinnitus threshold. Some folding in of bass and then clanger burbles writ as drones lead us on into a buzzing landscape of wide vistas. The slow plod of a time dilated clock keeps time, tone-washed murmurs wash In and out and as if of yore a TV voice tells us something then gets looped. Some slow keyboard part lays in. gently recycling itself. The voices die and some big electronics, Greek, old, powerful slide in. there are sum and difference frequencies beating in the weight of the drones, adding texture and even more depth. They wind out to an evolving three note distorted / reverbed chime modulating slowly off into the distance; into a feeling of dread, repetition. Is that a guitar gently strummed? And a finally verrry verry slow fade out to bliss…
Új Bála also starts with voice (his own) an ill-defined bass sequence like a stammering double bass, and growling synth. Synthetic Whale song, scurries of sequenced slurring tones. In the visuals he folds back in on himself. A staccato drum track bursts into life, a monotone bass pulse providing an almost gabber kick for the drums to form around. Over this radiophonic synth sounds and noise jostle with his vocals, a pause and off back into it again. Everything is rhythm. The rhythm degenerates and falls away to another semi random set of noises, bass buzzes, odd wirbles, that eventually build into something rhythmic, at least the phrasing is rhythmic but the tonalities never repeat. You can nod your head but not sing along. The rhythm fades into wobbling bass and squiggling trebles. Driven over by a large diesel motor and malfunctioning church organ. A bass drone pitched up and down (is that not a drone?) makes a bass line, some epic reverb on it and short pitched squeals give some melodic feel, and some LFO action gives it a soaring, whirring feel. Some other bass tones meld in and it gets all John Carpenter on us as the noise levels amp up, then into some kind of pitch distorted gating frenzy and it’s done.