Brian Labycz & Colin Peters @ Myopic Books Experimental Music Series: Nov. 11th, 2013

A few days ago I showed a co-worker some of my footage from a previous Myopic Books Experimental Music Series performance. His reaction, which undoubtedly would’ve been the same for this week’s Labycz/Peters performance, is exactly how I imagine the uninitiated majority’s initial response to this sort of performance: “What’s going on? Have they started yet? Wait… I don’t understand. Is this music?”

Plumbing the depths of improvised music’s subconscious this week were organizer Brian Labycz on his modular synthesizer and Colin Peters on assorted electronics and Casio. Peters’s small sized Casio keyboard, beautifully childlike old school sounds and all, was used to create some very simple intervals and harmonies that looped and looped. These were used as backdrop landscapes for his countless effected and distorted sounds/noises (pedals, mics, & drum machine in tow…) and Labycz’s occasional busy outbursts, but mainly cool modular synthesizer contemplations through most of their continuous hour-long set. It made for an effective dualism of man and machine; sometimes coming off as more man vs. machine - at times feeling like an extended struggle. While listening, I recalled Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, imagining that this music was a lost section of the film’s original score used for the scene where supercomputer Hal 9000 is dismantled by Dave: “Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave? Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” All the sputtering, whirring clatter of the ramping ups and winding downs of Hal’s “mind” coming to an end. The piece reached a sort of apotheosis of horrors and meditations about three quarters through the hour; then trailed off somewhat by rote.

While sonically the most unconventional Monday night I’ve attended so far, to my ear there was still a detectable conversation occurring. Though, truth be told, sometimes it’s hard to know whether the logic of the conversation is internal to the performance or an intellectual construct from without. In any case, this show wouldn’t disappoint anyone in search of aural adventure and weirdness, or some kind of post-art, meta-performance anti-art.

That being said, this type of sound/noise construction is, of course, not at all unprecedented. Even in the Pop music world, relatively extreme experimentation with what are mainly considered to be “non-musical” sounds/forms have been dealt with on occasion: consider Pink Floyd’s “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” or The Beatles’ (John Lennon’s?) “Revolution 9” for instance. However, if we’re to believe much of the written and aural history, Floyd and Lennon were on some pretty heavy acid. The trip at Myopic was different. Sure, it was a “long strange trip.” But from what I could glean, Labycz and Peters simply seem to love all manner of sounds and a strong cup of coffee.