Justin Walter @ Bar DeVille; Uncanned Music Series

Justin Walter at Bar DeVille last Tuesday, November 5^th, 2013: Awesome! Two thumbs up! 4 ½ stars! Fresh Tomato! And I will share more deep thoughts on his music/performance shortly. But first things first: I don’t get out much. Not for the last… ohhhhh… 15 years or so. For a few years after college I still had what people would call “a life.” Since then, I seem to have settled into what I’ll generously refer to as my nerdy/stay-at-home period. IE: I don’t get around much anymore; pretty much never. This, of course, includes bars. So when I walked into Bar DeVille this past Tuesday to continue my new search for good music to experience in Chicago, I feared that I would feel awkward. Out of place. Old and in the way… So I walked in through the front door of the joint and what happens? The dude sitting at the end of the bar nearest the entrance looks me over and says, “ID please.” Cue the sun.

Ok… I’m not saying the guy actually thought I was under age. It’s 27 years past my bedtime for cryin’ out loud and I’m sure he knew the score. But he played it straight when he easily could’ve let me walk by knowing that I was safely “of age.” This simple act of being carded put me immediately at ease, had me laughing out loud, and made me feel like I was in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. And for that, Bar DeVille is currently my favorite bar of all-time. But maybe I should just get out more.    

More importantly, seeing and hearing Justin Walter’s performance was like watching worlds collide; a thoughtful and combustible synergy of old school and new school; analog boy in a digital world; Graham Bell meets the iPhone. Walter is a kind of composite DJ/trumpeter where there’s a seemingly organic mix between 1) being an actual instrumentalist in the traditional sense: playing an instrument yourself and generating melodies and sounds live through that instrument; and 2) using computers/machines to trigger and mix pre-recorded sounds, tunes, beats, loops, etc… (which is, of course, now an art unto itself…). There’s a balance in his music where these two elements have become equal partners; a marriage of Machine and Man.

Walter’s main axe is the Electronic Valve Instrument. It’s a handheld synthesizer developed in the 1970s that has three valve triggers like a trumpet and some sort of round pitch controller at its “bell.” If it’s to be compared to the sound of a brass instrument, it was closer to the richer, more suffusive sound of the French horn. In Walter’s hands, it mostly emitted warm, round tones bringing to my mind some of the purer tones from, say, the classic Moog synthesizer or some Weather Report period Joe Zawinul. Treated occasionally with a light distortion or gain, it also had a slight crunchy edge when the vibe was needed.

Set up as a backdrop to play improvisations against, Walter’s 1^st loop of the evening was an extended, repeating I-IV landscape. A meditative, monastic never-ending plagal cadence, this space was set up for Walter to explore and ruminate over. Like virtually all the pieces, it was simple and in the pocket harmonically, but conceptually rich and soulfully performed. Awash in deep electronic bass tones and synthy, punchy electronic sounds, Walter’s deliberate, creative and mindful delivery made for some of the most inviting music in this writer’s recent memory. That room on that night was the place to be. Often (always?) rather cinematic or theatrical, Walter consistently conjured moody, languorous landscapes in the listener’s mind, all tending toward a subdued and darker low-range end of the spectrum: music to accompany an underwater, nighttime planetarium show.

From electro afro-pop grooves, to static ambient soundscapes, there’s no shortage of hybrid terms one could come up with to describe Walter’s music: Ambient EDM; Minimalist chill out improv; Creative New Age. Aphex Twin as an improvising, instrumentalist loop artist. Occasionally, there were so many sounds/loops happening that it was difficult to decipher what Walter was doing in real time, and the music would subtly blur into some type of gorgeous, post-ambient, improvised noisescape.  

Performing on a slightly risen floor from behind a table where most of his electronics and assorted devices (multiple stompbox-like devices, tablet/iPad looking thingies, multiple flashing lights and screens w/ cryptic programs, etc…) were shielded from view, Walter, often wearing headphones to mix himself in media res, appeared as some sort of half-exposed, musician Wizard of Oz. It reminded me of how the great Steve Morse once described why people enjoy watching guitar players. He explained that people innately want to know how things work; how things are done. When people watch a guitarist, they can see the fingers pressing down on the strings. They can physically see when a string is bent or when a finger creates vibrato and it’s easy to associate what you’re seeing with the sound you’re hearing. It just makes sense. And I agree with Morse. But Walter is fascinating to watch for just the opposite reason. At Bar DeVille, he was like The Wizard partially behind the scrim. Half the time you had no idea how he was making everything work. And if you’re willing to let go, the mystery of his production only adds to the beauty.

Some excerpts from the performance: 

"Dream Weaving" from Walter's Lullabies & Nightmares, out on kranky.