June 2022
The Rossi Bar
Adam Martin performing for the first time ever under his own name a piece he composed for his dissertation about his ADHD, a video cutup collage set, Adam is on the floor with a laptop its unclear – is he processing visuals, is he processing sound? Both. It all starts with rumbling and a solarised image, pulsing and lined, a screeching drone laying into it as the image thickens. The sound is chunked into segments along with the visuals, Paul Blart Mall Cop makes an appearance. Voices looped calling back. Ascending vocalese. An explosion. Confusion. Paul Blart speaks. Stages Classic; Inattentive; Over-focused; Temporal Lobe; Limbic; Ring of Fire; Anxious. Max Headroom. Intensity increases, incomprehensibility. And a little Rick-Roll at the end.
BUNKR starts with a floating drone and sweet arpeggio, switching over to minutely detailed little patterns twitching around a detuned version of the drone, the arpeggio comes back with a heavy filter and lovely melody floating around in the pads. About 5 minutes in a bass drum slips in almost unnoticed and a squelch comes in slipping around the rest. The second song starts with an elastic bass, and sliding whistle, a low key brushed drum pattern again imperceptibly makes its way into your consciousness. And out again. Again things return in a slightly altered detuned creepy manner. The third is straight in with the arpeggio and a creepy melody stalking over the top. The arpeggio is constantly mutating in timbre and scope, eventually everything around the arpeggio fades away to be replaced by a stepping bassline overpowering everything with its sense of dread. Finally a high pitched sequencer sparkles in around the top of everything else. The last piece is just an unfolding of layers of drones with a slow arpeggio underneath.
RAAD with two As start in silence and darkness before Heather starts slowly working at the electric double bass, it’s a stuttering “Fever”, Chris provides a commentary of occasional electronic squalls. Heather sings. Chris also sings. A slowed down recording of a radio show on fever segues us into the next section. “Fever is your friend” looped. There is processing and some subtle electronic tomfoolery. The double bass works away. The globe smoking as it spins slowly emerges on the visuals behind them. Its all quite stately. They don protective goggles. Heather comes out with an infrared thermometer and starts to scan the audience a temperature chart slowly completing on the screen at the back of the stage. Chris completes notes on a clipboard. The looped words slowly fade and filter out. Heather hands out bags of herbs. They both start speaking, intoning against each other. Heather kicks in a filthy fuzz on the double bass and grinds out a repetitive riff.
We are now uploading the whole set to YouTube for your entertainment viewing pleasure: