I went to the SFEMF festival last year. And I really dug Annea Lockwood. But the rest was kind of unbearable. I went again this year, now recovered after a year of hearing good and bad music in various places. I arrived feeling quite optimistic about hearing Ray Sweeten, Edmund Campion, and Tsujiko Noriko on the same bill. Wait, what? Could have might have may have been interesting, but I'm sorry to say, I strongly felt that it was quite a misguided programming decision. Ray Sweeten gave us 20 minutes of brown noise (as described by a certain DC), though composer FB mention that "it was interesting in the beginning." More memorably, we had a quasi Darmstadt moment when at the end of Sweeten's set, when a shout of "TOO LOUD!" came from the general vicinity of where long time West Coast electronic music guru DW was seated. Campion's theatrical piece was a collaboration with his poet and brother John Campion, performed by the illustrious Thomas Buckner. Fun but kinda weird, with interactive stuff between the performer and the click synched electronics. Then there was Tsujiko Noriko. Oh Nori-chan, we understand that you have a lovely innocent voice and that you like Bjork perhaps, but why give us the same song 6 times after we have already been held captive in Artaud theater for 2 hours. Cute. Pretty. Ha ha. Yay. Can I go home now? To be fair, she sounded fine. Her sultry electronic sound worlds can be dreamy. But I want to hear it on a CD, maybe at home, or maybe at Aoyama Fai sipping on some ridiculous colored drink swirling with cigarette smoke. But please, not in a squeaky chair in a concert/theater setting where I'm forced to direct my unfaltering attention towards her whispy karaoke.
Conclusion: Dear program committee of the SFEMF: Please avoid 3-hour concerts of programming that's so wrong that it makes music that is perfectly fine completely unbearable.
Micrpop Rating: ** out of 5 stars. Don't do it!
2 comments:
WOW, I thought the whole night was amazing. Shows just how individual we all really are, which is what I love about this festival - there's something for everyone. (Admittedly I'm on the steering committee, but there's been plenty of nights at festivals I've helped curate that I haven't enjoyed, so this is not a biased plug)
Hi kadetek, thanks for your comment. I have to say, that show wasn't really working for me, but maybe in my bitchy comments, I didn't quite get across that I think what the SFEMF is doing in general is awesome. There's a lot of new music out there, and you just don't know if it's good or not until you go out and hear it. So, you rule, and thanks for doing what you do. And I will go again next year.
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