“Iridium? Ytterbium? Yttrium!”
Gastr del Sol and Tony Conrad live at the Empty Bottle, Chicago — November 7, 1996
Seth Tisue reports
(originally appeared on sonicnet.com; the format of the piece,
with the times, is due to them)
In its two years of existence, Table of the Elements has quickly
become one of the leading outlets in the U.S. for experimental
music. In 1994, the organization was instrumental in bringing reunited
Krautrock legends Faust to the U.S. for a notoriously chaotic and
theatrical series of concerts. The label’s first festival took
place in Atlanta in 1994 and included Faust, free improvisation kings
AMM, and other artists; this weekend, Chicago is being treated to the
sequel. The label tags each release or event with a chemical element.
This festival is Yttrium, atomic number 39. It’s at the Empty Bottle, a club
which in the past year has broadened a focus on garage and indie rock
into jazz and experimental music.
Tonight, the first night, it’s Gastr del Sol (David Grubbs
and Jim O’Rourke), Bernhard Günter, and an unspecified
“special guest.”
- 9:35pm
- The special guest is revealed to be Tony Conrad, the
half-legendary, half-forgotten violinist and composer.
Conrad began his career in the early 1960’s as a member of
the original Theater of Eternal Music (also known as the Dream
Syndicate) with La Monte Young and John Cale. Conrad and Cale were
also members of the Primitives, a rock band which eventually mutated
into the Velvet Underground. The powerfully narcotic, droning
amplified string sound that Cale and Conrad pioneered later became
known to rock listeners through VU songs like “Venus in
Furs” and “Heroin.” Conrad eventually became better
known for his work with experimental film and video. His musical
reputation was hampered by Young’s autocratic suppression of the
early Theater of Eternal Music recordings. Table of the Elements has
been attempting to rescue Conrad from musical obscurity by reissuing
his only LP (a 1974 collaboration with Faust) and putting out new
recordings like 1995’s Slapping Pythagoras. Upcoming is a
four CD set of Conrad’s “Early Minimalism” series,
pieces which recreate and reexamine the sound of his lost music of the
sixties.
- 9:36pm
- Conrad is joined onstage by David Grubbs and Jim
O’Rourke of Gastr del Sol, as well as frequent collaborator Alex
Gelencser. She’s holding an instrument that looks like a cello,
but all neck, with no body and only two strings. Grubbs sits at a
long, horizontal, one-stringed instrument. O’Rourke is on
electric bass, and Conrad has his violin. In the back of the club, a
battery of film projectors is lined up on a pool table and pointed at
the white screens behind the performers.
- 9:45pm
- The performance begins with a violin drone from Conrad,
punctuated by a slight glitch whenever his bow reverses
direction. O’Rourke starts to add resounding bass notes, first
irregularly, later settling into a steady pulse. The piece is
“Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain,” composed in the
early seventies.
- 9:48pm
- Two projectors are running now, projecting vertical
black and white stripes on the screens behind the performers. The
flashing stripes invert motionlessly, but the eye sees them moving now
to the left, now to the right.
- 9:55pm
- Four projectors are running now, all projecting the same
loop of marching stripes. Grubbs strikes the lone string on his
instrument with a metal rod, making a grainy twang with a distorted
attack. He slides the rod along the string, making downward
glissandos. The fifth projector starts. The five projected images
span the width of the stage and spill out onto the adjacent walls. The
stripes play across the performers’ faces and instruments.
- 10:02pm
- Conrad is playing more freely now, adding and
subtracting pitches from the drone by altering the angle of his
bow. The booming bass notes and downward glissandos pull the music
down while Conrad’s violin leaps upward. Gelenscer’s
metronomic bowing on the cello-like instrument occupies the center,
unmoving.
- 10:05pm
- Suddenly I notice the edges of the five films have
started to overlap. They must have been gradually moving closer
together for some time now.
- 10:30pm
- The overlap between the films is substantial
now. Illusory interference patterns appear, tinged with faint phantom
colors: green, orange, yellow. Conrad sways back and forth as he
plays, sometimes grimacing with concern, sometimes positively beaming,
his mouth open as if frozen in mid-laugh. O’Rourke lies on his
back, bass resting on his crossed leg. The glissandos reverse
direction.
- 11:08pm
- The films finally merge into a single vibrating,
flickering mass. Then, one by one, they shut off.
- 11:15pm
- When the last film shuts off the music abruptly stops
and the echoes of the last bass note fade to silence.
I turn to a friend and ask him how long that was — 45
minutes? I find out it was over 90. (I forgot my watch; the times
so far have been estimates.) We calculate that O’Rourke must have
played the same note on his bass approximately five thousand times in
a row.
I explain the review format to my friend as dub reggae plays over
the PA. He lends me his watch for the next set and jokes that I must
have written: “10:00 still the same, 10:05 still the same, 10:10
still the same...” Sure, at one level the music is static, but
as the performance continues, your ears become more and more attuned
both to gradual change over time and to just how much there is to
listen to at each moment. How you deploy your attention constructs
your experience of the music.
Time for Gastr del Sol. David Grubbs has left the postpunk roar of
his bands Squirrel Bait (mid-eighties) and Bastro (late eighties)
behind and moved into quieter, more introspective, and far stranger
territory, centered on his (usually) acoustic guitar, calm and plain
singing, and oblique lyrics. Chicagoan O’Rourke is now his
regular partner. O’Rourke provides a second guitar to
intertwine with and brings interests in electronics and contemporary
composition.
- 11:48pm
- Grubbs and O’Rourke take the stage with their
acoustic guitars. O’Rourke is seated behind an old electronic
organ. Grubbs announces that German computer music composer Bernhard
Günter, who was scheduled to appear tonight, will appear on
Saturday instead. (I find out later there were problems getting the
special speakers that Günter demands in order to present his
work.)
- 11:50pm
- When Grubbs throws in a plug for the “concessions
stand” (merchandise table) at the back of the club,
O’Rourke contributes some appropriately cheesy movie theater
music on the organ.
- 11:51pm
- Grubbs announces the first piece as “Onion Orange” and
begins by playing characteristically spidery, deliberate figures on
guitar. O’Rourke holds down one key on the organ, altering the
pitch by twisting a knob on an attached effects box.
- 11:53pm
- The keyboard part starts to get low and rumbling, ominous,
then shifts back to the single placid note. As it shifts, the
perceived emotional character of Grubbs’ guitar playing alters
correspondingly, simply by being shown in a different light. Grubbs
adds and subtracts notes from the figure he’s repeating and
carefully alters where he places the emphasis.
- 12:10am
- “Onion Orange” ends abruptly. The next song is
called “Rebecca Sylvester,” off their album Upgrade &
Afterlife. “These are shark fins, I believe the tongue propels
them,” sings Grubbs. When the vocals end, the song shifts gears,
seeming to wander off into less structured territory, yet always
remaining in the same place. It’s one of their favorite formal
devices: taking a song and then spinning out a particular aspect of
the song through improvisation. Improvisation does not depart from and
extend the song but delves further into its interior.
- 12:16am
- Grubbs to O’Rourke: “Shall we?” They
cover a Vietnamese folk song that’s been a staple of their live
sets for more than a year now, passing the bright sounding melody back
and forth.
- 12:18am
- I notice I’m sitting right next to an ancient
looking drum machine with buttons color coded by national origin:
Latin (samba, bolero, cha cha), European (march, polka), American
(slow rock, fast rock).
- 12:22am
- Pause to tune up. O’Rourke and Grubbs introduce
each other. Applause. O’Rourke: “Well, that gave me time
to put on my finger picks...” He’s been intensively
studying the solo guitar music of John Fahey (who’s on the
festival bill himself, tomorrow night). O’Rourke’s solo
concerts over the past year have generally been programs of Fahey
songs. O’Rourke: “You remember those Kiss solo records?
This is that section of the concert...” He plays what sounds
like a Fahey song (or fragments of several), although I don’t
specifically recognize it. Grubbs intently observes
O’Rourke’s finger pick technique.
- 12:27am
- The piece speeds up until the high and
low ranges of the guitar start to sound like two different instruments
playing in counterpoint, like an Evan Parker sax solo. Then it segues
into what sounds like a hinting-at-without-quite-playing Fahey’s “Dry
Bones in the Valley.” Grubbs enters on electric guitar, adding in
dissonant figures that clash with the folky Faheyesque parts. O’Rourke
drops out; Grubbs’ solo section is thornier, more Derek Baileyish. As
the solo continues, a theme emerges. Another favorite formal device:
improvising towards an initially unheard theme rather than starting
with the theme and improvising away from it.
- 12:35am
- More tuning up. O’Rourke: “Are we in tune?” Grubbs:
“Are you in tune with yourself?” O’Rourke: “I’m always in
tune with myself.”
- 12:37am
- A trading back and forth of emphatic guitar flourishes
leads into the main body of “Dictionary of Handwriting”
(from the
Mirror Repair EP), a study in cross rhythms. It’s one of
the most rocking things they’ve done, although sometime
collaborator John McEntire isn’t there to play the drum
part. The interlocking repeating guitar figures result in interference
patterns and perceptual shifts, not unlike the films from the first
set.
- 12:45am
- Guitars cut off. Full stop.