Denton, 5.29.2024

Molten Plains at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios remains our must-see monthly gig for surprising sounds. Last night's edition came a couple of days after Sarah Alexander, Ernesto Montiel, Miguel Espinel, Dr. Louise Fristensky, and Aaron Gonzalez returned from representing Molten Plains at Tierras Sonidas fest in Marfa. 

On this occasion, Justin Lemons (Dust Congress, Shiny Around the Edges) kicked things off with a solo guitar set that began with a feedback drone which was already audible before we entered the show room. Waiting for the set to start, it was kind of calming and centering, a good transition from the aggro that seems to be everywhere these days. 

When Lemons took the stage and picked up his instrument, he immediately let loose with the loudest and most in-your-face guitar sounds I've heard in awhile. With the sound cranked and saturated to the point that the instrument would feed back any time he took his hand off the strings, we were treated to an extreme close-up/ultra high fidelity rendering of every scrape and clang. A bracing entrance. Things got more interesting later, as he manipulated the sampled sounds electronically, gradually tapering off to spectral wisps of sound. 

Next up was Anne-F Jacques, a sound artist from Montreal, who'd also performed at Tierras Sonidas, and made a riveting presentation that was as much performance art as sound. The room was reconfigured, with chairs in a circle surrounding a space in which materials -- batteries, a radio, Walkmen, lightbulbs, wires, paper cups, stones, and other objects which turned out to be air blowers -- were arranged in a seemingly random configuration.

Jacques entered the space like a post-apocalyptic sound technician and began connecting wires to the batteries and the radio. Low-volume static and electronic pulses emerged. She placed paper cups over the radio's speakers and weighted them down with stones. The sounds were amplified and became more focused. She turned on lightbulbs that were connected to devices which made them flash rhythmically. The pulses were audible in the radio interference. She placed lightbulbs around the space and turned on the air blowers. Tiny holes in the bulbs made whistling sounds. She placed the Walkmen, seemingly in record mode, around the space. At length she picked them up, left the space, and ended the performance. 

As always, Stephen Lucas was recording the proceedings, but it'd be hard to guess what was going on from an audio recording without being able to see Jacques'  activity and hear the spatial dimension in the sounds. (There's a podcast featuring an interview with Jacques and some sound samples here.)

Last but certainly not least came a set of quiet, nuanced improvisation by the multi-instrumental duo of Houston's Rebecca Novak and Denton's Miguel Espinel, whom I recently learned drums for both black metallists Oil Spill and noise punks Bog, as well as playing with Monteil in Monte Espina. (Oil Spill and Bog recently made a run up the East Coast, including a NYC date shared with my buddy Nick Didkovsky's band Vomit Fist, who liked both bands real much.) 

Novak started out on trumpet, employing projected visuals, as is her wont. She used the horn to produce low sounds like a didgeridoo or Tuvan throat singing, and employed a mute that gave it a sound like a wooden flute. Espinel responded with minimal patterns on a tom-tom and otherworldly tones on a violin. At length, he moved to the floor, where there was an array of small percussion instruments; Novak walked over and played her trumpet into the drum's head. She also had an array of small instruments, and for awhile they conversed on these, in a music of space and subtle gesture. Eventually they returned to the trumpet and drum/violin; Novak also played what looked like a child's wind instrument, shaped like a clarinet with large keys, and sounded like a melodica. 

When the set finally wound down, it brought to a very satisfying conclusion another night of exploratory music at Molten Plains. Next one will be on June 26, with Stephen Lucas's heavy prog outfit Vaults of Zin slated to appear, among others. We'll be there.