shizow!

so i haven't talked about any of the shows i've seen. well, they've been great. my second night here, aaron and i went to club berghain to see a phill niblock piece performed by a saxplayer who did modular synth stuff as well, and the arnold dreyblatt ensemble. the place is, i understand normally a techno dance club-type place. often, apparently, men have to check their shirts at the door. none of that this night, but there was an exquisite sound system.

i know that using that phrase makes me a huge dork. but it was great. four giant speaker stacks that looked beautiful and sounded better. djs were spinning when we got there and it was loud and clear, but easy to have a convo with aaron. we didn't feel like beers cause they're more expensive out and we'd had a lot the day before, so we bought a couple bottles of club mate, this yummy energy drink that's a lot like the guayaki drink we have back in denver but half the price.

after some time passed, a young dude walked up to a table with laptop, mixer, and some kind of modular synth. he got some things going. phill sat down in front of the speaker stack near aaron and i to listen. several areas of synthesized sound went by. lots of close tones with some amazing vibrations helped along by the quality of the speakers. the dude picked up a sax and started playing long tones against the drones, walking over near a stack of speakers to make the difference in pitch between what they were putting out and what he played vibrate the metal of the horn and distort his overtones. it was very nice.

at some point he stopped. i couldn't tell what i thought of it in some ways. but in some ways, i knew it was amazing. djs played. good stuff too, including a fred frith song off of "gravity" and, i think, a skeleton crew song as well. a japanese dude that i sat down next to introduced himself. "what do you do? are you a musician?" "oh ya, ya know. you?" "yes. i'm here doing..." and he described to me an interesting-sounding sound art kinda thing, using non-traditional instruments and so forth. "...and what do you do?" "oh, ya know..." some attempt at a brief summation of my disparate musical activities. "oh, you do a lot [which is not how i meant it to come across]. do you have the myspace?" and we were supposed to, like, exchange info, but aaron and i split right after the next performance.

so ya! i should talk about that. arnold dreyblatt came out and played some of his modified bass. he bowed like, staccato eighth notes on one string the whole time, eliciting different kinds of overtones in a nice rhythmic fashion. after setting up an interesting pattern, he began to vary it by partially stopping the string at different points to make harmonics. he went up and down the overtone series. it was nice. then a drummer and guitarist came out and played a kind of "rock music" with him in this same vein. the tuning was gorgeous and the rhythmic feel was very hypnotic. it was one of those shows that, after it was over, you're not sure if you really liked it or just thought it was ok. but then you realize, as aaron pointed out, that you're in a really good mood. and then you decide, yes, this was a really good show.

more about other shows and other aspects of hangin' here later!