By
Keith Prosk
No Idea is an improvised music festival occurring annually (usually in
February) in Austin, Texas since 2003, with more irregular iterations in
other cities across Texas and Mexico.
No Idea 2019 took place in Austin
February 21-24, and in Mexico City February 28 through March 2. The
festival is run by percussionist Chris Cogburn, who has collaborated with
Damon Smith, Jaap Blonk, Henry Kaiser, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Jandek, and
countless other names no doubt familiar to our readers, and released last
year’s absolutely stellar (though perhaps too short)
Y_y with
Anáhuac on Astral Spirits.
The festival curation leans towards a more extreme though often subdued
threshold between composition and improvisation where extensive use of
extended techniques provides a path to explore sound, rather than
traditional music, especially in relation to space. It has the explicit
purpose of nurturing new collaborations amongst its performers, as well as
advancing existing collaborations. This year’s festival included Toshimaru
Nakamura, Sean Meehan, Werner Dafeldecker, Valerio Tricoli, Jaap Blonk,
Damon Smith, Wendy Eisenberg, and several other excellent performers.
I highly recommend you attend, if able. Beyond the excellent bills it puts
up annually, the nuts and bolts of the festival are solid. It’s beyond
affordable, coming in at $45 this year for three nights and two afternoons
of music, as well as an installation by Dafeldecker available for four
afternoons. The musicians stacked the merch table with so much great
material that I ended up spending twice as much there as I did for a
ticket. The sound this year was among the best I’ve ever heard at any show
anywhere, and in a city that prides itself on live music. The usual venue,
The Museum of Human Achievement, is not air conditioned, but fortunately
Texan winters are mild. For the first time since I’ve attended, the venue
offered refreshments, and there was a delightful selection of infusions
(pineapple & serrano, apple & fennel, orange & clove, lemon
& earl grey, et al.) that you could add to your vodka. Most
importantly, the festival is arranged in such a way that there are no
schedule conflicts - you see every set. And there was an excellent DJ,
Mutarrancho, creating dreamlike soundscapes from an eclectic array of
sources (I recognized at least Asnakech Worku and Konono No. 1, but it was
not all African sources) during the impressively brief periods between
sets.
I missed out on Dafeldecker’s installation, MONOLITH, inspired by and
created during a trip to the Antarctic peninsula, as well as an afternoon
program with solo sets from guitarists Wendy Eisenberg and Tom Carter. Here
are some brief notes on the rest of the festival, accompanied by some
pictures that I took when my soft shutter click would not interfere with
the performance.
DAY 1
Jaap Blonk, Damon Smith
Jaap Blonk (voice) and Damon Smith (bass) improvised on six sound poems by
German Dadaist Hugo Ball. This duo recorded improvisations on these sound
poems in 2014, linked below, and Blonk visited them at least once before
with BABA-OEMF (Blonk, Bart van der Putten, Pieter Meurs) in 1989. Blonk is
an enrapturing thespian. Posing his arms and contorting his face to produce
caricatures of melodramatic personae. These often comedic contortions
extend to his respiratory system, with Blonk pulling and slapping his
cheeks, shaking and squeezing his throat, gurgling, hissing, grunting, and
ululating in between the comparatively normal, though affected narratives.
Smith matches the variety of Blonk, fluidly moving between consonance and
dissonance, plucking and bowing, rubbing the strings with a plastic chain,
threading two bows through the strings and hitting them with a mallet,
bowing below the bridge, and slapping the strings.
Sean Meehan
This particular set from percussionist Sean Meehan (percussion) tread the
line of performance art. There was a blurry beginning to the set, with
“silence” gradually waving through the audience as it realized the
performer was sitting behind them, cradling a cowbell as if in prayer.
Meehan’s palm-muted bell made about as much noise as a wind chime on a
still day, meaning most sound was coming from chairs creaking, boots
shifting, people swallowing, talking outside, distant sirens, and the faint
electric buzz of the venue. After about 15 minutes, Meehan abruptly shakes
the bell, creating a mutating polyrhythm between the clapper hitting the
casting and the spring at minutely different times. After a few minutes of
high-volume ringing, Meehan returns to relative silence before signalling
that the set is ended. No doubt an exercise in the body and mind reaction
to abrupt volume changes, not to mention the commentaries on what an
audience and performance is.
Toshimaru Nakamura, Tom Carter
This is a festival-curated first meeting between Japanese onkyo luminary
Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board) and Texan psych stalwart Tom
Carter (guitar), perhaps best known for his work with Charalambides
alongside Heather Leigh. When I think of characteristically Texan music, I
don’t first think of country or electric blues or even the free jazz of
I.M. Terrell High School graduates, but rather our particular strain of
psychedelia that so often dabbles in noise and improvisation, like The Red
Krayola, Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, Ed Hall, Cherubs, Mike Gunn, and
Charalambides. This performance felt like a spiritual heir to that line,
and was the standout performance of the night if not the entire festival.
The performance began with Nakamura’s metallic squeals and mechanical
sputterings met with light guitar feedback that Carter modulated by
touching, tapping, and squeezing the body of his guitar. And the
performance built into a heavy, heavily distorted, feedback-laden free form
freakout from Carter and a multiphonic onslaught from Nakamura of a deep
rumbling buzz, bellicose chirps, glitched-out bass pulses, and sputtering.
The effect was physical, vibrating the body. Here’s to hoping this
collaboration continues beyond the festival.
Bárbara Lázara, Virginity
Virginity, an Austin duo of Parham Daghighi (guitar, cornet) and Spencer
Dobbs (voice, electronics), paired with Bárbara Lázara (voice) for a mostly
performative set. Dobbs began with haunting, dirgelike moans that
transitioned to unintelligible poetry while Daghighi matched the mood with
eerie, spiderlike guitar and air notes from a cornet. Lázara was on the
other side of the venue, putting up chairs from a previous set, scraping
the legs along the wood floor, walking heavy-footed, abruptly running and
abruptly halting, sitting down and talking to herself unintelligibly,
skipping. Eventually she entered the same space as Dobbs (and Daghighi
left) to perform similar behaviors, some extended vocal techniques, and
recite a poem.
DAY 2
Werner Dafeldecker
Bassist Werner Dafeldecker performed short, discrete exercises in exploring
and appreciating bass timbre during this solo set. He began with a small
mallet tapping the bridge, then the tailpiece, then used a heavier mallet,
eventually moving to the body, then the strings, before transitioning to a
bow, tapping the strings, scraping below the bridge, then using his hands
to flick the body, rub the body, and finally returning to the bow to
violently saw for a short time. Each exercise had a significant pause
before the next.
Toshimaru Nakamura, Sean Meehan
This set from the established duo saw Meehan mostly building resonance by
rhythmically rubbing a stick perpendicular to a belly-up cymbal resting on
a snare-head. Nakamura complimented Meehan’s metallic shimmers and glassy
wails with rhythms comprised of electric purrs, low-end rumbling, and
sputtering. A mighty, subtly dynamic drone performance.
Bárbara Lázara
Lázara’s solo set was another largely performative piece. She began before
the audience was attentive. She started with tapping a bass left in the
performance space and tapping her foot on the wood floor before stepping up
to the mic to woosh, gurgle, breathe, chirp, and click before modulating
some syllables like “heff” and “osh.” She then opened the garage door
behind stage, wailing into the night. She walked into the night, away from
the view of the audience, wailing at intervals to mark her growing distance
from the venue and audience. Someone else had to announce the set was
finished after she was inaudible.
Jaap Blonk, Sarah Ruth, Liz Tonne, Rebecca Novak, Wendy Eisenberg
Blonk performed two of his triangle compositions (visible on the projector
behind him), twice each, with trios including Rebecca Novak (cornet, toy
clarinet, objects) and Wendy Eisenberg (guitar) and then Liz Tonne (voice)
and Sarah Ruth (voice). The compositions are enigmatic, and the only
performer who even looked at the compositions was Blonk, but what rules
were clear to me were clearly followed by the musicians. One piece was a
narrative with protagonists labeled in the triangles; the other involved
being able to repeat a previously improvised complex series of sound when
the performers returned to a triangle with a certain symbol. The vocal and
instrumental performances seemed unreconcilable, despite being the same
compositions. The expert musicianship of everyone involved made for a great
performance, if baffling how they got there.
DAY 3
Wendy Eisenberg, Damon Smith, Stefan Gonzalez
This was a festival-curated first meeting that matched Eisenberg and Smith
with percussionist Stefan Gonzalez to rock out. Smith complimented
Gonzalez’ heavy-hitting forward drive by vamping and then either walking a
fast line or bowing chaotically to compound the momentum. Eisenberg
overlayed the propulsive rhythm section with superfast atonal blues, cold
angular Duane Denison-like jazz, and licks befitting rock in opposition,
all melted into her distinctive style. A very strong set and another
collaboration I hope continues beyond the festival.
Valerio Tricoli, Werner Dafeldecker
Dafeldecker (laptop, synthesizer) joined Valerio Tricoli (reel-to-reel tape
recorder) to create a rich, hypnotic set of clicks, pops, whirrs, crackles,
and white noise cut through with sampled spoken word, chimes (both wood and
metal), and (perhaps) biwa. So well communicated that it didn’t seem
improvised at all. For fans of glitch, ambient dub, survival-horror scores.
Another standout set of the festival.
Jaap Blonk
Blonk blasted through a variety of short songs in this solo set. He started
with three pieces in a language invented by him, sounding like Dutch but
without meaning. Continued on to Paul Hausmann’s sound poem, “Nightmare.”
Repeated “what the president will say and do,” with each syllable
disintegrating into extended sounds until the phrase was unintelliigable.
He sung a narrative on electroshock therapy which became increasingly
unhinged and out of order until he screamed zapping noises while acting out
the process. Inspired by the phrase “stretch out the hour” and Javanese
gamelan, he sung a piece that became increasingly slower and unrecognizable
until it became nothing. He had a rock song that sounded like an even more
restrained yet unhinged U.S. Maple. And finally ended with a cover of Roy
Orbison’s “In Dreams” in duet with his computer’s voice. All the while, he
controlled odd, Lynchian lounge music through a videogame controller
attached to his laptop. As stated before, his performances are utterly
captivating.
Toshimaru Nakamura
Nakamura’s solo set featured many of the same methods as his previous
festival appearances - sputters, rumbling, phasing, squealing, white noise
- except he went loud right out of the gates for this one. The effect was
physical and enveloping, like floating in the ocean between sand bars - you
feel the waves but you’re always encapsulated by the water.
DAY 4
Iván Naranjo
Iván Naranjo’s set explored the resonance and effect of space on sound in a
small art studio. His set up included several belly-up cymbals on the
concrete floor with independently-controlled vibrators and several
independently-controlled speakers through which he filtered some bleeps,
bloops, ambient dub rumblings, and pulses, all connected to a laptop. The
audience is encouraged to walk around the space to feel and hear how sound
changes, for example, in the middle of the room or a corner of the room.
The effect is impressive, and he explored some interesting delay or
Doppler-like effects with the kind of surround sound system.
Valerio Tricoli
Tricoli’s solo set added a laptop and synthesizer to his setup, as well as
six independently-controlled speakers stationed throughout the room that
allowed him to have a surround sound effect. Again, he created a eerie,
dreamy soundscape of tape whirr and screeches, percussive clicks and cuts,
and samples of a hammered, delay-drenched piano, some soul violin, and
unsettling spoken word. The content felt ghostly and gossamer but the
physically vibrating sound coming from each speaker created a corporeal
tether to the experience. An absolutely arresting performance and excellent
cap to an excellent festival.
