Some of you may know my affinity for stringed instruments, feedback loops, and just general volume. I love everything about guitars – the tones, the strings vibrating, the endless supply of cool devices you can plug into to shape and completely alter the sound, and yes, the volume too.
So with that context, I had to share this link from the Times. In my next life I’m coming back as Thurston Moore.
Courtesy of Whitney Museum
It’s not often that a prestigious art institution hosts an evening of face-melting noise music. Yet that is exactly what happened on Friday at the Whitney Museum when Ari Marcopoulos, an artist in this year’s Biennial, was invited to curate the museum’s “My Turn” program. The series uses artists’ recent work as the jumping-off point — which in this case just happened to be ear-splitting cacophony.
Marcopoulos’s compelling Biennial piece is a seven-and-a-half-minute video called “Detroit.” The film features two young males in a bedroom kneeling before an array of sound-altering foot pedals from which they coax ungodly electronic squalls. The most surprising moment comes at the movie’s end, when the noise-makers look up from the screeching clamor and reveal themselves to be mere boys (aged 11 and 14) wearing joyous expressions on their innocent faces.
Tiffany Oelfke
Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth improvise.
The several hundred spectators who gathered in the Whitney’s basement cafe on Friday seemed similarly enthralled by the three groups Marcopoulos (who has photographed for T) had booked. Orphan, a male-female bass-and-drum duo from Brooklyn, played thunderous and deeply grooved metal and blues riffs with tight song structures. By contrast, Mirror/Dash, composed of the experimental-rock icons Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, were more free-form. Their improvised set saw Gordon atop a windowsill sliding her purple electric guitar against a concrete pillar while Moore, splayed on the floor, ran a small metal file across the strings of his over-driven acoustic guitar. Yellow Tears is composed of three Long Island men who vigorously turned mixer and amplifier knobs to create a deftly layered sonic maelstrom. At one point, one of the members literally began scraping a piece of metal across the floor.
The full link here – http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/art-rock-the-whitney-brings-the-noise/
Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth improvise.