I’ve always found it ironic that Chicago’s experimental music venue Elastic Arts shares a building with Friendship Chinese Restaurant. Looking around the dim, lamplit warm orange room, everyone seems to know each other well. Some of the performers stand near the door, chatting with guests. Another sits on stage, preparing some strange objects that will be part of the night’s show.
The chatter and greetings keep coming as Chad Clark walked up to a corner of the stage and turned on his Macbook. A wash of ambient fuzz and sound seeped out of a speaker. The show was billed as Live Quiet Sounds, so I wasn’t quite sure whether the sounds were part of the program or just warm-up. Greg O’Drobrinak’s table was set up with a strange device that looked like a wooden banister-cap, with copper wires of various length sticking out of it. I assume the base of the wooden egg was fitted with a contact microphone, so the scraping and plucking of the wires would be picked up in the sound system.
But, in the end, it seems this was all warm up, though it was plenty interesting. The lights dim, after a few minutes, as Clark kicks on a field recording of water of some kind. Noé Cuéllar’s laptop and subwoofer are behind the audience, creating a cocoon of quiet noise. At first, I mistook the flutters of bass for passing trucks on Milwaukee Ave., but they soon become more distinct.
Vocalist Carol Genetti sat behind the audience at the other end of the room, eyes closed, rocking a bit back and forth, hacking and popping quick breaths of air. Paul Giallorenzo slid xylophone mallets across the exposed strings of an opened grand piano, releasing metallic yelps and squeals. Joseph Kramer sat at the far end of the stage, doing god knows what with tapes, walkie talkies and what looked like a couple of small speakers.
After a while, I hear Genetti walking around the back of the room, her intonations swirling around just as well as the electronics. With eyes closed, the whole thing sounded like a soundtrack to some sort of surreal film, with vague, watery images. The sounds coming from Clark’s laptop swapped into what sounds like a bright, sunny day with birds chirping; suddenly, the film in my head becomes crisper, clearer.
Giallorenzo reached into the piano, muting the strings as he plucks at them, the thick, flat tones matching the warm, calming recordings. I’ve seen Giallorenzo in a few different shows, but his sound seemed to fit in exceptionally well in this quiet atmosphere. Instead of being overpowered, his swift, succinct piano-work blended in perfectly.
By this time, either O’Drobinak or Clark has added a thick layer of goose calls to the sonic field. Genetti is speaking in tongues so well that she’d be just as welcome in a Southern church as in an experimental music venue. Giallorenzo sounded like he was popping corn inside his piano. Cuellar’s bass throbbed like a rapid heartbeat, returning the anxious images to the scene.
Eventually the whole palette mellowed out, and the field recording opened up, adding the sounds of children playing in a park. Kramer waved his walkie talkies back and forth, letting them feed back into each other (I assume) as Giallorenzo plays the first out-and-out notes of the evening: a few mournful, quiet minor chords. Genetti added a layer of wavering moans, matching the tone perfectly.
This moment exemplified the concept of Quiet Sounds; where so many improv shows relish cacophony and aggression, these musicians were confident and strong enough to let moods and sounds develop slowly, their ideas meshing without seeming chaotic in the least.
