Mark Solotroff "Live In Wierd"Live Recording + T-shirtIn late 2007, Pieter asked me if I'd like to perform a microphone feedback set at Wierd, that winter. I'm sure that we both knew that harsh feedback would be more sonically confrontational than the weekly crowd there was used to, but it seemed like a good plan, nevertheless. Bear in mind, this was prior to when experimental, power-electronics, and noise artists played the weekly Wierd party on a more frequent basis. A date was chosen in mid-January of 2008, and on the day of the show I flew to New York with a small mixer and ten microphones. I did a quick soundcheck in the late afternoon, while the bar was being set up for the night ahead, and things sounded loud and clear over the Wierd PA. That night, as was typical, the room became more and more crowded and the dance floor filled up, as midnight approached. I made my way through the dark space to clear some space to place my mic stands in an arc and to get my show underway. As you'll hear at the beginning of the recording, there were some ringers in the audience, including James from BLOODYMINDED and Alex from Climax Denial, who were visiting from Milwaukee. That resulted in some good spirited heckling, like you'd probably hear at a BLOODYMINDED show. I let the frequencies and the volume build up slowly, resulting in an uncomfortable space filled with mild static and the sound of an industrial-sized smoke machine in overdrive. I remember that once the feedback fully kicked in, the crowd began to thin out a bit, but it was really hard to see exactly what was going on through the thick fog ("The sky is so thick with smoke"). After about ten minutes of heavy feedback, someone got in my face and yelled at me to stop. Apparently, the bouncer from Home Sweet Home felt it was way too loud and he lost his shit. My feedback performances were never meant to be confrontational or to elicit the same sort of crowd reaction as an Intrinsic Action or a BLOODYMINDED show. I imagined that they were somehow more academic in nature, but I suppose that it's all just noise to some people. Once I was done, it was only a matter of minutes before I untangled all my mic cords and packed up and people were back to dancing. While I've never felt that live recordings have done justice to these feedback shows, whether in capturing the full intensity of the frequencies at high volume, or especially the physical effects that audience members have related to me, like the pressure they felt in their inner ears or the sensation of air moving around them, I think this recording holds its own, pretty well.Listen here:
https://marksolotroff.bandcamp.com/album/live-in-wierd
   Companion T-shirt, adapted from Pieter Schoolwerth's original flyer design, with his kind permission: https://BLOODYMINDED.threadless.com/designs/mark-solotroff-live-in-wierd |
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