By Greggory Moore
A simple concept: sound artists gather to create a live score for short expressionistic films. And that’s all that happened. This will be a short review.
This was my first experience of them, but apparently the Brothers Quay are well-known for their stop-action animation work (which has been featured on MTV, among other outlets). Think a team-up of David Lynch and Tim Burton aspiring to sets fit for Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. The Quay films shown on this night ranged from one minute to something under a half-hour and seemed to eschew any (important) plot. These films were projected on a pull-down screen in {open}’s back room, but their “proper” soundtrack was muted; instead, nine artistically intrepid souls provided the music and atmosphere. The results were completely satisfying.
To give some idea of the sound, here is the roster of artists and the tools with which they plied their collective trade:
Shea M Gauer—piano, baby piano, clock chimes, bowed metal, kalimba, fx
Scott A Peterson—signal generators, field recordings, vibrator
Joe Negro—laptop
Glenn Bach—laptop, analog synth, fx, dulcimer, abacus
Marco Schindelmann—laptop, keyboard
Michael Raco-Rands—laptops, fx, bass
Jorge Martin—laptop, a whole variety of fx pedals and signal generators
Jeremy Drake—guitar, resonating devices
Jessica Catron—cello, resonating devices
The number and variety of sound-makers meant that the audio came from everywhere, enveloping the viewer/listener, which helped immerse us in the filmic world before us. The menacing calm of the tones and groans, gentle screeches and breathiness, soft clanks and rumbles was the kind of thing that could both lull you into somnolence and waken you to a lucid dreamworld.
And thus endeth the review, because this event was a paragon of the limits of symbolic language to communicate the raw and immediate realm of the purely sensory. {open} is a place to experience this for yourself—so why don’t you? www.accessopen.com will help you on your way.
[Editor's Note: Here are links to two large pictures taken at the performance - P1 - P2]
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