For another year of great performances, stiff drinks, and hugs and kisses.  Some of the highlights of the weekend for me were: Green Velvet showing what can be done with a dancefloor and making it look easy, [a]pendics.shuffle busting out some strange new techno-dub which had little to do with the usual “dubby techno,” and KFO getting his freak on with some dancing crashing cars in the background.  Jon M’s performance was unfortunately marred by the arrival of the Seattle Police, and a forced attenuation to living-room volume.  But he soldiered on anyway, and at least one of the transporting, amazing jazzy songs at the beginning of his deeply weird set will definitely have to make it to vinyl soon…

Speedy J’s set was an anti-climax for me.  Maybe that’s because I made the mistake of being mostly in the other room where I was actually listening to it as music, not caught up in the spectacle and energy of everyone going apeshit.  So musically, it was pretty dull, but that can be forgiven-- there’s a lot to be said for the power of a performance.  (This is one reason Kurokawa left me kind of flat, despite his gorgeous visuals.) Another slight disappointment was Bola, who played his beautiful music while sitting down half-hidden at the rear of the stage.  If you’re hiding, you need great visuals.  The polygon glop (including Jitter demo patches!) being mixed without much apparent sensitivity to the music going on was actually subtracting from the experience.  Well, Bola’s visuals at Mutek 2003, or was it -02, were a tough act to follow.

Due to playing this year I had to miss a lot of stuff which was probably great, such as Thos. Fehlmann, Lusine, Jerry Abstract, Apparat, Alex Smoke… Decibel is definitely on a par with Mutek now.  It’s a different, rougher beast.  We’ve got no Ex-Centris in Seattle, and for now, still less of an awareness of what’s going on in the electronic art world.  But we have a ton of volunteers with heart, and a lot more tolerance for the banging and hedonistic.  Now that Decibel has begun to do more justice to the visual and art-music end of things too, I’d say it’s an equally successful mix. 

posted by randy
6:32PM, 19 Sep 2006
[5 comments]