Have you ever had a musical experience so intense you’ve actually feared a head explosion? Mega bass, forehead veins, brain quickly de-solidifying?
I found myself at the Red Bull Music Academy at Dark Mofo Festival in the city of Hobart, fingers pressed into my ears, anxiously anticipating my forthcoming mind splatter. I had heard a lot about EYE, the performer about to take the stage. With a career that predicated my entrance into this crazy bass-y world, along with a discography that is a casual 62 titles strong (my favourite title of which has to be 1984’s ">Take Back Your Penis!!), EYE is little short of a music legend.
Originally famed for his work as a part of Boredoms – a musical collective that championed the genre known as Japanoise (clever wordplay basically referring to a style heavy in minimalist and ambient qualities) – EYE has since gone on to prove himself as a pioneer of frighteningly futuristic musical styles. I lucked out and managed to grab a quick chat with Noise In My Head, EYE’s manager, one of the performers in CIRCOM and one of Melbourne’s most prominent music figures. He also played self-proclaimed ‘ear bleeding techno’ at the after party.
“Eye’s most long term project was ‘Boredoms’ which I was a fan of,” Noise started off.
“It’s just really fascinating music and amazing ideas that I hadn’t really been exposed to before. A couple of years ago I had this crazy idea which was to track Eye down in Japan and bring him out for a DJ tour. It was totally mental. Then last year I went to visit him in remote Osaka in Japan and stayed at his house. I told him about Dark Mofo and that he’d probably like it because there are a lot of experimental acts and a lot of things in tune with what you listen to on a daily basis so how about I pitch this idea – you’ve just done this project for Red Bull Music Academy last week it seemed to go really well, would you want to do it again?”
[A shot from EYE’s Tokyo production.]
The original project, casually titled ‘Chaos Conductor’, would see a group of ‘performers’ play Ableton software to signals made by EYE. For CIRCOM, not all of the performers would be musicians, some were actors, visual artists and journalists. One was a curly haired guy that I chased down at the afterparty and swapped shirts with (when at Dark Mofo, right?).
“It’s just eight different participants that don’t know the hand signals or – in most cases like mine – Ableton,” noise continued. ‘There’s all these applications that we’re using are completely foreign to me so that was a bit of a flash course.”
“It’s a bit of a Motley Crue, but I think anyone can do it if they apply themselves and learn the signals. It’s not as complex as it sounds. The main skill is memory and staying alert.”
And in terms of the project coming to it’s fruition? It seemed that Noise was more concerned about me than his performance.
“I just hope we don’t damage their ears. That is a legitimate fear. I’m sure we’ll follow safety codes but some of the frequencies are very intense.”
Cut forward an hour and a few local Sauv Blancs, and the lights are dimming for CIRCOM. The audience is suddenly overridden with that strange feeling of a quiet space heard through squishy earplugs – handed out at the door. The performers enter and calmly sit in a circle around EYE, who sits on a small stool. At first the frequency of the sound was so low that I strained to hear it. Even though my ears were working overtime, I soon felt the deep throng of bass at my feet. It soon after took over my core.
Both EYE and the performer’s focus was relatively unnerving. The speed of their reactions to his seemingly improvised signals was impressive. He would stand up, move a hand, point a finger, and the ferocity or the frequency of the sound would jump in space. The scene of human action ignited by human action, but in a way that was directly dilated through the machine, gave the sound a bizarre quality. Almost foreign, it worked outside of time signatures and melody. It worked outside of the rhetoric of music itself.
Then the teeth gritting came. As EYE stood up and lengthened his arms a wall of sound came cascading over us – mostly bass. I thought I was cool until I started to feel my friendly forehead vein make an appearance. I realised soon after that I was holding my fingers to my earplugs in my ears. I then started to worry about the structure of the theatre. Imminent death seemed probable.
It’s pretty hard to notice time go by in this state. When the show came to an end and the sound subsided, I felt almost sad – and the hectic fripple frost of Hobart rushed back into my bloodstream. Then the musings began.
We’re a pretty sensory people, us postmodern-world humans. Living in what is increasingly a virtual world, it seems we’re only going to be descend further into our mechanical infatuation. To see a group of artists to use human movement and instinct, as well as personal interaction to create through machinery cant help but seem indicative of future ways that we will both produce and consume music. Many producers seem to be working against the systematic grain of software to force it to inhabit more humanlike qualities. Improvisation, variation, free movement. All elements which seemed strangely solidified by EYE and CIRCOM.
I asked Noise this. Could this be the future of music? He cocked his head to the side.
“For EYE this is almost tame compared to some stuff that he’s done in the past,” he said. “He’s driven bulldozers through walls as a performance before, so this is pretty much an ordinary day for him.”
I went outside the theatre and felt very shallow, my ears ringing.
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