Critical Listening / Club Zho 85

Last night Club Zho 85 was presented by Tura New Music and Meupe at the Ellington.The performances were based in the electronic / experimental realm and all featured sets of singular pieces, composed what seemed like semi-improvised electro-acoustic sounds. The artists were M. Rosner + Greg Taw, Paul Fiocco + Tristan Parr and finally Seaworthy member Cameron Webb.

Each artist featured looping and electronic manipulation as a key feature, all with field recordings and gradually building structures. M Rosner's set was particularly minimal, very cautiously approaching each sound. Tiptoeing around carefully, while very sparsely interacting with some cymbals splatters and camouflaged computer looping.

Paul Fiocco and Tristan Parr used mainly contact microphone'd cymbals and objects along with looped cello. The mass of sound was intriguing, it built up and stayed constant, but shifted and melted throughout to create multitudes of movement. Mixed in with field recordings, this was a very powerful set.

Cameron Webb performed with a projection consisting of a slideshow of location pictures, and utilized sparse field recordings of birds and co. mixed in with looped guitar. I could only describe the music as very 'nostalgic' which I do find odd as I have no direct connection to the sounds and images, other than the medium. However the music was subtle and transforming, evolving in the end to a blissful epiphany of tonal noise.

These electronic performances all drove a hard line towards listening durations and each approached temporal sampling in different ways. The obviousness of a minimal, rigorously constructed sound mass is much too appealing for some, and leaves the listeners happy. I still question what else can be done with electro-acoustic music, but the methods and compositions are strong and these performances help me to take note of what is happening now, and how this can be used differently, if not possibly improved upon.

I highly recommend Paul Fiocco's album Torsions and Drifts available from Meupe
Seaworthy's 1897 can be found on 12k
M. Rosner's Morning Tones can be found here