The Cyndustries List

Great show Friday night!
A professional job done by by everyone in a perfect venue.

I was sitting with fellow synthesist Ben Covington in the center in about the fourth row 
from the front and could see and hear everything quite well.
Earlier that day my allergies started acting-up and I was beginning to panic that I'd be 
sneezing my head off through the whole show - so I took several antihistamine pills and 
after a an hour our two they didn't seem to be working, so then I took some Nyquil which 
works great but can make you really drowsy...

Of course I had to try Redcat's house drink called a Catatonic but they would not let them 
in to the theater so I only had a couple of gulps, tasty, yes!

That said, I was in a rather perfect frame of mind to surrender myself to the music and 
enjoy the show :) no sneezing either.

Each performer had an arsenal of equipment that was easily seen by the audience, and 
rather than having just a typical large projection screen, there was also live video of the 
performers beamed onto large strips of hanging scrim material so as to render the video 
somewhat more ghostly than usual. This was my first trip to Redcat and apparently from 
looking at the lighting diagrams,
a great depth of the stage was used for rear projection so the theater is even bigger than 
experienced. My recollection of the videos were that they were competent but rather 
simple
so as to be integrate into an calming overall ambiance created by Paul Tzanetopoulos.

Sanctuaries: Faith (2007)

I had been reading of Gary Chang's recent tour of Europe where he had been performing 
live electronic music in surround sound in a variety of interesting acoustic spaces with Neil 
Leonard and although only in stereo this time, it was a real pleasure to listen to some of 
these same beautiful
and slowly changing ambient chord structures from his tour. His Wiard system was of 
course stunning to behold with long dual horizontal rows full of blinking LEDs.

The Ghosts on the Windows (2007)

It was interesting to see which of his many sculptural instruments Chas Smith would bring 
to the show. We we not disappointed by his piece for welded titanium Towers where long 
vertical tubes welded to thin horizontal plates were hammered in quick succession to form 
lasting resonances.
By moving from tower to tower chords were formed and I found myself nodding in and out 
of a pleasant sort of sonic trance at this point of the show. This reminds me to go buy 
some of his CDs!

The Secret Life of Semiconductors (2003)

Peter Grenader was sitting in a glowing chrome cockpit of his wonderful Euro format 
modules and had one of those nifty new hexagonal keyboards that debuted recently at 
NAMM.
Peter performed part of his Secret Life of Semiconductors in what was apparently a 
mixture of previously recorded material with live electronics on top? It was wonderful but a 
little hard to tell at times who was playing what.  His piece ended in a
wild accelerando of sequencing with a surprise layer of even wilder vicious cobra like 
sequencing on top,
Bravo!

Paris 1 (2007)

After a brief intermission the show resumed with Alessandro Cortini playing a 
combination of Plan B and Buchla modules doing a really faithful re-creation of the 
legendary Buchla type of banjo plucked sequencing... sort of Low Pass Gates
meets Nine Inch Nails although Alexander was clearly enjoying a break from rock n roll 
and acting more as composer this time. I found his piece more musical sounding than 
Subotnick type Buchla, while paying homage to it.
Reading in the program we learned that the piece was actually written in a hotel room in 
Paris during the NIN european rock n' roll tour. That must have been a fun evening!

The aborted Ascension of Angel Assassins (2007)

Thighpaulsandra had more vinatge equipment than anyone including an EMS Synthi AKS, 
some Serge panels, and even an Aries Modular, (so cool to see these still gigging). He had 
other gear too including a trusty Moog Voyager. I felt connected to this piece more than 
the others perhaps because it was more evolving and organic, or because it was most 
similar to the type of music that I hear in my own head?  In any event Thighpaulsandra's 
extensive experience in live collaborations was clearly evident
as his compositional skills and communication with other players was excellent. Traveling 
to the USA for this show with so much equipment must have been a real challenge and I 
felt that he had succeeded in making it well worth the trip.

Captract (2004)

Richard Devine was the one Laptop soloist at the show and frankly his output seemed 
every bit as fluid and responsive as the others, in fact he created some pretty diabolically 
evil and overwhelmingly powerful sounds. I'd call his, "IDM
meets heavy metal laptop". I think his was an important musical compliment both in style 
and in timber to rounding out the whole show which ended when he dramatically yanked 
the output cable out of its socket leaving us with sudden silence.

Was it a great evening? Hell Yes!
Was it all over way too soon? Double Hell Yes!

A great thanks to all of the participants and both Peter Grenader and Barry Schrader for 
organizing the event. Loren Nerell and JaNelle Weatherford provided excellent sound 
engineering too. This was a rare gathering of the tribes and we as a community should do 
this sort of thing much,
much more often, (perhaps this group will consider taking this show out on the road for a 
few more performances in the future?)

In the evening's introduction by Barry Schrader he
stated that he has been producing local electronic music concerts since his shows at 
Theater Vanguard starting in 1973...
Then I realized that I attended a lot of those shows back then and was reminded that this 
evening's performance has come a long way from the days when a new electronic music 
premier involved sitting politely in the audience while watching
nothing more than a reel to reel tape deck turning on stageunder a lone spotlight.

Cynthia Webster