Deadly Orifice, in Austin. Gimmicks are so smart.
The first 12 hours of No Future Festival—stretched last weekend on Friday and Saturday from 8 p.m. to sometime after 2 a.m. at Nightlight—were about a friendly scene: Some of the premier noise musicians in the world came together with their biggest Southern fans, crowding the already occupied by-day used book-and-record store. New friends smiled, musicians sold merch and crowds listened.
Friday night, the forcible static squalls of Pedestrian Deposit—a frail kid named Jon Borges from California, leaning over a square table of pedals—flung the room into fits, a group of 30 kids crowded around him and moshing in waves to a rhythm that didn’t exist. Saturday night looked like an upped-ante continuum, with some of the genre’s weightiest performers—Carlos Giffoni, Aaron Dilloway, Hive Mind—playing some of the most precise, exhilarating sets several in the crowd had ever seen.
But, in the 13th hour, two days of brilliance turned on itself, turning the club’s floor into shambles and its denizens into confused, terrified or exasperated bystanders of bloodsport. During the closing set from Macronympha—a shocking, turbulent, two- to three-piece that seldom performs more than three times each year and fueled this year by a guest appearance from Dominick Fernow of Prurient, one of the smartest, most capable minds in the genre—people started to pay special attention to a guy named Robert, standing just behind the stage.
On Friday, blood had been trickling down his brow. On Saturday, most spectators not colliding into one another and thrashing about the room as Macro played watched more confused than shocked. His entire face was caked in blood, three-quarters black from cuts, save the bright-red spots still streaming. He repeatedly lifted his shirt up and cut his chest in more than 50 horizontal lines, clutching a can of beer in a paper bag with his other hand.
After Macro’s set, a woman named Nicki, who had spent most of Pedestrian Deposit’s show shrieking and riding someone’s back, plugged her guitar into a batch of pedals and an amp. Before she started playing, Robert began kicking her in the chest, yelling at her as everyone else in the room wondered what was happening. She yelled back, eventually turning the amp and guitar on and letting the pedals induce a boring, clipped stream of feedback. Rodger, another musician from Macro, joined her with a sampler. She put the guitar down and started fighting Robert, her bloody assailant. She grabbed pieces of 20 glass panes and a dozen five-foot fluorescent tubes they had brought. She bashed them over his face. She didn’t stop.
For the next 30 minutes, the scene—the performers and 10 spectators too dazed or too ecstatic to know what was happening—joined the most brutal, horrifying half-hour I’ve ever seen. As a mindless, shrill loop pierced ears, Robert and Nicki—he calls himself Deadly Orifice from Dallas; she calls herself Wilderness from Austin; they call this band Bloodletters—attacked each other and the audience with glass and anything else they could find. People broke bottles and attacked others. He slammed her head into a concrete floor. She cracked light bulbs across his eyes. He picked her up and slammed her down across his knee before throwing a sheet of glass at her chest. She picked up pieces of a splintered table and clobbered audience members.
At one point, she was on the floor, the single still point in a sea of under-foot broken glass and frantic feet. I was convinced that she was going to die. At one point, he stood naked in the middle of the floor, a piece of glass in each hand, neck splayed up toward the ceiling. I was convinced he was going to kill himself.
Eventually, someone managed to kill the sound in the room and turn the lights on. She jumped up, saying “Give me a broom. I’ll clean it up,” as if the whole thing had been a joke (or, worse still, a piece of art) meant to shock fans who thought they were ready for a free-form noise festival or meant to broaden the scope and in vitro impact of the genre. Five kids who had been dancing carefree throughout the entire festival confronted Robert both during and after the performance, shocked by his violence to the point of fighting. He scared them away: “My father fucked me everyday when I was a kid…. Come on, there are five of you and one of me…. I have AIDS.” Maybe it wasn’t a joke or art. Maybe it was, after all, a painful-to-watch release from people who have issues beyond most peoples’ comprehension.
I’ve spent the past three days debating those and other explanations with the friends who peered with me from behind bookshelves as these two beat and cut, quite literally, the blood out of each other. One friend insists it did exactly what art should: It elicited a reaction and demanded a re-evaluation of what one supposed one knew. I agree that, on those terms, Bloodletters could be seen as some new, fucked frontier.
But because those other explanations are as valid—that this was a joke meant to shock or that the members of Bloodletters are just more than a bit insane—that artistic expression explanation fails. Anyone who sees hyper-violence as high art, at this point, is just an idiot: From Rome’s practice of capital punishment as top-notch thriller ethos to today’s prime-time television shoot-’em-up principles, extreme violence performed by people on people is the overplayed stuff of braindead simpletons. In fact, hyperviolence has been parodied consistently for decades, most notably with Burgess and Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in 1962 and 1971, respesctively.
Sure, such mayhem is an enjoyable concept for those with too little excitement in their own lives, those who want to get more adrenaline and satiate animal instincts. That’s not art, especially when it’s set to the masturbatory banality of a thrown-down guitar feeding back through pedals, and especially after actual artists took the room to new places of sonic awareness and possibility.
For instance, Aaron Dilloway—who got marginally famous as a member of Wolf Eyes, a noise band that signed to indie stalwart Sub Pop—made compelling sound by running an eight-track deck, some mixers, two contact microphones and a piece of magnetic tape in his mouth played with a violin bow. He grabbed a bottle of beer from a fan and spit a swallow back in his face, climbing on top of his table, forsaking the sanctity of his equipment to push the audience to increased excitement. No one got hurt. Everyone got amazed and happy. It’s one of the best sets I’ve ever seen, with more energy than a Lightning Bolt exercise and more sound than a good metal show.
Dilloway, like the other best performers at No Future or in the noise niche at large, possess incredible theory of mind, a psychological concept meaning you know what you’re thinking and are aware of what others are thinking, too. They understand the prototypical forms that have been presented to their possible audience, and—from their own experience with such forms—they know how to turn a vehement attack on those forms into a lasting, affecting piece of work. Some bands use theory of mind to find a popular appeal. But this is subversion at its best: Like punk rock before it, noise is a genre about individual liberation. But its chief efficacy as communal expression is in the notion that others are available for a trip on liberation from the same restrictive parameters that you are.
Saturday night, honestly, I only wanted liberation from Bloodletters and the mindlessness of performers that need bloodletting gimmicks because their music and mindsets are so rife with insincerity and so low on innovation. True, if you’re as chemically phased and maddened as Deadly Orifice (he claims he’s a pharmaceutical guinea pig, and he ended last year’s No Future set by masturbating in the middle of the room), maybe it takes beating the fuck out of a woman to find your jollies or to fulfill your muse. Or maybe, in her case, it takes being beat. As she put it days later on a message board, “I have to admit I pushed it a little bit… cuz i hadn’t played live in months. I don’t know what got into me- I can’t narrow it down to just being violent, you know?”
I saw some truly great work at No Future Festival this weekend. I also saw some truly derivative flotsam masquerading as elevated expression. I’ll never look at anything the same way, but I also hope I never have to look at the latter—Bloodletters, Deadly Orifice, Wilderness, anyone who sees hyper-violence as something that culture needs more of—again.
On the surface, I hated it because it scared me, and no one (Giffoni, Dilloway, Jessica Rylan, Xome, everyone in the crowd) enjoyed it. But I’ve enjoyed being terrified before. Really, Wilderness’ performance echoed no spark of creativity, brining about no recognition and destruction of common forms and inspiring only disgust among those with a predilection for skewed entertainment. Few things are more orthodox in American culture than hypersex and hyperviolence mimicking meaning. This performance was nothing more than perpetuation of persecution by pop culture, a vacant excuse for art amidst a group of people who know it when they see it.
Post-Script: The people at Nightlight, including co-owner Ryan Martin and festival organizer Jason Crumer, didn’t think much of the Wilderness/Bloodletters/Deadly Orifice set, either. Martin had gone home sick earlier in the evening from a new epilepsy medication, and Crumer, like everyone else, was more or less powerless to do anything, except wait until it was over and start cleaning up. Stimbox, a member of Macronympha, called one festival set pointless online. See a discussion of the festival—including an apology from Wilderness (username: nicki)—here.
when noise is in the paper, it’s a sure sign of the apocalypse.
Comment by some guy — June 7, 2006 @ 8:58 pm
The band with Nicki Tommy and Robert is called BLAST BEAT (not bloodletters). They recently had a split LP with Torturing Nurse come out on dada drumming if anyone is interested.
I liked everything about their performance except for the fact that it was at nightlight, North Carolina’s only decent noise venue, and that my name would be somehow attached to it as one of the festival organizers. Thanks for covering noise in the independent.
Comment by Jason Crumer — June 8, 2006 @ 11:45 am
Thanks, Jason. I heard the name from a few people, so I figured it was right. I knew they sometimes went by Blast Beat, too, but I wasn’t sure if this was a special deal or something, as bloodletters. Thanks for clearing that up, and thanks for helping start No Future. I really enjoyed it.
Comment by grayson — June 8, 2006 @ 6:50 pm
Top notch work, G.
I remember going to some talent competition years ago at NCSU’s Talley, and an unassuming duo dubbed Piano Magic started oscillating the bolts off a room filled with gospel singers and high school ska bands. That was my only exposure the noise scene.
Comment by Ian — June 9, 2006 @ 12:16 am
it is all terribly fabulous lies. i have aids, i kill people, i was molested, ect.
i have known robert since i was 14. he and a friend gave us acid and went on their own to enjoy it. they convinced each other and thenselves that they had killed us and they cried. then he cuts up my friends back. then he is saddened by the mangled wreck we leave a toy dinosaur in.
Comment by mcfetus — June 9, 2006 @ 6:13 am
Grayson, sorry everyone is talking so much crazy shit, people do noise because they’re never satisfied. It’s really neat to see noise getting press in the triangle. CRUMER
Comment by Crumer — June 11, 2006 @ 2:21 pm
oh gee and deleting comments that make sense. keep up the intelligent well-researched journalism.
Comment by pepe — June 11, 2006 @ 4:34 pm
I don’t think anybody’s deleted any comments. Try and repost them.
Jason, I think the discussion’s been great. I haven’t heard too much crazy shit.
Comment by grayson — June 11, 2006 @ 4:41 pm
I was there for the whole thing, and I do not remember Robert starting it off by kicking her in the chest. In fact, I remember her simply getting her gear together and plugging in. Then Robert grabbed a flourescent tube from the old-fashioned galvanized trashcan that held the various accoutrements they intended to use during the performance—surely you noticed this trashcan that set on the left side of the stage. Things like this do not make an appearance on stages in which their imminent destruction is not planned. cf Anti-seen. Heard of them? Anyway, Robert grabbed the flourescent tube and ran over and hit her with it. That was the first physical contact I saw between them.
It was rather an anti-climatic end to NFF, I will give you that.
What I see as most unfortunate however, is that a scenester in charge of prescribing interpretation to events such as these is incapable of evaluating the situation from any point beyond the shallowest end of the pool.
As you stood and watched the violence erupt, have you stopped to think about how you really reacted?
At what point did you decide Nicki did not need help?
Were you ever sure of it?
You wrote, “I was convinced that she was going to die.” Why did you idly stand in self-complacent judgement?
Assuming you decided she did not need help (instead of just being the typical “I don’t want to get involved” by-stander), rather than be aware that what you were taking part in was a chance to evaluate your own feelings about violence against women, for example, your review reads like you spent no time thinking at all, immediately taking the typical reaction to witnessing violence against women: you have turned your anger against the woman for allowing herself to be a part of the violence. How do I get that? Consider this, your own words, “Or maybe, in her case, it takes being beat.”
That one line makes it painfully clear you haven’t spent more than 15 minutes thinking about the feelings you had, nor how you came to the decision to just stand and watch. Honestly, I don’t think you’ve spent any minutes evaluating your responses or how you made your decisions. It’s way easier to say, “those people are crazy, and what’s wrong with that girl?” as opposed to asking yourself why you choose particular actions when you’re presented with uncomfortable situations.
From Nicki’s own statements, it doesn’t seem she had some sort of motivation to higher art—she was merely expressing herself, and in such a way as to interact with the crowd. It reads like the manner of expression Nicki chose does not fit into a mold you deem as acceptable behavior for a female artist, and perhaps this is why you feel “Wilderness’ performance echoed no spark of creativity,” “nothing more than perpetuation of persecution by pop culture,” “a vacant excuse for art,” and so forth and so on.
Most telling in this blog is your italicized post-script. What it tells is that you are still seeking validation for your opinions. No doubt, when people witness things like domestic violence—which is what that performance was most like—they have any number of mechanisms by which they can rationalize their inaction and their disgust with the victim.
I was at Nightlight for this finale performance. I ran for cover as soon as I saw Robert grab the flourescent tube, because I knew what was going to happen. I’ve been to Anti-seen shows before, and it was clear that these flourescent tubes were not going to be confined to the stage area. I spent an uncomfortable 7 minutes trying to determine if this was what Nicki meant to be doing, and whether someone needed to intevene against Robert. When I realized this seemed OK with Nicki, I tried to see where it was going, all the while being aware there may be some point where intervention might have to take place, but it did not. When it was clear they were in some limbo of nothingness—the festival is called “No Future,” if you recall—Lauren threw the main breaker. I’m betting Nicki and Robert were happy with her decision. They had gotten tangled beyond their ability to break free/end. It was a good call.
What you witnessed was an event that very closely re-enacted domestic violence. Domestic violence is a real problem in this society, and part of the reason is because people react the way you have when they encounter it.
Because, of course, domestic violence always happens to other people—not to the good, smart people—there’s not much reason to do anything about it, except complain about it amongst one’s peers and hope it just goes away. If people are involved in domestic violence, it’s best to berate them, and if they don’t figure that out, leave them alone. Whatever it takes so it doesn’t taint one’s own happy life. Now, I don’t believe this, nor do I think this is the way to address domestic violence, but this is very much what I understand you to be saying.
Again, I do not believe Nicki and Robert said, “Hey, let’s create a DV scene, and see how people handle it.” But that is actually what they did. It wasn’t stylized or scripted, so maybe the re-enactment wasn’t the pristine creation you might see at a Man Bites Dog performance. A little too close to home to appreciate as a performance, perhaps? No pun intended.
Also, you passed one exceedingly dull-witted judgement:
“She jumped up, saying “Give me a broom. I’ll clean it up,” as if the whole thing had been a joke (or, worse still, a piece of art)”
Sometimes people miss the obvious, I guess, or maybe your judgement was clouded because you, yourself, were under the influence of too many chemicals (alcohol and nicotine are also “chemicals,” and their ingestion can even prove lethal).
Why go all hipper-than-thou scenester-writer on your readers? Why not just be honest and consider that they had made one helluva mess in Nightlight, in addition to creating a violent scene that was often difficult to discern between real vs. performance. By immediately volunteering to help clean up, Nicki was more likely saying, “Thanks for the space to publicly express ourselves in this radical manner,” and “I’m OK, Robert didn’t hurt me.” I saw the broken glass coming, but I sure as hell didn’t anticipate the DV scene, so those were the two things that most needed to be said after such a performance, and that’s what her statement sounded like to me. But then, I’d spent the time considering what it was they were trying to say and how it was affecting me, not being all upset that a woman would go on stage—a woman who had spent the previous night “shrieking”—and do things that I didn’t especially understand why she was doing them. In a dress. I mean, wtf. Why don’t women learn their place already, and puh-lease—yeah, yeah, it’s a noise festival, but could you cut it with the shrieking, already? Oh and the riding someone’s back, too. Women who behave like this can not be taken seriously, and it’s really annoying. Would someone please calm her down. ...Huh? What? Oh, no! Guys who whoop and crowd surf, who pick-up-change, they’re OK—well, you know, guys just do that. It’s normal and OK for guys.
This scene is in absolute denial about how exceedingly saturated it is with sexist ideology. Stop it.
Comment by Richard — June 12, 2006 @ 11:34 pm
I disagree almost completely, but thanks. I must have forgotten the part in my response where I decided it was appropriate behavior for guys, too. Thanks for inventing it, though. He kicked her in the chest at least four times just before she plugged in, I believe when she was untangling cords.
Comment by grayson — June 13, 2006 @ 12:03 am
The last performance on Friday night had the singer violently ramming into audience members, throwing punches, and in fact I am sporting a bruise from where he clocked the guy in front of me, causing him to kick the living be-jeezus out of me.
Which is not to be taken as a complaint—I know what to expect if I’m down in front.
But that performance and these other expressions of real violence by performers were, in your own words, “two days of brilliance.”
You reference one act which involved no violence as being especially pleasant for you, but you completely neglect to describe the violence during Pedestrian Deposit (except for the horror of Nicki shrieking and riding some guy’s back), and especially, you neglect the very real violence of the performer who was into attacking audience members Friday night, whatever that closing act Friday was called.
The violence that culminated with Nicki and Robert had been brewing all night Saturday. Micronympha—all of Macronympha was not there—ended with some fairly intense violence, but you didn’t write about that.
I like pits, but I made it a point not to be in that mash-up. A bit more than I’m down with.
All the other violent slamming about is plainly treated as acceptable. What’s the difference? Looks like Nicki’s gender to me.
I’m just sayin’.
Comment by Richard — June 13, 2006 @ 12:36 am
Pedestrian Deposit: “...a group of 30 kids crowded around him and moshing in waves to a rhythm that didn’t exist.”
Aaron Dilloway: “He grabbed a bottle of beer from a fan and spit a swallow back in his face, climbing on top of his table, forsaking the sanctity of his equipment to push the audience to increased excitement. No one got hurt.”
I suppose I didn’t say more about the Macro set’s MOSHING because I was busy concentrating on Robert’s razor blade and Prurient’s antics. I saw neither the PD set nor the Macro set as being violent. Kids were moshing, freaking out, having fun. No one was beating the shit out of each other with light bulbs and tables, at lrast that I remember. The kids freaking out the most during those sets were even stunned out of that last set.
And I will, under no circumstance, equate the Blast Beat performance to a dramatic, high-art reenactment (you seem split on this…was it improvisational art? indeterminant?) of domestic violence. That’s an apologetic defense of a void excuse for performance. I would have said the same thing if it had been two dudes beating each other. It’s more than a bit silly, really.
And, if I needed some sort of validation for what I wrote, I wouldn’t have included a link to iheartnoise in my post-script. Not a lot of validation going on over there.
Thanks. You should get in touch with Mike Nutt at UNC. I think he’s compiling a set of reactions to NFF06. Let me know if you want his e-mail address.
Comment by grayson — June 13, 2006 @ 12:55 am
Yes, I would very much be interested in any and all reflections/observations/justifications/defenses
about No Future Fest. Eventually they will be part of a larger documentary about Nightlight and Skylight, but I’m starting with NFF. Richard, Robert, and Nicki, if you’re out there, I’d be especially interested in hearing more about your perspective. Please get in touch if you are at all interested! nutt at email dot unc dot edu. also, i think if you click on my name in this comment, it will take you to some photos from the evening which will later be incorporated into the aforementioned site.
No Future was certainly quite the experience.
Comment by Mike Nutt — June 13, 2006 @ 1:11 pm
With all due respect Grayson, between you and I, you are the only one who seems to require something to meet a standard of high art at a noise fest. Personally, I went because I enjoy the noise. I don’t need to somehow be validated as a worthy (hip, cool, enlightened, choose your own adjective) human being through my enjoyment of weird-ass sounds. I just do.
I clearly stated that I don’t believe there was any intention for a specific performance at the outset of what Nicki and Robert gave us, merely that what they did, in fact, present to us was an event that was remarkably close to actual domestic violence. One obviously could take the opportunity to respond or react to the event however one felt appropriate.
Judging from your assessment of the evening, I feel that you have taken a reactionary sexist stance to the situation. It is disappointing that you adhere to your notions that Nicki was the only performer that was “bad” and that everything else was wonderful, mainly because you are blind to the sexist ideology you’re nurturing, but I’m not surprised. I still encourage you to try to understand the issue of acceptability of women and violence/physical contact/direct confrontation.
This scene is in absolute denial about how exceedingly saturated it is with sexist ideology. Stop it.
Comment by Richard — June 16, 2006 @ 10:34 pm
No battered woman emails show promoters and requests permission to get beaten in their club. No battered woman drives 24 hours to get abused, goes to home depot to buy the tools to get abused with, and sets up sound equipment to document it. It was a set by Blast Beat, the infamous Blast Beat who always do shit like that. Their set was amazing. I didn’t watch it. You boring Chapel Hill fuckers needed to. It sure as shit wasn’t no fucking DJ.
Blast Beat doesn’t lack analysis, in fact all three members of the band are brilliant and bright. They lack easy analysis, the ‘meaning’ won’t fit on a patch or bumper sticker. Deal with it, or boycott harsh noise shows.
Comment by Crumer — June 18, 2006 @ 2:57 pm
I know I’m probably poking my nose where it doesn’t belong, especially since I wasn’t there. But, man… some of you people are uptight.
I think it’s pretty obvious that the set was nothing more than two slightly messed-up kids in the throes of ecstatic violence. But since when is that not art? Art is (at least partially) supposed to be about physical self-expression, is it not?
Regardless… even though it you may consider it artless (in every possible way), the EFFECT of the performance speaks for itself. As “pepe” so correctly put it: “for something thats supposedly so droll and banal and uninspired and cliched etc etc somehow you managed to discuss it for 3 days and write an essay on it, (ignoring mostof the rest of the fest)”
You’re going to remember the Blast Beat set for years. How many other performances that weekend wil stick in your memory for so long? Could you write a detailed review of their performances even now?
And I doubt that Nicki and Robert give a hairy rat’s ass about gender roles or examining society’s views on violence, but their performance did bring everyone’s smelly opinions out into the open.
For instance: Even though, by all accounts, Robert and Nicki were pretty much equally violent – both to themselves and to each other – Nicki is automatically the victim because she’s female, and holding her responsible for her own actions is just blaming the victim.
Or: That since Nicki’s a girl, if anyone has any problem with her behavior, they’re just saying “Why don’t women learn their place already”.
And this is from someone who said that EVERYONE ELSE “is in absolute denial about how exceedingly saturated [they are] with sexist ideology.” Wow, thanks, champ! That looks like a mighty fine stick there, but all the same, I’ll just take a pass on sticking it up my ass.
And as far as the violence itself goes: You yourself admit that “From Rome’s practice of capital punishment as top-notch thriller ethos to today’s prime-time television shoot-’em-up principles, extreme violence performed by people on people is [...] overplayed.”
Did you ever consider why that is? Humanity has a will to violence as much as it has a will to peace, or love, or affection… probably more. Other than practical necessity, why should expressing one set of emotions be acceptable, the other not?
Put another way: Would you have had so much of a problem with the set if they were fucking instead of fighting?
Now, I’m not saying that everything is all fine and dandy here. I personally believe that anyone can do whatever the fuck they like, but in return they have to accept the consequences. And there are obviously a lot of consequences in this case – things like ones’ own physical safety, a trashed venue, the possibility of police intervention, etc. These are things that can potentially hurt everyone, and I think it is perfectly acceptable to call Robert and Nicki out on all of these counts. If no one else had done it, I would have.
But as for all the rest… lighten up, already.
And write something about the dozen or so other performers, for God’s sake.
Comment by Karlheinz — June 19, 2006 @ 9:53 am
Blast Beat was fun to watch. It was fun watching them hurt themselves AND actually enjoy it. The noise was stupid. Remember Nicki was ENJOYING it. When Robert grabbed her and did his naked backbreaker, she had this huge grin on her face. She enjoyed doing it, hell she even went around while the mayhem was going on and patted a few of us in the chest that were up front watching.
I’m just glad noone has focus on my pro-gun rant. wink
Comment by shawn (Moribund) — June 19, 2006 @ 2:50 pm
this back-and-forth bickering sounds like a mid-90s emo show. the wooooorrrms.
Comment by rich — June 20, 2006 @ 1:09 am
haha the fucking worms!
Comment by jim — June 20, 2006 @ 10:32 pm
me and tommy are blast beat. secret man in the dark. he should have gotten stitches…! i didn’t even get beaten up like i see people say it..? i think its just cuz i am the smallest i get thrown the farthest…? i think jason explains it- how we drive thousands of miles to play five minutes and then drink in the parking lot and listen to the radio. id say i an just a dumb kid before id say i was an artist and an artist before id say i was violent.
Comment by valley of ten thousand smokes — June 23, 2006 @ 6:31 pm
I wasn’t there for Blast Beat. After an initial bad reaction to hearing what happened from my friend Lauren, who was bartending (she was freaked-out and upset – I would be too if I had to work during Blast Beat!), I would have to say that I’m glad it happened. I saw pictures and they were beautiful. The whole spectacle comes across as very moving, somehow. I’ve had dreams aboust it. I wasn’t even there and it left an impression … These are inarticulate late-night ramblings, thanks, good night
Comment by Ryan Martin — June 27, 2006 @ 1:40 am