Quote from: youngnosh on May 09, 2012, 06:58:39 PM
Quote from: kettu
I saw a little clip of hals show on the tube, sounded cool but one guy said it was mostly looped? and that there wasnt much physicality going on which is something I associate with junk meditation.
Yeah - that was me who said that. He just seemed to press "play" then occassionally scrape some metal and stand back drinking a bottle of lager whilst watching his backing video...not terrible but when compared to TNB a few nights later it retrospectivley looked a bit crap.
I have mixed feeling about such things. When I think about metal junk, I think about physicality, BUT, when I start to really wonder, how exactly should you physically play loops?
I'm sucker for good metal junk loops. Some of such stuff I can listen for hours and hours. And to make that on stage, and look interesting, is probably hard. Unless there is some kinetik art on stage - some sort of machines, rotating objects etc, which create "loops" physically, it's really hard to create loops that would be more than pushing few buttons of sampler, loop pedal or recording of tape loop.
That 29 seconds clip of Hal's set hardly gives good document of the entire 30min+ show. What I sensed was, that his physical noise scraping/banging got looped always as integral additions to playback. Something new he did, started to re-appear and loop on top of old sounds? Or did I just imagine?
While in case of TNB show, they had burst of playback materials arriving in near random doses to give extra textures to live havoc, in HH case live noise was the random textures over the solid backing material. With both artists, it blend pretty well in mix. While TNB trusted in stage action and absurdity and kind of loose randomness, HH was just noisemaker with result of sonically solid monolith. No performance, no real stage presence.
I have no Real complaints, but it's very true what youngnosh said: Someone drinking lager and standing in corner watching his own backing video doesn't look very impressive live action. It may be necessary sonically to be able to step away from gear to allow certain "noise meditation" to take place (as opposed to throwing things around sporty activities breaking the oppressive "minimalism"), but it ALWAYS looks lazy to me, if someone can't wait few dozen minutes to drink/eat/smoke/whatever AFTER the show. Even doing absolutely nothing appears better than spending time on stage with drinking beer and watching clock - things you see to happen once in a while.
Consumer Electronics was probably only band who can make art about drinking on stage. With all the water spilling, gargling and erection simulating bottles, it's integral part of sets visuals / action. Not lack of it.
In my own set, there was no "playback tapes". Couple source sounds was used from tape by Jaakko among live sound source. Each song was possible to control on level of each sound element, yet to make many sounds appear more physical than pushing few buttons and twisting knobs, is hardly possible.
Reason for first 5 minutes of Grunt set being low volume, was some sort of confusion. Unlike some bands doing extensive soundchecks and having kind of "normal gear", lots of channels for different instruments etc, in my case it was just one mono cable out put. In quick soundcheck mono out was taken from aux, while for set I actually changed it to phones out, so in case where output to main sound desc would be too loud and result glitchy sounds (like some bands had especially in soundchecks which resulted the decision), I could easily adjust the output volume without touching individual tracks or master volume which would affect recording the set or level of saturation: As usual I used 4-track tape deck as mixer, since it's good piece for crispy overdriven noise sound which doesn't start clipping, merely distorting. However, it sounded at first there was clipping in sound indicating too loud output towards main stage mixer, and I turned down volume in assumption that soundman understands to turn his output back up as it should be. Since it really was just one mono channel which volume he needed to keep at max. I guess I didn't explain it well enough, so he must have though beginning is meant to be very low. It was meant to be low, but not THAT low and for that long time. It took few minutes for 2nd layer Pete to go tell him crank volume up. Unfortunate lack of punch for start, but I personally rather listen quiet noise than glitchy clipping...
For Kettu: only master masks. I do have great sub masks at home, with neat eye/mouth pieces. They may look better with all sorts of extra pieces hanging, but etiquette dictates they can't be used. At least if you're into "old school etiquette", not just contemporary kinky pervs wearing whatever looks nice.
For MT: We're intending to play set quite close to this for Helsinki 25.5. Some changes will appear and different PA/amps may result some changes too.
