The Voidologists: Live at Squeaky Wheel (Saturday)

The Saturday show went well, although I ran into some technical difficulties and had to switch around my setup. My delay pedal wasn't working, so rather than try to figure it out, I opted to just perform without it. I also ended up going through the board instead of my amp, so the speakers I played through were missing a layer of distortion. The result was a much more controlled, cleaner performance with an emphasis on subtle sounds instead of the usual ferocity and clashing contrasts. I also intentionally played more "robot" style sounds for the benefit of Kendra and Lauren, who both showed up to see me and take some awesome photos. I lost track of time and accidentally rushed through my set, only playing about 13 minutes, but it was a solid 13 minutes so I suppose it's okay.

It was an amazing week. The next goal is to try to promote myself and see if I can get an actual gig somewhere in town. There are enough house shows and warehouse venues around here that if I work hard enough, I just might be able to play again. I've gotten a really positive reaction from both people who are into noise and others who aren't at all. Kendra actually insists that I should start classifying my music as "robotica" instead of noise...I just might, although I still have to stay true to my roots. I've been doing this for over ten years now, and I'm honestly really proud of it all. I'd like to think that all that time spent playing and practicing alone has led me to a sound that can be appreciated by more than just...well, myself.

(Also, I got an award!)

The Voidologists: Live at Squeaky Wheel (Wednesday)

Laura, Andy, my sister, and Kendra all came to see my show at Squeaky Wheel on Wednesday night. Stacey had made an amazing video of ridiculous distorted images, looped video, and some great retro 60's looking robots. I hadn't actually seen the whole thing, but I had total faith that it would be great. (and it was, there were many compliments on it after the show.)

I've always said that if even one person that I don't know shows up, I'll be ecstatic...and two people showed up! So I was double-happy. I was bonding with the one guy over Merzbow and noise in general, and the woman who showed up was actually one of the organizers of the Infringement Festival. She was excited to see my show, and we talked about how I do things and my passion behind all of this.

She even wrote a great review the next day on the Infringement blog:
"then over to Squeaky Wheel to see "The Voidologists" whom I had missed at the Noise Fest on Monday. I HAD to go see this act, which was described as a footnote on their promotional material as sounding "like a robot orgy in hell...gone wrong". I thought they deserved an audience just for their marketing acumen. "They" is a misnomer; "The Voidologists" are essentially one techy guy named Dave that puts it all together in his basement, backed by a video his sister made. That last sentence makes it sound like kid stuff; au contraire; this was the audiovisual equivalent of being run over by a tank, and enjoying the experience. I was thrilled. For those with an acquired taste, NOT to be missed. At Squeaky Wheel at 6pm on Saturday."

This entire experience continues to be surreal for me, it's just...amazing. Completely amazing.

The Voidologists Live at Burnwood

The most amazing part of the night was when I looked up after I finished playing, and there was a crowd of about twenty people cheering and applauding.

My noise has always been very private and personal. To be able to perform it live in front of an enthusiastic audience was incredible in a way that I can't even describe.

More pictures, video and audio will be posted soon. Next show is Wednesday, then Saturday...!

Bev-Beverly

Headed out last night to go support Sherri, one of the bartenders at Soundlab, as she opened the show for Icy Demons. When I was paying the cover, the doorman remarked to his buddy, "Man, this guys is devout! He's always here. We should start giving him a discount or something." I just smiled and said, "Ah, you know it, I'm a regular." I joke all the time about how Soundlab is my home away from home. It really is the place in Buffalo that's kept me sane.

Sherri put on a great show, she plays this old school style of electro off of an MPC and a keyboard. I saw her once before at a little house party, but she always said that it wasn't really a good performance and that I should check out a more proper show. Her stage name is "Bev-Beverly" (I have no idea why) and her style is sort of a cross between modern house/dance and 8-Bit Nintendo sounds. What really makes it fun though, is her energy. She was really adorable paying, bouncing around, occasionally stopping to throw balloons into the air or a roll of streamers into the crowd (which nailed me right in the shoulder. I kept it going though, by launching it towards some unenthusiastic hipsters that just watched it hit the floor...) She even had a little machine pouring a sea of bubbles into the air, which provided the perfect atmosphere for the small group of dancing girls nearby. There was a companion video being projected in the background while she played, a colorful mix of random images and animations. At one point there was a cluster of cute hamster photos, animated to be dancing and shooting rainbows out of their mouths. Sherri's hard to describe, but that little sequence represents this girl better than I could ever explain.

I was really excited to see Icy Demons, I'd heard a lot of good things, and I liked what I heard on their myspace page. I even really liked the crazy insane pink and black tiger t-shirt they had for sale. I do this all the time, I'll just randomly go to a show and 9 times out of 10, it turns out to be awesome. Well, this was the 1 time out of 10 where it just sucked. They weren't really bad, I guess, but I just wasn't into it at all...maybe it was the fact that they kept going a little off key, maybe it was that the music was too "jam band" for me, or maybe it was that 3 out of the 6 members were wearing different versions of that tiger t-shirt. I'm sorry, but no band member should ever, ever wear their own bands t-shirt on stage. Or off stage, for that matter. I mean...come on. Lame. So I bailed early, mid performance at around 12:30. I had been bugging Kendra to come to the show with me all night, and now I'm kind of glad that she opted to stay home instead. Turned out to be a wise decision. I've brought Laura and Andy to a few shows that turned out to be horrible, and now I have a bit of a reputation with them for picking awful bands out. I'd like to have a better track record, but the way I go to shows there's always the random element, it's a gamble for quality.

Despite the lame main act, I'm still totally glad that I made it out. I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately and my brain has just been feeling like it's slowly melting into a pile of goo. You'd think I would just go to bed earlier, or stay in more. You'd think that...and yet I'm going out anyway. There are shows for the next two nights, then my High School Reunion is on Saturday, followed by a dance party, which means I'll be drinking A LOT. A whoooole lot of a lot.

Mind = Exploded

This is something I never, ever, EVER thought I'd see in an Artvoice show listing:

I am so excited and proud right now...this is so huge. Awesome. Just awesome.

Boris at The Tralf

I arrived early enough to catch the opening Torche set, which was just some in your face metal. I mean, when the guitarist has a handlebar mustache, you KNOW he means fucking business. When they launched into their last song, a smoke machine filled the air with obscuring clouds, and when it cleared, we could all see the drummer from Boris, who had jumped up onto the stage...and started playing a gong. Yes, a full size gong. He then hopped onto a second drum set and alternated between the two, banging the hell out of both as Torche thundered their way onward. It may have been one of the most metal moments of my life.

When Boris did take the stage, they put on a pretty great show. I'm kind of a casual fan, but I still really dig their style and ability to create an ocean of guitar noise. That, and I can stand and watch a cute Japanese girl play the guitar forever and never get bored. Seriously. I was kind of disappointed by the crowd, everyone was so subdued, but really I think we were all just in awe of the mighty entity that is Boris. They don't really inspire moshing or even head banging, it's more of a zen like trance you fall into while listening to the impossibly dense and deafeningly heavy riffs. I'm really glad I went, because I don't know if I 'll ever have a chance to see them again. It's pretty amazing that they're even doing a US tour, I never would have expected to catch these guys in Buffalo.



Below are few edited clips from the show as witnessed through the eyes of my cell phone. The audio is awful, but it does give a sense of the intensity of the show, so I kept it, in all of its low quality glory.

Goldmine

My good buddy Dave is living in Boston these days, so I don't get to see him as often as I'd like. Still, his family is in Buffalo, so when a holiday rolls around, he always makes the effort to squeeze in at least an hour or two for us to catch up. We used to hang out at Higher Grounds, the only independent coffee shop in the suburbs...until it closed and became a furniture store. So this time it was Anderson's, the local ice cream parlor. It was great to see both him and his wife. Somehow I ended up just telling these long winding stories about the last few months of my apparently eventful life. It had been a few months since we talked, and I hadn't realized just how much has happened during that time. I did my best to condense it into a few short stories, which they did seem to be really entertained by.

Another highlight of seeing Dave is that he always brings me a big bag of experimental music. You see, one of his buddies in Boston is a DJ for a radio station, and the guy constantly gets CD's submitted to him by artists hoping to get air time. A lot of the stuff he gets is really avant-garde, out there material that wouldn't fit with his show. So he asked Dave, "would you want a pile of CD's with music that is just too weird to be played on an indie radio show?" And Dave said, "No , but I know someone who would..."

Every time I get a pile of this music it's like Christmas and my birthday multiplied by magic. One of my biggest joys is discovering new artists, especially ones that play experimental, ambient and just straight up noisy crazy ridiculous audio nonsense. These albums are just a goldmine of that stuff...one mans rejected music is anothers treasure. Not only that, but as a big fan of the "do it yourself" mindset, I love seeing the handmade packaging and the gorgeous artwork that these albums always come packaged in. My favorite so far from this latest batch is a guy who plays improvisations using a stereo DJ mixer. Nothing hooked up to it at all, it's just the mixer. He found a way to get screeching, squeaking noises from the thing, and recorded an entire album of it. Why, you may ask yourself, would anyone bother to not only spend time doing such a thing, but then make an album and release it? Because, of course, someone like me will find it, listen to it and love it. I am a huge, huge fan of music as art, and I'm just a total sucker for stuff like this. It also encourages me to keep working on my own projects, in the hopes that somewhere out there, someone will stumble across my album and genuinely enjoy it. I'll actually be selling my albums for the first time at the end of July when I play at Squeaky Wheel...big step for me, but I'm totally excited. If even one person picks up a CD of mine and likes it...that would blow my mind...the very concept is awesomely surreal.