- Debacle is a prolific experimental/noise/drone/what-have-you label run out of Seattle, which has been hosting its own festival since 2008. The lineup is a cast of Washington State locals, prominent US experimental artists and the label's own signees. This year there was a dance night too, though you might want to put dance in quotation marks.
Debacle consisted of four events in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood. The first two were heavy on drone, and took place at the FRED Wildlife refuge. The venue was almost full by 10 PM that Friday night, with the colourful cross-section of people you might expect to see at a noise show. Seattle synth head Panabrite proved the star attraction, delivering a blissed-out half-hour of synth doodles (after almost 40 minutes of troubleshooting). The next evening, the desert hymns of Date Palms came to life beautifully with viola, sitar and bass guitar—quite a relief after auditory assaults from American noise chieftains John Wiese and Nate Young.
The harder side of Debacle's ethos was well-represented on the Saturday afternoon when the action moved over to the Highline. The grungy metal bar had an appropriately heavy lineup: Blue Sabbath Black Cheer member Stan Reed obliterated eardrums with a formidable wall of noise, and John Wiese's grindcore group Sissy Spacek thrashed around for 12 minutes of pure intensity.
Taking over the considerably nicer Lo Fi Performance Gallery, the dance event was easily the festival's strongest night. Black Hat and Prostitutes delivered tonnes-heavy techno with a careful dose of noise that meshed well with the rest of the event's programming. Hieroglyphic Being played to a room of about 30 people by the time his headlining slot rolled around, but his driving rhythms felt incongruous after the impenetrable sludge of Moon Pool & Dead Band.
That group, with their especially soporific take on noise-inflected techno, contrasted sharply with the more boisterous acts that night—an inevitable issue at a festival that has its horizons set as wide as Debacle. With such a diverse lineup, you're bound to have to sit through some stuff you're not all that interested in, especially when chilled-out ambient acts follow abrasive washes of noise. The focus on live performers with intricate setups at largely DIY venues also meant that equipment issues could drag down energy levels. But Debacle is the type of event that naturally demands patience out of its attendees with the kind of music it presents, and offers a rare opportunity to experience a wide breadth of experimental electronic music in one place over a single weekend.