The Denver Noise Scene
by Joel Center
Just when I thought I had gotten a little sample of everything the Denver music scene has to offer, I was proven wrong. My moment of astonishment came as a result of Gorinto, the Mercury Café’s weekly “Experimental Food and Music” event. Now, while some connotations, and even stigmas, of the word “experimental” in correlation to live music involve a gimmicky performance and mediocre music, the actual definition was better displayed that night at the Mercury.
What was transpiring in the room was more generally accepted as noise than actual music, and fittingly so. It wasn’t that the music was bad, it’s just that it wasn’t music at all, by common definition. In reality, what I had stumbled upon was a taste of Denver’s Noise Scene – a gathering of very avant-garde people with wild ideas about what can actually be considered as art using an audible medium.
I felt myself asking how I could possibly discover this strange environment – was the tirade around me really occurring, or did I get passed a questionable drink? As I thought back on how I had arrived at the Mercury, I knew it was for one purpose, and one purpose alone–to see the opening act, Casualties of the Digital Revolution.
Casualties of the Digital Revolution is one man, Taylor Fitzke, with an incredible intuition not only for the common factors that make actual music (you know, stuff like notes, articulation, dynamics, rhythm, tone, and space), but he is also uncannily in tune to the constantly growing and changing genre that is taking our fair city, along with the rest of the world, by force: Electronica.
While I’ve come to terms with electronica being a fun style of music to party to, it had taken until very recently for me to be able to actually sit and enjoy listening to the damned stuff as a respectable art form. Casualties, along with better-known artists such as EOTO, Beats Antique, and Thievery Corporation, helped me ease into a state of astonishment and awe at these rapidly reproducing artists that fall into some sort of sub-category or another of electronica.
I felt very fortunate that evening to have been made aware of all of the positive sounds that have come from these new and different styles of music, for if I hadn’t been, I certainly would have developed an even deeper cynicism towards the dastardly sounds that were assaulting my unprepared eardrums throughout the rest of the night at the Mercury Lounge.
Now, I can’t let myself say, with confidence, that the experience was completely torturous, or that there was no talent in the room. The first obvious bit of talent (after Casualties of the Digital Revolution’s set had finished) came from the all organic and vegan buffet that the venue had made available for the modest price of five dollars as the Experimental Food portion of the evening. This was, in fact, one of the remainder of the show’s most redeeming qualities; the food was absolutely delicious and was noticeably lacking that hint of plastic taste that is getting so popular in pre-made food these days.
Echo Beds was the only Noise group that really stuck out to me that evening. While all attention in the audience was diverted to a group of three gentlemen–two working away at various effect and synthesizer pedals, while the other clawed at the guitar and operated more pedals at his feet–who were conducting their noise in the foreground, the three members of Echo Beds were busily setting up just under a dozen old television sets in the back corner, and tuning them to a station that only received static. They had an impressive array of these shitty little amplifiers, a buffet of synthesizers and mixers, and various cymbals, floor toms, and even crystal drinking glasses scattered throughout their stage area.
When it was time for their portion of the show, the televisions flashed images of the all-seeing eye of the dollar bill, mixed with all sorts of intimidating war and military sequences, most of them old and devoid of color. Then one member of the group started screaming, and an all-out assault began on my ears. It was like the audience had been suddenly jerked through time and space to a war zone, complete with bombs, sirens, dictators, and marching armies. The effect was like a violent psychotic freak-out.
Your mind becomes confused. It rejects the offensive sounds forcing their way into its territory and wills your physical body with everything it has to move your legs, one by one, towards the door and out into the night, and to just keep moving until the whole terrifying ordeal has transformed into silence far behind you. This is no ordinary horrifying experience, however. These men have managed to create the effect that oncoming headlights give to a dim-witted deer; you cannot look away. Logic is telling you to run, but this stuff has meaning. It’s actually going somewhere, trying to convey something. The man screaming has begun to actually run up and shove members of the audience who don’t know any better. Your conscience recognizes what’s happening as something you may actually need to be fearful of, and you begin to see the shocking phenomena before you as pent up anger at very real situations. The pure energy and emotion becomes contagious, and you realize that you haven’t felt this strong of a mixture of raw emotions at any sort of live performance for quite some time. It was absolutely astonishing.
At the end of the night, despite my complete speechlessness upon realizing that Denver could hide something in its depths so shocking and offensive as the Noise scene, I also got to experience what I can only hope is the point of it all. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised; it’s no different than the point of any other sort of “valid” music that I’ve loved throughout the years. The point is to convey emotion, to make your audience (whoever it may contain) feel something directly caused by your performance.
If you’d like to see proof of this strange and interesting Denver happening, check out the Mercury’s next Wednesday Gorinto or the Denver Noise Fest; a national gathering of noise groups occurring on the weekend of April 27th-28th at the Old Curtis Street Bar.
www.ReverbNation.com/CasualtiesoftheDigitalRevolution
Category: The Rock
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