Bozidar Brazda Exhibit at Bortolami Gallery (NYC)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Not every work of video art is a work of sound art — not even every video work that takes music as its subject, such as a piece in medium-agnostic artist Bozidar Brazda’s current exhibit, titled Beat Meat Table Eat, at the gallery Bortolami in Manhattan.

What suggests this Brazda video, titled “Line Jerk-Off”(2007), is worth considering as sound art isn’t just that it presents a brief (maybe one-minute) loop of a fish-eye view of a close-up of a tattooed pair of arms rapidly picking a black-and-white electric bass, one of whose strings is missing (the second one from the bottom).

It’s how it’s installed, how it’s situated, and how it makes one choose between one’s senses.

A monitor is set on one blank wooden cube, a single speaker on another. You stand between them and watch a musician’s hands rapidly work at that bass while the sound rumbles behind you. When I did so earlier this week, I felt the bottom of my thick winter overcoat ruffle in the artificial breeze created by the music. I also found myself wondering whether the video had been sped up, and why the speaker was mixing a rough layer of glitchy static in with the funky bass playing. Looking at the video didn’t answer these questions, so I turned to face the speaker, which reversed the usual functions of audio and video, and which I imagine — or, certainly, I like to imagine — was part of what Brazda had in mind in the first place.

From Raymond Pettibon’s illustrations for the band Black Flag to the gothic-industrial explorations of Banks Violette, the imagery and sounds of heavy metal, punk and industrial music has long since infiltrated art galleries. Brazda’s “Line Jerk-Off”is a welcome addition to that growing catalog, even if I did experience empathy for the gallery employees who have to listen to that brief loop, which fills the room each day from opening to closing. One of them told me that they do occasionally opt to lower the volume.

“Line Jerk-Off”is the sole sound-emitting work in the Bortolami show, which is otherwise purely static and sculptural, including a table hung from the ceiling, a clear suit made of vinyl, and a stack of newsprint zines, which are free for the taking. The name of the zine, Morgensen, reportedly refers both to Danish furniture maker Borge Mogensen (the furniture in the show is all modern Scandinavian stuff) and to Niels Mogensen, a Danish punk musician. (More info at bortolamigallery.com. The exhibit runs from October 25 through November 24.)

Air (Virgin) America

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Here’s just a handful of what currently plays on the music section of the in-flight entertainment system of the relatively new airline Virgin America: an excerpt from Karlheinz Stockhausen‘s Stimmung, John Adams‘s Shaker Loops, a half dozen Sun Ra tracks, more than twice as many from Frank Zappa, two off Miles Davis‘s Bitches Brew (that is, according to the system’s touch-screen interface, B*****s Brew), a whole lotta Kronos (including “White Man Sleeps”), not to mention electronic fare like Underworld. Airspace is the place.

Noisejihad Netlabel Return

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The freely downloadable music (and occasional video) at the netlabel Noisejihad (noisejihad.dk/netlabel) always sounded like a soundtrack for endtimes. So, it was no shocker that Noisejihad eventually faded away. Let’s face facts — netlabels close down as often as they open for business; every time I update my list of netlabel websites (bookmarked publicly in disquiet.com‘s Elsewhere section), it seems like a handful have gone dead or on hiatus. And Noisejihad, as its name suggests, was from its first release (May 2005) to what appeared to be its last (late 2006) a locus for some of the darkest, most desperate extremes of metal: raw industrial sound that inherently evoked the eschatological.

What a surprise, then, to find that Noisejihad has been resurrected, with not one but two releases, the most recent of which, Noisejihad Does Rumstativ, is five recordings of live performances from a noise festival held earlier this year. Now, this is noise music, which is to say it’s long stretches of the sort of sound that many people ignore, or are irritated by, in their day-to-day lives — sonic abrasives that experimental musicians turn up (or on their heads) with an ear for exotic timbres, Zen-like revelation or a visceral, cacophonous effect.

The five tracks on Noisejihad Does Rumstativ aren’t indistinguishable drones, not by any stretch. You can discern each piece’s individuality by paying attention to the singular sounds it explores, like the 1950s sci-fi score that is Pol Mod Pol vs Skamstøtten‘s nearly 17-minute track, which opens the set (MP3) — or by extreme transitions, like how Dennis H’s entry moves during the course of 20-plus minutes from a quiet that will have you checking your volume setting, to a noise so thunderous you’ll soon lower it, to a welcome fadeout of jangly electric guitar (MP3). Katotja‘s is distinguished by vocals (both punk ranting and vocoded instructions, the latter another sci-fi moment), followed by skwonky horn noises (MP3).

The release’s highlights come from Leonid Kukik and from Svenning Og Fuglekongen. Kukik’s is a half hour of field recordings that are initially layered delicately and that slowly come to reveal unexpected dimensions; what begins as a sonic equivalent of a close-up eventually pulls back, courtesy of some echo, and it builds to a mild clatter before exploding at the very end (MP3). At just under 50 minutes, the entry by Svenning Og Fuglekongen is the set’s prettiest and longest piece, opening with gently pulsing minimalist touches before it appears to move through a sequence of intimate cavernous spaces (MP3).

As is often the case with Noisejihad, this release represents but a portion of the event it documents. Also performing at the festival were Double Space, Periskop, Interzone and Ultimate Combat Noise. There’s a seven-minute UCN video posted along with the MP3s. Welcome back, Noisejihad.

Tenori-On MP3 Album by Norman Fairbanks

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

With its pulsating beats and wispy bits of melodic phrasing, the eight tracks on the free album 7 Days Microsleep, available at the website of musician Norman Fairbanks, normanfairbanks.com, are the sort of pulse-settling, introspective music that could give existentialism a placid name. Though the steady electronica sounds like the sort that attends artful drive-by montages of suburban malaise in films like Risky Business, American Beauty and Bodies, Rest & Motion, just to name a few, the concept behind the album is more procedural/structural than sociological/philosophical.

The stricture that binds all the work on 7 Days Microsleep is that it was all composed on a single instrument, the hand-held device called the Tenori-On, designed by Toshio Iwai, the same inventor who created the audio-game Electroplankton for the Nintendo DS. The Tenori-On is a battery-operated grid of pulsing lights that makes music-making all the more achievable for “non-musicians.” Fairbanks pushes it much further than do some of Casio-preset-style jams that appear on youtube.com. Everything on 7 Days is recommended, especially “The Freedom Loop,” whose shuddering backing rhythms and occasional pauses lend it particular depth (MP3). (Thanks to Brian Biggs, of mrbiggs.com, for the tip.)

Just to reinforce the idea that not everything performed on the Tenori-On necessarily sounds the same, do check out the freely downloadable pieces by Jim O’Rourke, Atom Heart and Robert Lippock that were the Disquiet Downstream entry back in September (disquiet.com).


Janene Higgins & Elliott Sharp’s Street Art

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Outside the gallery White Box (whiteboxny.org) on 26th Street off 10th Avenue in Manhattan is a little installation that brings new meaning to the phrase “street art.” It’s called “Video Box” and from a distance it looks vaguely like an ATM machine.

In fact it’s a monitor with speakers and it’s currently playing “Tunnel Vision” (2006), a four-minute loop of images (subway scenes, defocused color fields and other urban motion studies) shot by Janene Higgins (echonyc.com/~myrakoob) and set to a skronky noise-music by Elliott Sharp (elliottsharp.com). Higgins has collaborated in the past with musicians Ikue Mori, Alan Licht, and Zeena Parkins, among others.

When I wandered by on Saturday evening, there wasn’t much street life with which it might have mingled, despite the large number of galleries open late, but it cast a nice glow on the immediately adjacent areas and the sound drifted further afield than it might have otherwise.