Decibel 2010

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    Oct 8, 2010
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  • RA sent out four correspondents to report back on the happenings of Decibel's seventh edition. This is their perspective on what went on in Seattle late last month.
    Wednesday
    Photo credit: +Russ Ghostly showcase The Ghostly Showcase at Neumos found fur-clad burners, fist-pumping rockers with asymmetrical hair, Germans in austere club gear, grey-haired men in pleated Dockers and sensible shoes, the Pocket Protector Brigade in thick glasses and even peppy sorority girls all sharing one dance floor. While the Boeing-bred Jet City has long been a music summit, historically, the fractured communities clamoring around specific genres and sub-sub-genres haven't crossed over. Yet the 2010 iteration of Decibel changed all that. Slappy, spunky, video game samples by Mux Mool ping-ponged across synth territories throughout a stellar set. The performance by hood-wielding international man of mystery Pantha du Prince was something of an anti-climactic closure to the Showcase: his pristine, (almost too-) beautiful melodies were rife with technical difficulties and were somehow done a disservice by the venue's state-of-the-art sound. In stark contrast, Lusine's live performance resonated. The longtime Decibel veteran's restrained pacing and phrasing eventually gave way to polyrhythmic layers and eventual, anticipated release. Sara Jayne
    Thursday
    Photo credit: +Russ Lo Dubs Showcase In a festival that included several repeat performances in its seventh year, London's Dan Richmond, known as Clubroot, was among Decibel's biggest surprises. His dubstep set at the cozy Baltic Room was steeped in deep abstract chords of claptrap beats, and smooth harmonics. The open-faced rhythms drew a small swarm of people to their feet almost as soon as he began. By incorporating a drone drenched core, he then thickly laid a bold percussive sensibility throughout, having just the right mastery of the mixer to gracefully shape the thumping vibe down. The dual level club was the perfect setting for a make-shift A/V scene with fabrics posing as silver screens hung above the heads of even the tallest dancers. TJ Norris Shameless showcase Even a set of high quality techno from Daniel Bell couldn't stop Deepchild from stealing the show at the Shameless showcase. Looking party-ready in a tank top, he alternated between getting down to his own beats and giving the impression he was going to completely lose control of the show. He juggled a dizzying spread of synths, mixers, drum machines and computers, which made his hands look like a fast motion sequence in a movie. At times the countless tracks of audio drifted out of synch and his jaw became so clenched and eyes so wide open that his face looked absolutely panicked. What made his performance so intriguing was that it was impossible to tell if he was intentionally hamming it up for the crowd or if the wheels were actually about to come off. In the end, he always corrected things just in time and kept the dance floor in complete rapture with round bass, warm synthesizer tones and sexy vocals. Ava Hegedus Room40 showcase Australia's Room40 label, the mainstay of all things post-concrete, experimental, avant-guitar and cinematic ambient from down under, opened their showcase with Rafael Anton Iriasarri, whose set explored some of the most complex mixtures of treated guitar, ambiance and field recordings from any of his monikers, yet was much too short to lead us far down the path glimpsed. Surprisingly, it wasn't the reverb-laden instrumentals Grouper is known for, but rather, glacially slow hushed folk where she excelled this night. On the verge of inaudibility, her breathy vocalizations and plucked guitar explored perception's forgotten corners. Asking that the audience appreciate the contents of his performance prostrate, the setting of Pravda Studios suddenly become a sleep-in with the few hundred in attendance lulled by waves of Lawrence English's low frequency thrum and heavily processed field recordings. Let it not be said that "ambient" music can't also deliver visceral, body-rocking, mind-frying thrills. It's rare that composers of such crepuscular, distant sounds even aspire to such ends, but Ben Frost has been establishing himself as the vanguard of a engaging, powerful, electrifying music that may just eschew that category altogether. This night's performance, unfortunately, had a soundsystem that couldn't keep up with the surging blasts of dynamic, symphonic, almost hallucinatory noise issuing from his electric guitar and laptop. Jefferson Petrey
    Friday
    Photo credit: +Russ Optical 1 Optical 1's set-up at the elegant Benaroya Hall, a classically modern performance space, had Berlin-based composer Robert Henke physically behind the audience. It was a smart choice, focusing the audience on the vibratory, heavy bass drone that began his set. From that grew the trance-inducing stimulus of the artist's signature deep layering of warm ambience. Images of fields and giant ants overlaid with underwater settings pulsating with tiny bubbles morphed on a screen, as a frenetic ticking beat led way to conductive sounds emanating at highs and lows with a stylish cadence. Murcof delivered a slow and deliberate set that stole from classical music and gave back a bit of a squeaky chair full of broad bass, cello strings, offbeat Latin flourishes that ranged from undulating to slow motion. His work ascended in moments of the psychedelic with a cavernous virtuosity, but a quick pan of the room revealed a split crowd. Some were completely riveted and others heads were reclined in REM. Mark Van Hoen presented what seemed to be live video sound collages that started off with a genuinely fluid cut-up of Joni Mitchell from her blue period. Van Hoen then added percussive accompaniment from an unknown drummer taken from Iranian television. Each piece was fairly short, like a pop song. Next were layers of players, someone that could be the torso of Little Richard mixed with late '70s hair rock on one channel and '80s 4AD (here, presumably the Cocteau Twins). By using source material that drew from the synergy of successive decades, detailing voice and other instrumentation made for a ghostly mash-up—a somewhat brilliant cross section of both Jason Forrest and Christian Marclay. TJ Norris
    Saturday
    Photo credit: +Russ Mothership boat party The Mothership Boat Party set sail in rare, late September sunshine, despite a rather livid, red-faced Captain (who erroneously thought a cigarette smoker had smuggled contraband aboard his hale vessel). Aboard the Lake Washington-bound ship, Catz 'n Dogz mixed eclectic delights for landlubbers and sailors alike, blending ESG's "Dance," a Hall & Oates rendition by Soul Clap and some old gems I hadn't heard since visiting London's Turnmills in 1999: Cassius, King Britt and more. Seattle's legendary house music impresario Jeromy Nail blended deep house in his usual organic, seamless fashion as the ship returned back to its Seattle slip with a satisfied cargo of househeads, sailors and winos. Sara Jayne Optical 2 Seeing as the Optical showcases act as a forum for the intersection of video arts complementing and/or being an extension of the performer's work, obviously this works best when the visual aspect is not only the creative product of the musical producer, but the two pieces are one-in-the-same. Here with Christian Fennesz, Lillevan's high contrast depictions of kinetic collisions of viscous fluids perfectly suited the cascades of aural torrent that Fennesz rained down on the primed acoustic space of Benaroya Recital Hall. His set opened with swelling strings, and had an equally unexpected encore of a collaborative piece between him and Rafael Anton Irisarri. The evening's other performances were more mixed affairs. New York guitarist Noveller, in the midst of a ring of effects pedals glided between subtle melodicism and onslaughts of Matthew Bower-esque feedback assault. While her visual accompaniment was largely passive, her sonic presence was notable. Rounding the bill out, Oneohtrix Point Never's set was one of willful druggy eccentricity with corresponding shroomy visuals. Even though the performance was impressive for its all-hardware improvisational nature, it struggled to transcend the intended wigginess of the heavily processed synth and voice that is Daniel Lopatin's sonic palette. Jefferson Petrey Hotflush showcase As the key destination for most of the dubstep and other bass-driven sounds at Decibel, one might expect careful attention to the sound system at Baltic Room. Descending down Capitol Hill to the club at prime showtime, a very well known artist chugged back up the steep grade towards the festival epicenter and warned that the sound system rendered the music unlistenable for anyone with a discerning ear for low frequencies. I had hoped this would have been addressed given reports about people physically fanning the lone subwoofer on hand to keep it operational during a previous showcase. Checking in at the club despite the impending aural disappointment, the place was packed. Untold fed off the crowd's energy, playing an energetic and somewhat surprising set that included house and real-deal electro beats. Scuba delivered an impeccable set of his signature cerebral dub techno hybrid. Clearly some of the ecstatic crowd wasn't bothered by the sound situation, others grumbled and made the best of what was a regrettable disservice to some very talented musicians. Fed up, I left towards the end of Scuba's set and later heard rumors that all but one speaker had blown by the end of the night. Ava Hegedus Photo credit: +Russ D25 showcase The Seattle technophile set regularly traverses festivals like Montreal's Mutek and Detroit's DEMF in pursuit of sets by Detroit grandfathers. Decibel Director Sean Horton (a former Detroit resident) took this into consideration as he booked Decibel 2010: a stellar line-up featuring both Detroit techno grandfathers Kevin Saunderson and Carl Craig was something of a reward for longtime attendees. Kevin Saunderson performed a lively, romp & raunch set with slick maneuvering and sick bass drops. I've had the luxury of seeing Carl Craig perform a few times, and I can't say that his Decibel 2010 performance was much different than any other set of years past—yet his characteristic slow builds, amorphous rollicking and spare productions remain riveting. Sara Jayne Late Night Soul Kitchen showcase Much conversation followed the Late Night Soul Kitchen showcase about whether headliner Theo Parrish was having some sort of religious experience on stage or was just completely fucked up. His eyes were rolled all the way back into his head, his body swayed like a windsock and, at one point, he stopped the music altogether by accidentally resting his elbow directly on the active turntable. This was actually a fortunate moment because it seemed to wake him up to the fact that there was a captive audience standing before him expecting to see something magical. Up until that point he was playing a serious game of hard-to-get, holding out on dropping any kind of solid beat for nearly an hour. Anticipation is key to any good DJ set, but Parrish took things too far. If there was some hidden genius in the impossibly long build up of tension, it was lost on a girl next to me who commented, "Let's get out of here. This DJ doesn't know how to keep a beat going." He eventually gave in and delivered some sustained 4/4, but not before losing a sizable chunk of the dance floor. Ava Hegedus
    Sunday
    Photo credit: +Russ Decibel finale Despite Cassy's visa-related cancellation, the Decibel finale stood out as a major highlight of the weekend. Luke Hess coaxed tired, weary festival-goers onto the dance floor with a perfectly paced set of deep and sexy dub. It made for a splendid hand-off to Monolake, whose performance was likely the most anticipated (and well-received) of the entire festival. After his intriguing but very slow and ambient A/V presentation at Optical 1, people were ready to hear some beats from the electronic music luminary. Monolake looked iconic on stage with his angular shaved head, and his expertise with surround sound reaffirmed him as a pioneer of the genre and master of sound engineering. He barely looked up at the crowd though his set, but that didn't cause any disconnect. He was so enthralled with his own process and so absorbed in the music that he was dancing wildly and grinning ear-to-ear the whole time. The lasting image of someone turned blissfully inward by his passion for sound couldn't have been a more appropriate coda to the four-day event. In seven years Decibel has repeatedly outdone itself, rising to the top as one of North America's premier events for forward-thinking electronic music and visual media. The ability to experience world-class artists in a variety of intimate settings all within a short walking distance in one Seattle neighborhood has drawn increasing numbers of attendees, and pushed nearly all venues over capacity this year. One hopes that going forward, organizers are able to accommodate the growing interest in the festival, keep up the impressive bookings and still maintain the cozy atmosphere that defines Decibel and the community that makes it possible. Ava Hegedus
RA