Kirin's Kickass Column: Antisocial Music
by Kirin Furst '10
Monday March 24, 2008
The innovations of post-modern music are completely astonishing. Not only has digital technology released us from all sorts of practical obstacles in music creation; the rules of composition and performance have been turned in upon themselves, defiled, raped and thrown back together in what appears to be a limitless playing field for experimentation. The proof has found a portal to Sarah Lawrence through the unique, abrasive style of Anti-Social Music. An NYC collective of musicians including our own guest faculty member Pat Muchmore, the group features an assortment of orchestral instruments and electronics wielded in a strange combination of classical influence, post-punk, jazz and more.
Between the creative vision of composers Pat Muchmore, Andrea La Rose and William Brittelle, Wednesday night was an impressive and often deliciously uncomfortable exhibition. The show opened with a dialogue between trombone wielding Jen Baker and an electronic track by Muchmore. The overall impression was of a fierce and profound battle for existence that testified to the limitations of the analog trombone in relation to digital music, waged back and forth and in tandem until ultimately the brass instrument stopped making noise and moments later ceased movement.
Baker (who traveled from San Francisco to perform) demonstrated an astonishing range of noise and technique with her instrument between this song and her solo performance in the next, ‘testify’ by Andrea La Rose. Both were testimonies to her incredible talent, regardless of how you may feel about the dissonant and irregular musical style. In ‘testify’, Baker vocalized moans, yelps and other guttural exclamations in between extremely adept tromboning, producing what might be compared to spoken word instrumentation, or a severe twist on scat (jazz singing with nonsense syllables). It could also be described as a trombone having an orgasm. ‘Small pets in the sixth house’, another composition by Andrea La Rose, was a duet between the composer on flute and our own Pat Muchmore on cello to the rhythm of an absurd time signature. It sounded almost electronic in nature, also verging on Eastern, at any rate almost entirely alien to conventional Western music.
After the smoke break, Muchmore and La Rose returned as participants of the ‘Mohair Time Warp,’ written and lip-synced by the gifted and charismatic William Brittelle. This performance of a full length conceptual album was experimental in the most literal sense; none of the instruments were actually being played. Every musician involved was faking, and clearly so: the cello and violin looked naked without their strings, the cords for the electric instruments sat coiled out in front of their players, and the ‘conductor’ was unmistakably actually the DJ. The inspiration for this unusual performance style stemmed from the unfortunate vocal-cord injury Brittelle suffered while performing with his post-punk band The Blondes. Although it meant the end of that group, he went on to develop a new approach enabling him to record his vocals in increments and then lip-sync through performances. Wednesday night was a trial run for the full lip-syncing ensemble, and afterwards the performers gave the audience a chance to share their reactions. This predictably yielded mixed results. It seemed in general that while the audience found it interesting, they were also aware of having missed the opportunity to hear obviously talented musicians actually play their instruments. In the case that the performance was repeated this way, the recommendation was that it should be tightened and perhaps made more interesting and self aware.
Either way the piece is done, I highly recommend checking out the album. Mohair Timewarp will be released April 1st. The music itself is a spastic, startling combination of post punk, pop and occasionally classical with eerie absurdist lyrics that are often sung with emotion completely contradictory to the words (Brittelle sweetly crooning ‘pain… is ubiquitous’ repeatedly as if to a child or lover). Scattered throughout are jarring pop references and the often randomly placed names of brands and products, as though the songs overtly aspire to subliminal messaging. The piece is clearly some sort of commentary on popular culture and music, as much of Brittelle’s work has been, though perhaps the listener should be allowed to formulate her own opinion as to exactly what is being demonstrated.
Anti-Social Music performs in the New York area fairly often, and is well worth the effort to see. They will play Joe’s Pub in Manhattan on May 8th (although you may want to double check the date in a few months). They claim to be “Basic New York scene eclectics. All the fun without the pretension,” the latter of which I can verify personally. As to the former, I don’t see anything basic about it. Their approach to music stretches the imagination and tests the steeliness of one’s figurative balls. Check out their website in the meantime: http://antisocialmusic.org/.
