[051105]

Thuja // Axolotl // Skaters – Jewelled Antler Greenhouse - Berkeley, CA

Arriving at Rob Reger’s (Thuja) house, on time at 9 pm sharp (I’d once missed some of the first set for arriving in “California space-cadet time”, ie 30-40 minutes late) I stepped into the backyard where the garden and greenhouse seemed more tidy than usual (mind you Rob put up the greenhouse under a year ago). Various young hipsters were drinking beer and chattering, none I knew. For this performance, I invited everyone I knew that might like the music (I wondered if I’d gone overboard) and surprisingly none of them showed up. A person actually recognized me from a previous show and said hello; it was Spencer from the Skaters and I apologized for not recognizing him because I had never gotten to see his face when he performed. There’s a running joke about the Skaters that you end up watching their undulating asses when they perform, crouched over boxes of electronic thingies. I opened my bottle of wine, sat strategically in a corner, and shortly the first set began.

Thuja did not sound out-of-ordinary this night, but their manner of playing was different from usual. The last time I’d seen them play, they did something interesting where each member started out from a different part of the garden, creating a quadraphonic stereo effect. However, they had shortly converged to the greenhouse and played the rest of the set from a central location. This time, Rob and Glenn were set up and remained on opposite sides of the yard with separate amps (although this was also plugged into a soundboard, a first for them I later discovered). Steven and Loren played inside the greenhouse. Rob and Glenn had each threaded a guitar string between the branches of trees, with a contact mike to serve as pickup. I couldn’t see much of what Glenn had been doing because he was far away, but near me I saw that Rob used various techniques like bowing the string, plucking it, and using a giant plastic gag comb, all the while utilizing the fact that the tree’s stature was limiting the length and hence pitch of the guitar string. Pushing the tree caused the pitch to wind and unwind like the grumbling of a stomach. He even shook the tree at one point, softly capturing the rustling of falling leaves. He had other peripheral instruments like a guitar and an oil drum nearby that he also utilized. Glenn seemed to be doing something quite similar but I think he was causing the tree-violin sound to sustain for a bit longer, creating a modest drone. I couldn’t see a thing of what Steven was doing except when he appeared from behind an amp to play a thumb-piano (one of those African gourd things, a Mbira?). I suspect that Steven was also contributing to a sparse drone that fed in and out, almost like the electronic hiss of the amplifiers. Meanwhile, Loren was using various instruments including rubbing two bricks together and matching the nearby train whistle with a harmonica. Overall, this was a sparse Thuja landscape, unlike the fuller opaque drones sometimes made by the Blithe Sons or Of, and not necessarily traveling to any particular musical destination. It was almost like an exercise for their cultivation as avant garde musicians; I have yet to hear tones by Thuja that make me weep or well up with joy. Nevertheless, their music does alight a world of truth inhabited by the majority of life, excepting the civilized human and its fabrications and myths. The music was quite similar to their latest records, but I felt that in synthesis they had progressed as a team with their approach. Another thought I wondered about was whether some electronic musician would remix Thuja – there were various unique sounds and very little of it (none?) manipulated by effects boxes, perfect for sampling.

After a break, where I remained in my lonely corner, blond-mop-headed Axolotl came to play a solo performance. Unfortunately his set only lasted about 7 minutes before he gave up at a pause. He commented that he was having problems. Perhaps if it wasn’t a free show he would have felt inclined to figure the problems out. Should we have persuaded him to keep going onwards? One of the interesting things about artist performances is that the artist is attempting to channel something that emanates from their mind or desires. However this latency rarely comes out in pure form, especially for improvised musics, and often the artist is dissatisfied. On the contrary, the listeners have no fore-knowledge about the source of the emanations, and thus the audience is often satisfied despite the artist’s shame. I wish there was a way we as listeners could encourage and embolden the artist to walk forth strongly, perhaps blindly, and trust their instinct and be proud of what they are currently capable of. My experience of the short Axolotl piece, I will humbly admit, closely approached tears. He had created a buzz, static white noise, perhaps a drone but I wouldn’t go that far. All the while he was humming or playing violin and manipulating that too on top of the buzz. The static crackled as he adjusted it, and one could discern gaps and that it was not a continuous drone. This made me think that our lives are not some flowing lifeblood but rather the result of the stepped pumping of our hearts, the synapse-jumping or our circuitry. The music was both sad and triumphant; I thought to myself that this is not the music in the minds of babies being born, but rather the soundtrack to our recollections of being born. As a couple affectionately snuggled one another beside me, I thought to myself how sad it is to walk the earth alone.

After another break, sound came from inside the basement as the Skaters began their set. People hobbled into the dark room, lit only by a candle beside the amplifiers. With the swelling and moaning music made by the Skaters, the sound felt as it must have when ancient humans performed rituals in caves. The music bordered on haunting, never was appalling or annoying, but still consisted of amplified and manipulated reverberating moans, with minimal percussion such as a conga prostrate like a cannon. I likened the music in my mind to a male version of Fursaxa. The music ballooned until its crest subsided and then the set was over. Because the set was so short and consisted of only one such excursion into the holy territory of the mind, I was a bit disappointed. Not because their albums are so dynamic and this performance had a clear trajectory, but rather because I wondered if they had anything else in them. Could they produce diverse soundscapes or was their voice so haphazard that it would always sound the same way. Another parallel drone would have made their performance phenomenal.