improvisation

Tony Conrad

"The narrow room where IPR has its world-renowned, state of the art speaker system was packed, with people seated in the aisle and on the floor. The performers had hooked up their instruments to a separate PA system. I'm all about experimental performance, light and sound theater and dissonant/atonal/weird sounding music. I was looking forward to see something totally bizarre that I probably wouldn't totally understand, but enjoy.

Instead, the first hour and 20 minutes of the show was a way-too-loud continuous looping of speaker feedback. I go to live shows and clubs all the time where the music is too loud, but can get into the music. In this case, it was impossible." [NY Press]

That negative review of one of the Tony Conrad / Genesis Breyer P-Orridge shows at Issue Project Room this weekend doesn't specify if the reviewer was there Saturday or Sunday. Zach was there Sunday (1/11). He said, "They played two sets with an intermission in between. Each set was about 30-45 mins each I think. It was a full house although the seating inside didn't provide for a huge crowd - I'd say 50 seats at the most. I didn't recognize any of the songs as this was the first time Tony and Genesis had ever performed together, an experiment of sorts." I think it's safe to say that there probably weren't any songs to recognize, aka it was complete improvisation. More pictures from the Sunday show below...

Continue reading "Tony Conrad, Genesis P-Orridge @ Issue Project Room - pics"

posted at 5:37 PM on January 12, 2009 in music | pictures | Comments (12)