Grimley's Gang

It's not often I see something as distinguished and delightful as Tom Grimley's automated music machines. On September 26th, Tom wound up on a snazzy program of electroacoustic experimentalism at the cozy home in Fishtown (a peripheral and charming neighborhood of Philadelphia) where selfless new music supporter Brooke Sietinsons and others host both experimental and folky strains of underground music from time to time, fostering a balanced and inviting musical climate extending well beyond the deservedly celebrated resident ensemble Espers. Since 1996, Tom has been creating an entourage of small devices that play themselves, simply sitting in the back to enjoy the resulting music much as if he were just another audience member. Basically he has found circuit boards with interesting sound behavior and implemented motor-driven mechanical interfaces with the electrical loci of variation in the circuitry, like variable resistors. These ad hoc gadgets are packaged in attractive small boxes with speakers and Tom needs only plug them into a power supply for them to start their unpredictable mechanically-mediated sound excursions. With a handful of these gizmos operating at the same time as independent musical agents, the emergent textures of slowly pulsing and bleeping analog electronic sounds is complex and intoxicating.

As can be seen from the picture above (that's Tom in the black shirt sitting in the rear and enjoying the performance), the devices also offer spatial separation that gave an unreplicable psycho-acoustic experience for us lucky folks sitting a few meters away from the array in the ideal intimate space. One of the memorable moments from the performance came when a machine positioned in a corner a good bit away from the others in the center of the room suddenly came to life midway through. It was like being in the middle of lively sound installation and quite unlike an ordinary music performance. The boxes were like little alien creatures having an indecipherable and relaxed conversation while us humanoids watched over with pleased puzzlement. While essentially autonomous, the behavior of the analog circuitry was modulated by the power supply and since all the machines shared a common power supply, there was an element of subtle interaction as voltage ebbed and flowed in each device and altered the overall voltage state of the network. So, at several levels, this was a fine example of the emergence of complex and unpredictable phenomena from the interaction of simple processes. Best of all, it sounded great. Tom's background is mainly in academic composition, but it appears he's gone the way of the soldering iron instead of paper and ink while developing truly refined taste in his selection of analog electronic sound sources.

Bravo to Tom for an elegant concept beautifully realized. I can't remember where he lives, but it's somewhere far away from Philadelphia and I was plum pleased to see his music in action during this rare trip he coordinated with his colleague Joseph Hammer's East Coast jaunt. After seeing Joseph do some excellent performances during the High Zero festival in Baltimore in the preceding days, I was thrilled to hear his unique twist on analog tape performance as solo music, though it was in fact a duo with his partner and visual artist Sayo Mitsuishi, whose straightforward projection of real-time drawing is captured in the photo below. Sayo drew in a linear fashion along a transparent sheet that unrolled as she moved along, a process analogous to Joseph's musical path along the surface of a strip of magnetic tape rolling through his antiquated tape machine. In their respective media, both also conveyed a feeling of textural continuity without repetition. It was a beautiful and novel experience.

Joseph uses a laptop to play sound files, routing the output to the input of his tape machine (I have no idea what sort of name or taxonomic niche this device has), which records the sound on magnetic tape that immediately proceeds to roll past a playback head. At it's simplest, then, the tape machine is a delayed analog playback machine for the digital sound source. In practice, all manner of subtle mechanical complexities impinge upon this process. For example, Joseph manipulates the degree of exposure the tape has to an erasure head, varying the layering of old and new information on the magnetic tape. He also manipulates the surface region used for the recording. Because he's accessing the very guts of the machine, various moving parts are also fair game for his playback permutations. There's a whole series of real-time mechanical interventions he uses to transform and layer the source material. While the aesthetic is in all other ways unrelated to Howard Stelzer's use of analog tape machines in real-time performance, they share a similar palette of slurred sounds I find endlessly engaging in their electroacoustic subtleties.

It was none other than the cassette maestro himself joining Joseph for this concert to launch a mini-tour together. Howie and Joseph had never heard each other perform before, so it was a bit of an analog tape summit meeting as they heard each other do solo performances and looked forward to sharing a few more evenings in the ensuing days. Howie's solo set was frankly astonishing, perhaps the best I've heard, though there's just so much to be said about his music that I remain too intimidated to make a real attempt. For now, the cursory hints of his music in a previous Bagatellen entry will have to continue sufficing until I tackle the topic in earnest someday and get down to the real musical substance and not just the methodological surface. I'll also use that page as a better contextualization for any further remarks about Joseph and Howie, because my primary intention here is to simply make note of Tom Grimley's work and briefly acknowledge the distinctive evening it was part of.

There were five short sets in total, and all of them had a strongly analog electronic slant. Stelzer's touring mate from Boston, Jay Sullivan, did a fine set on turntable, mostly processing and layering the turntable as an ordinary playback device. While pleasant and technically polished, the high-medium-density and static continuity of most of the set wasn't the brand of tea I prefer to drink. I did really enjoy some of the sparser crackling passages, though, and I found it remarkable how similar his sounds could be to Howie's despite the totally different equipment being used. Perhaps it's the magnetic pickup at the heart of that delicious sound world. Kudos to electromagnetism.

Michael Barker, a Philadelphia improvisor I've seen do a bunch of consistently solid stuff over the years ranging from acoustic doublebass in a free jazz vein to live circuit-bending electronic improv, did a fine set on theremin and some processing devices that seemed responsible for most of the content, as I couldn't make out any sounds with a theremin flavor. It was a single line of gentle harsh noise minimally modulated and played at a sensible and pleasant volume. I appreciated the relatively narrow band of frequencies employed, giving the effect of chiselling instead of bulldozing. Seeing this dapper lad standing in the middle of a living room in front of a theremin sharing his sonic wares with a dozen or two convivial, attentive listeners gave me the striking impression that I was in the midst of a postmodern revitalization of what I take to be the parlor performances of a century ago in which socialites would gather to behold some recital or technological novelty or another, offering perfunctory applause with a self-satisfied air of cultural patronage. A quaint scene we were that night.

~Michael Anton Parker