Friday 11 February 2011

Noise Upstairs - The Riverside, Sheffield (9.2.2011)


When I was growing up, I remember with some fondness, forming a noise duo with a friend of mine called Ozz.  We were inspired by artists such as Throbbing Gristle, John Cale and Cabaret Voltaire into experimenting with music.  Our preferred choice of 'instrument' was a cassette tape recorder.  We would remove the back off these machines and poke our fingers around in the circuits so that they screamed back at us, as if we were harming them in some terrible way.  Maybe we were amongst the first of the circuit benders, but the practice hadn't been named back then. 

Over the years I have continued to dabble in using obscure instruments and household objects to come up with interesting sounds.  I often sample those noises and put them with something more melodic, because in the end I’m always pulled back to melody.   But these experiments with sound can be great fun, particularly when you find a sound that is like nothing else you’ve ever listened to.  So when I heard about Noise Upstairs, which is run by a group of enthusiasts in both Manchester and Sheffield, I was intrigued to find out more.

I opted to go to the Sheffield event because it took place at The Riverside, a venue I’d heard good things about and one which puts on a variety of eclectic and different nights, from theatre through to live bands and spoken word.  It’s situated on the outskirts of the city centre, in amongst a mix of high rise flats and next to a busy roundabout. 

On arrival at the venue I got a pint of Guinness and made my way upstairs.  I said hello to some of the guys running the event and one of them, Johnny, explained the set up.  You put your name in a hat and then they draw out three names at random, so you don’t know who your going to be playing with.  It could be any combination of instruments and objects.  They do this for an hour or so, and then there is a guest band, followed by more of the names in a hat.

I sat down at a table near the back of the room and picked up a copy of a free art magazine called Now Then.  One of the musicians was talking to another and it turned out he was just finishing a PhD.  A deep conversation ensued about the difficulties of acoustic and electronic combination in the key of F.  Another conversation related to sign waves, differentials and the availability of recording equipment in music departments.  It occured to me that many of the people here were music academics who had chosen the ways of contemporary noise over contemporary music.  I started to feel a little out of my depth and wondered whether the ‘anything goes’ philosophy was what it promised to be.  I’d had bad experiences with literature and poetry academics who looked down on anyone who hadn’t studied the subject at their high level.  Academics can be very elitist, and so can musicians - the fact was I needn't have worried.

When the programme got under way my name was the first out of the hat.  And I was teamed up with a saxophonist called Ian and an American by the name Rodrigo.  I made my way carefully into the noise proceedings feeling a little uneasy with the intensity of it all.  But as the process got going it became more relaxed and I decided to avoid the instrument samples on the kaoss pad and went for the sound effects.  Then I used the vocoder to loop some random words and sounds into the mix, speeding them up and slowed them down (trying to achieve an audio concrete poetry of some kind).  Ian threw in some sharp bursts of sound over the top and Rodrigo added to the ambiance with guitar.  Strangely enough, as random a collection of individuals that had never met before, we worked our way through the piece and found exactly the right place to stop.  The noise had its own life span and the ending felt very natural.

The next random set of musicians were Angie, Steve and Johnny.  Angie played an acoustic guitar upside down so that the strings were resting on a table.  She wrote on pieces of paper and then tore them up on the back of the guitar so that it could be heard through the PA via a microphone.  Steve played some chaotic bass lines.  Johnny stroked and tapped a small drum kit with an anti-rhythm, so that there was never a beat for the human heart to hook up to.  I watched the dark surging waters of the River Don outside the window, and it seemed like the reflection of neon lights was moving with this discord.  And again the ending came quite naturally, somehow deliberate, but never intended.

There were more performances from more trios and of particular note was an amplified cymbal which was played by another American by the name of Ray.  Ray had laid out what looked like a yoga mat on the floor and set the cymbal down on it.  He used various metal objects such as a fork, and an egg whisk, to scrape, tap and generally upset the cymbal into action.  At one moment it sounded like that noise you get when you run your nails down a blackboard, and another it resembled the ringing in your ears after you’ve run your fingers down a blackboard, the sound of the heart thumping in your brain.

Ray stroked and attacked his cymbal with relish.  He waved his arm out at the audience and then twisted his hand on his wrist in an odd gesture of defiance.  He shut his eyes and screwed up his face as the noises he was making got louder and more awkward.  He fidgeted and hesitated throughout the set in the manner of the edgy sound he was creating, and it was good to watch his amplified cymbal getting a right pasting. 

Meanwhile, a musician called Anton, filled the room with a sweeping synthesised feedback from an acoustic guitar.  In normal circumstances you would be fighting to prevent this from happening, but in this upside down world it was positively encouraged.  It complemented the sparse moments of the cymbal abuse and the quick bursts of the clarinet from the third of the players.

The guest act brought together Ian, Ray and Rodrigo as 16 Figures.  Rodrigo produced a stringed instrument almost like a guitar, but not a guitar, and he played it alongside a home made electronic box which was covered in switches.  From talking to Rodrigo earlier I’d learnt the box contained a paper circuit, putting together transformers and resistors in such a way to create random buzzing and whirring noises, as you changed the parameters and setting via an array of switches.

16 Figures created a vibrant and agitated noise and I had to stop myself from stroking my chin too vigorously.  Ray fidgeted around in his kneeling position even more than before, hovering over the amplified cymbal, whilst Ian seemed to relax into a burst of saxophone that started to sound almost classical, before stopping himself and using the instrument in a more percussive way.  I guess this is one form of music where if you hit on a pleasing melody you have to work yourself away from it because that ways lays convention.

When 16 Figures had finished I retrieved my stuff from the back of the stage and then bought a copy of the Noise Upstairs compilation.  When I got talking to a few of the Noise guys I realised very quickly they were not at all elitist.  This was an error of judgement on my part and one that was born out of bad experiences with academics in the literary field.  In fact they were as friendly and genuine a bunch as you could possibly come across, and passionate about their chosen art form.

The Noise Upstairs is something to be cherished and valued in a society that is dominated by manufactured sounds of the most banal and unimaginative kind.  I despair of the mediocrity of music, and even those who think their songs or creations may not be part of the middle ground, are actually more middle ground than they realise.  All singer song writers with a desire for creating something different should try a session of noise and see whether some of this creative experimentation rubs off on them.

I've included a video of Ray with the amplified cymbal below.




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