Our October 2013 Frequency Fridays show features improvisational noise duo Darkmatter::Whitefire (CLE), experimental improv percussion trio Meridian (TX/AL/SC), dirty new media/glitch artist Jon Satrom (CHI) and experimental percussionist Ben Bennett (CMH). Date: Friday, October 4, 2013. Location: Wild Goose Creative (2491 Summit St. 43202). Admission: $10, $15 for 2. Doors open 8pm. Our Frequency Fridays 2013-2014 season is supported by a grant from the Greater Columbus Arts Council.
About the performers:
Meridian (Nick Hennies, Greg Stuart, Tim Feeney) use traditional and non-traditional approaches to create shapeshifting rhythmic interplay. Relying on a developmental aesthetic that allows their music to expand, contract and evolve in real time as they explore boundaries, the classically trained percussionists utilize elements of composition and improvisation to guide their performances. They engage in what’s been described as a “primitivization” of their instruments, seeking to expand sonic vocabularies by exploring the fundamental aspects and properties of the objects they have at hand.
Jon Satrom undermines interfaces, problematizes presets, and bends data. He spends his days fixing things and making things work. He spends his evenings breaking things and searching for the unique blips inherent to the systems he explores and exploits. By over-clocking everyday digital tools, Satrom kludges abandonware, funware, necroware, and artware into extended-dirty-glitchy-systems for performance, execution, and collaboration. His time-based works have been enjoyed on screens of all sizes; his Prepared Desktop has been performed in many localizations. Satrom organizes, develops, and performs with I ♥ PRESETS, poxparty, GLI.TC/H, in addition to other initiatives with talented dirty new-media comrades.
Darkmatter::Whitefire is the improvisational noise duo of Lisa Miralia + Robert O’Lexa of Cleveland, Ohio. The band uses homebuilt electronics, synths, drums and percussion, various stringed and acoustic instruments, vocals, and effects to weave intense sets combining the styles of dark ambient, noise, industrial, and metal with ritualized spooky atmospherics. DMWF combines Lisa’s background in mystical freeform-acoustic, noise, and experimental-electronics improv with Robert’s background in grind, rock, drone-folk, and heavy post-punk to form a duo with a varied sound ranging from industrial drone and noise rock to moody, eerie, and quieter ‘otherly’ evocations.
Ben Bennett is a totally legit musician based in Columbus, Ohio. He is continuously looking for ways to make the most varied and visceral array of sounds from the simplest instruments. His ongoing investigation of the drum set has led him to distill it to its essential sound-making apparatus – the vibrating membrane. He plays an evolving pile of often home-made instruments, which includes tuned drum heads, frame-drums, rubber stretched across a hoop, rubber by itself, sheet metal, and wind instruments with reeds made from drum heads. All this stuff fits easily on his back or on his bike, and can get rained on, dragged along the ground, or tossed down the stairs with no worry. Unencumbered by expensive, delicate, or complicated gear and electronics, little if anything stands between the sounds heard and the bodily movement required to make them. He has played sporadically with many musicians, but his most frequent and ongoing cohorts are Jack Wright, Ryan Jewell, Wilson Shook, and Jack Callahan. In addition to petrol-fueled tours, he and Callahan pedaled a nice loop around Massachusetts and Vermont on a 7-day bike tour, and once he biked all the way down to Cincinnati to play a gig. He played once in Canada and once in Japan. “international”. “transcontinental”. Some seemingly pretty smart people have called his sets “really great”, “transcendental”, “the best thing I’ve seen – maybe ever”, or as this one music conservatory student put it, “pretty entertaining stuff”.