There are those outsider musicians who deliberately make sound far removed from the conventional tastes and preferences of public opinion, if for no other reason than to explore what possibilities might lie out there beyond the realm of the accepted and the familiar. Three such artists recently decided to tour together and share their explorations with the public, and last night that tour led them to the DIY venue The Bakery here in Atlanta.
First up to kick off the evening was a short set of solo drone guitar from Atlanta ambient artist Gulp. She performed one sustained piece and unfortunately finished before we had the presence of mind to take a picture and we can't find anything by her on the usual internet resources (e.g., Bandcamp or YouTube), so you'll just have to take our word for it that she performed an interesting several minutes of dark ambient drone overlain by an ominous rattle.
A very short few minutes later, Atlanta favorites Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel performed a, well, duet of theremin and lap steel.
We've seen them several times in the past, including last year right here at The Bakery and this year opening for Norman Westberg and DBUK at The Earl. There guys are really terrific at what they do, which ranges from pleasant outer space music (think, soundtrack to an episode of Cosmos) to pieces that would have fit in nicely with Eno's Apollo LP and many things inbetween, all in one long ambient exploration.
The headliners were the Rapoon/Pas Musique/Sandor Trio, which may or may not be performing under the moniker Oldcastle. Since these outsider artists are hardly household names, here's a little bit about each of them.
Rapoon is Newcastle Upon Tyne's Robert Storey, a founding member of the legendary and legendarily reclusive industrial band :zoviet*france:, and then later The Reformed Faction of :zoviet*france:. Storey formed Repoon in 1992 as a solo project and to date has released some 60 solo albums as Rapoon. Also a noted visual artist and animator, his work has been exhibited around the world.
Shaun Sandor performs improvisational and electronic music in the avant-garde, ambient, experimental, sonic art, glitch, broken, and noise traditions. As the title suggests, he recorded 2014's Homemade Instruments Improvisations using a homemade guitar, zither boards, rods, acoustic door, and acoustic laptop, all of which he constructed by himself (talk about DIY!).
Finally, Robert L. Pepper started Pas Musique in Brooklyn back in 1995. Working in the mediums of sound and video, Pas Musique have performed throughout the United States and in 17 countries. Obscure Alternatives was recorded for a 2018 tour of Vietnam and Indonesia and sold exclusively at the tour in a limited edition of 50 tapes. His extensive discography includes several collaborations with Rapoon.
Okay, even though we're now familiar with all the members of the trio, we still don't know how to to describe last night's set. The best approximation might be to play all three Bandcamp selections above at the same time. At one point, Sandor played a bowed electric bass and made it sound like he was sawing an acoustic bass in half. Pas Musique, who wore four or five mic'd rings in his ear, played an earlobe solo that sounded like a kalimba. Still later, he played an inflatable cow. Literally, he produced all manners of strange sounds by running a mic over the cow's vinyl skin, fiddling with its utters, and mic'ing the sound of air escaping the valve as he deflated it. Of course, all these sounds were run through a laptop and a bevy of pedals for further distortion, and were accompanied by electronic improvisations by the rest of the trio.
Here's a sample of one of the more ambient portions near the beginning of the set. Note the as-yet unmolested cow over on the right.
As we said at the beginning, this music wouldn't be to everybody's liking, but that's sort of the whole point - after everything else under the sun, what's left to play that's original and never been done before? As the tent of recorded music covers a wider and wider range of styles and ideas, what's still outside that's left to be explored?
Last night, we got a peek under the tent, from the inside looking out.
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