TBA:11

most beautiful

Dean & Britta 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests
Thursday, September 15, 8:30 pm
Washington High School
Photos by: Chase Allgood

After a few nights at the WORKS, it’s interesting to see the 40-and-over crowd mixed in with the art party scenesters. The evening promises to be easy on the ears: now married, both Dean and Britta were former members of Luna, Dean was the frontman for Gallery 500, and Britta was the singing voice of super-glam cartoon superstar JEM. Yes, of JEM and the Holograms. Wow.

As concept albums go, it is a beauty. The stark portraiture and artsy nostalgia of Warhol’s screen tests provide a distilled, but achingly poignant backdrop for Dean and Britta’s layered psychedelic surf lullabies.

Most interesting are the stories and commentary Dean and Britta dispense with studied indifference between songs: Edie Sedgwick cut her hair to look like Warhol and died of a barbiturate overdose at 28, Dennis Hopper was one of 13 people to buy a soup can prints at Warhol’s inaugural exhibition in Los Angeles; Billy Name covered his apartment with tinfoil and met Warhol at a hair-cutting party. Beautiful and tragic, the faces and music create an entrancing symmetry. Most beautiful, yes.

Also see my original post on PICA’s blog at
http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2011/09/17/most-beautiful/

heightened perception

New Musics
Wednesday, September 14, 10:30 pm
THE WORKS at Washington High School
Photos by: Chase Allgood

Act 1: Color Film 5 (Madison Brookshire) and Field Organ (Tashi Wada)

“The subject of the work is duration, with color as the medium through which we experience it.” - program guide, New Musics

A color field that almost imperceptibly shifts means you can’t see the increments of change, just the change itself. As soon as you stop looking, everything is different. Wada’s 2-organ duet produces a similar effect with an opposing approach; you hear every sustained note, both melodic and discordant, in real time. Because the musical progression is so fluid, however, the emotional responses generated can only be realized periodically.The two works are a brilliant pair and together produce a realization about perception of time and visceral response that is greater than the sum of its parts. Something previously hidden becomes known: the liminal space between hearing/seeing and responding emotionally is suddenly visible.

Act 2: PART (Grouper)

Grouper’s “tape collage” matched with Flash Choir’s vocal instrumentation puts the central focus on the flickering images on the screen. The result is non-narrative (or at least non immediately so) and alternatively lulling and haunting. The staging, whether intentional or not, made the work somehow less accessible; if the use of tape is inherent to the work, it would be intriguing to make the process at least as visible as the choir.

Act 3: Mourning Youth (Claudia Meza)

“…if time passing can only be experienced and digested through memory…then ‘youth’ as a concept will always be mourned” - program guide, New Musics

Memory and reality collide in Meza’s non-mournful Mourning Youth. Powerful, charged images are slowed to iconic speed and paired visually with each other and sonically with taiko drumming and choral response. Meza’s collaboration with Portland Taiko, Flash Choir, Thomas Thorson, Chris Hackett and Allie Hankins is an evolving work; the movement portion was recently added and seemed less integrated than the other elements of what Meza calls a “wordless opera”. Reminiscent of a Greek drama/music video mashup, the performance is charged by searing visuals and heart-pounding sounds, describing the electric physicality and heightened perception of both experienced and remembered youth.

Also see my original post on PICA’s blog at
http://urbanhonking.com/pica/2011/09/16/hightened-perception/