It’s always nice when you lavish extravagant praise/prose on an event and the event follows through, often spectacularly. Such was the case with Debacle Fest, which devoured last weekend in a hail of left-of-center sounds. Below are some of the highlights I experienced. Highest accolades to organizer Sam Melancon for manifesting this excellent event.
FRIDAY AT FRED WILDLIFE REFUGE
Total Life: Kevin Doria of the band Growing located the universe’s emergency broadcast signal, which is a glowering, overpowering snarl. His roaring drones were at once ominous and soothing, a trick few can pull off.
Panabrite: Seattle synth magus Norm Chambers bust out the most dance-oriented track I’ve heard from him—a kind of slow-motion, aquatic cha-cha with a majestic, mountain-climbing melody. If you’d told me we were listening to an advance of the new Boards of Canada album, I’d have believed you.
Monopoly Child Star Searchers: Portland keyboard trickster Spencer Clark was wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a spring jacket with the sleeves rolled up: NAGL. Fortunately, he overcame those sartorial blunders with a set of spaced-out, ornery Yamaha(haha) exhalations and sporadic splatters of bamboo percussion. Toward the end, things morphed into a bizarre, rococo, avian keyboard odyssey that warmed my prog-loving heart.
Dave Segal/The Stranger
Monopoly Child Star Searchers: Never mind the flip-slops, dig the Yamaharmonics.
Brain Fruit: Cosmically minded Seattle trio brought the krautrock locomotion and radiant synth spray straight into the clear light, as Garrett Moore drummed up a storm in heaven. If Debacle were SXSW, Brain Fruit would have a contract with Thrill Jockey or Bureau B right now.
Plankton Wat: Eternal Tapestry’s Dewey Mahood gave us solo electric guitar folkadelix that made me want to call him Wankton Plot—but in a good, spangly, “Dark Star”y way.
Expo ’70: Facing away from the crowd and kneeling before his FX board, Kansas City’s Justin Wright cast deep spells with Floydian blips and six-string whorls that made me regret not dosing. Somehow, this became ideal make-out music for two women sitting near the front.
SATURDAY AT HIGHLINE
MTNS: Local bass/drums duo donned silk slips and went barefoot, but the music was the antithesis of dainty. Daniel Enders and Austin Hund created centrifugal noise rock that used both repetition and unpredictable dynamics—and occasional light Theremin crackles—to forge smart sonic turmoil.
Dave Segal/The Stranger
MTNS: Noise rock in slips—it's a thing.
SATURDAY AT FRED WILDLIFE REFUGE
Matt Carlson: I mistakenly thought Carlson’s duo Golden Retriever were playing Debacle, but it was just him performing. Sorry. But I’m not sorry about the array of radium-rare tonalities that the Portland synthesizer maestro coaxed from his modular analog gear. The sounded like Terry Riley’s Shri Camel exploding into a more volatile galaxy. I will go so far as to say that Carlson is this generation’s Terry Riley. Bow down before his synapse-jangling powers. (Note: Brenna Murphy’s accompanying surrealistic visuals were the best of the fest.)
Marielle Jakobsons: The Date Palms violinist/flautist scraped out some beautifully forlorn, windswept drones, at times evoking the eerier moments of Beaver & Krause’s Ragnarök.
Mind Over Mirrors: Former Seattle resident Jaime Fennelly used his harmonium and effects to pump out some of the thickest, richest tones I’ve ever heard live. At one point they recalled those of Seefeel’s “Climactic Phase #3,” and it doesn’t get any more succulent than that.
Nate Young: Wolf Eyes’ matinee idol wore shades and a lab coat while teasing out a conglomeration of creepy, dread-filled tones and textures and deep-as-fuck bass probes. The track on which he sang could’ve been a too-weird-for-Liquid Sky outtake. Before one song, Young announced, “This is a standard.” Shockingly, it wasn’t, but it did conjure Throbbing Gristle in melancholy mode.
Valerie Calano
Nate Young: "This one's a standard."
Date Palms: If you missed Date Palms, you fucked up badly. They proved conclusively that they’re one of America’s greatest bands. The core duo of Marielle Jakobsons and keyboardist Gregg Kowalsky expanded to a quintet featuring bass, guitar, and tamboura. If Don Cherry’s Holy Mountain soundtrack or the idea of the Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs” being sacralized to the utmost appeal to you, you need to investigate Date Palms.
Valerie Calano
Date Palms: Taking "Venus in Furs" to the Holy Mountain.
SUNDAY AT LO-FI
TJ Max: Jayson Kochan (Airport, Midday Veil) and Timm Mason (Mood Organ, Midday Veil, Master Musicians of Bukkake) teamed up in aviator shades for a disco smorgasbord, ranging from hedonistic to brutalist. At times they recalled a more clangorous, clamorous Cabaret Voltaire, their bulbous rhythms hitting with an implacable impact.
Valerie Calano
TJ Max: Dark disco.
Black Hat: Seattle producer Nelson Bean makes techno that refuses to take the path of least resistance. Wearing a Supersonics jersey and a Raiders cap, he showed off his allegiances to his adopted city and his hometown (Oakland) while making severely fucked-up beats and distressed giraffe cries. This is music for the last (g)rave, the riveting and satisfying sound of expertly executed, major malfunctions.
Prostititutes: A lot of Midwestern techno is just naturally dirtier and harder than that from the West Coast, and Prostitutes (Cleveland’s Jim Donadio) proved this last night. All of his tracks’ elements—hi-hats like sabers being sharpened, kickdrums like nail guns, etc.—are extreme yet finely wrought. He also presented a cut that was the closest thing I’ve heard to Bo Diddley in a techno context. Prostitutes’ downwardly mobile techno made the dismal sound dazzling.
Strategy: Portland’s Strategy (Paul Dickow, looking like a young, bipedal Stephen Hawking) produced the night’s most joyous dance experience. He began by polling the audience for preferences in kickdrum sound, then proceeded to bust into some of the most infectious, playful, and tonally expansive house jams I’ve ever heard, seguing with thrilling unpredictability.
Moon Pool & Dead Band: Weird to hear a Wolf Eyes member (Nate Young, with help from Dave Shettler) crank out Chris & Cosey-like mutant acid techno, but damn if he/they don’t pull it off with some tight, hip-grinding bass lines and pounding kickdrums.
Hieroglyphic Being: By this point (12:52 am), I was a mere husk of a shadow of myself, but, holy shit, Hieroglyphic Being (Jamal Moss) rewarded the 20 or so fatigued souls who stuck it out with alien oscillations that flambéd neurons and triggered hallucinations (or was that was just me?). Imagine if avant-jazz iconoclast Sun Ra and electronic-music pioneer Conrad Schnitzler were reincarnated in a 21st-century house-music producer’s body—that’s Hieroglyphic Being. His menagerie of fuck-off noises, froggy 303 ululations, and madly scrambled yet funky beats were next-level genius. (Decibel! Book this man!)
That so few people witnessed HB’s set is a goddamn scandal. But then the same could be said for the entire Debacle Fest, whose every showcase should’ve been packed. In a metropolis of Seattle’s size? Are you fucking kidding me? Whatever the case, I doubt I’ll hear a better, more concentrated blast of novel music this year.
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