WARP CHAMBER

Poster: Theo Eastwood.

WARP CHAMBER -- noun (SPACE) 
/wɔːp/ /ˈtʃeɪm.bər //-bɚ/ n 
[C] an enclosed, specialized environment in which sound and vision take full control of the senses.
[see also:] surround-sound audiovisual theater, psychedelic arena, synaesthetic cascade.

With the inception of Warp Chamber, the Velvet Lounge will be converted into a fully-fledged audiovisual theater, with windows facing the street entirely blacked out, couches rearranged in rows facing the stage, two additional speakers set up to create a surround-sound environment, and an array of visuals displayed over projectors and TV monitors, as well as oscillating light rays and slowly morphing clouds of smoke. 

Four musicians will be performing, including

KYNAN TAN, who composes music through a combination of instruments, electronics, computers and improvisation. His live performance works are based on a combination of scored and improvised instrumental parts and real-time manipulation with Max/MSP, the latest shows featuring vocals processed into slow moving ambient textures, with schizophrenic no-input mixer and extended guitar, often in multi-channel speaker environments. (www.myspace.com/kynanmusic)

SALAMANDER manipulates sounds via a laptop, FX pedals and an electronic sampler, shifting through a variety of twisted, sense-distorting soundscapes that either bubble and simmer in a digital-organic ooze, or else escalate violently in layers of manic tribal-electronic percussion and industrial noise. Recently he has been adapting beat patterns from dubstep and ambient house music, turning these familiarities on their head by filtering them through what could best be described as the sonic equivalent of a space-station emergency siren pooled in cosmic radiation. (www.myspace.com/salamander85)

SOLAR BARGE was conceived in 2009 as a musical representation of the mythic journey of the Egyptian sun god Ra and his crew aboard their celestial boat. Each Solar Barge performance or recording is a unique permutation of this concept, embellished and reimagined through improvisation and fluctuating arrangements. Musically, the project evokes epic krautrock jams, interspersed with abrasive noise interludes, guitar-loop ambience and minimal polyrhythmic grooves. WARP CHAMBER presents a setting for Solar Barge to expand into its intended form - as a venture that conflates experimental rock music with performance art and sonic installation. (www.myspace.com/solarbarge)

ADAM TRAINER uses laptop, field recordings and various organic and electronic instruments and with these forges a hypnagogic, mind-lifting ambience, often intersected by bursts of noise. Although his approach to solo composition is constantly changing, he is interested in the intersection between texture and melody, between the musical and the non-musical, between sound and space. (www.myspace.com/adamtrainermusic)

ENTRY is $8
DOORS OPEN at 7pm, with the show starting at 8pm SHARP – please try to arrive on time. The environment will be fully seated, and once those seats are filled, the doors will close. There will be an intermission between the first two acts at around 9pm.

ALBUM REVIEW #1 - MENTAL POWERS

Mental Powers - Untitled

[Badminton Bandit, 2010]

If there’s one band in Perth who like to tread the road less travelled, it’s Mental Powers. They eschew stages in favour of atypical performance spaces. They hand-draw their gig posters and painstakingly craft their album covers one by one – never caring, mind you, to name the record. And all the while, they create sound which inhabits only the very fringes of what might be called pop or rock music, and which in any case renders the use of such terms redundant. So in truth, it was fitting that, in order to acquire their debut longplayer, I had to brave the apocalypse, grinding along anarchic streets on semi-submerged buses, assailed by black-green skies, hemmed in by flailing whips of lightning and pelted by ice-chunks the size of small mammals. We slithered desperately through sodden five o’clock darkness until, upon reaching my album-bearing destination, the sun surged out in smoldering orange and pink.

 

So I’ve eventually arrived home with the attractive brown-paper-and-paint packaging mostly dry, dimmed the lights, affixed the headphones and set the disc swirling. 

But no sooner had I escaped the tempest than I was bombarded with the hailstone-on-tin percussion that announces ‘Contador.’ An eight-note saxophone fanfare pipes purposefully like so many restless car horns, leaps an octave, then vanishes. The hail subsides to a half-tempo drizzle bestrode by repetitious, eastern-scented guitar twang. Before long a dull trickle of vocals is wrung out of a sopping shirt, but sublimates to a steamy howl and rides the throbbing beat into the firmament – higher and stronger, fueled and punctuated by rhythmic pirouettes – then suddenly, a deep clang resounds and the writhing hubub is wrenched into oblivion.

 

‘Ology’ finds us instead miles below, claustrophobic in some subterranean chamber. Rusted pipes clink, tectonic plates grind like teeth and dark shapes lumber in the gloom. The metallic resonance of the ensuing few minutes is reminiscent of Einstürzende Neubauten at their most ominous and ambient. But the sense of dread and despair is eventually mitigated by a steel-drum pebble-bounce groove, a life-affirming firefly in the dark. About half way through the twelve-minute track a seething do-re-mi bassline joins the firefly on its journey; it drags too heavily behind its beat to feel like a release however, and not until an Apache-esque vocal chant starts up does the track seem to peak.

 

If ‘Ology’ was underground, third and final track ‘D+D’ is an enraged armadillo’s frantic burrowing towards the fiery centre of the earth. It races feverishly across the record’s most accessible chord progression, melodic but unrelenting, narrated by asphyxiated half-singing and screeching sax. Don’t bother listening to this while you’re playing Dungeons and Dragons, you’ll just freak out. Listen to it whilst driving fast, or tenderizing meat. Inevitably though, the track does mellow somewhat, letting your ears take a breath. And at last, with little warning, it fades to black.

 

On fourth listen, the album is still entirely enjoyable – but one feels wary of treating the disc as too definitive. It doesn’t seem like a monolithic, standalone, cohesive piece of art. No; you feel almost like a voyeur observing a suspended fragment of time – the frozen immediacy of some killer ideas being pounded out in a room full of creative energy. Mental Powers’ brilliance exists in the moment; in the sparkling chance and contingency of every performance, every tumultuous groove. Without a doubt, you’d do well to acquire this record, but good luck working out where in your collection you ought to file it. In fact, best to just give Mental Powers their own shelf. Remember – the Powers that be do things a little differently round here.

_______________________

Visit the Mental Powers Myspace.

Purchase the album from the Badminton Bandit Store.

Seams / Thursday March 25, UWA

This thursday

Also featuring the fresh tones of duo Farthing Woods

And the hotly anticipated return of THESE SHIPWRECKS