March 8th, 2008: Les Sciences Bruitistes

@instants chavirés

8 hours, 12 projects. That was the plan, but I fucked up and missed the first one. Still, that was a lot and I didn’t really attempt to keep track of who was playing. I ended up liking most of it, but not all. Most was more or less regular noise, with a few exceptions. Standing out as one of the latter were Christine Sehnaoui and Ryan Jewell; even though I lost interest in that kind of drum playing a while ago, it was refreshing to see people from the free improvisation scene take that kind of chance. Any attempt to build bridge between these many niches is most welcome.

I guess I somehow avoided burning out, because I liked the final set by Family Battle Snake. Maybe a bit too easy at the very end, but it was suitably tranceish to bring it all to a close. Vomir stood out as well, with an onslaught that kept somehow introspective — I didn’t stick my head in that plastic bag though. Evil Moisture vs FRed Nipi turned out very different from what I expected, much calmer and slowly evolving where I expected something more furious; I really liked the early part of the set, surprising tendrils of very low frequencies.

Unsurprisingly, my favorite set was Bobby Moo; even though I thought it didn’t rise up to the level of last year’s performance, they still stood head and shoulders above the rest of the day’s projects in my eyes. Miho was less steadying and had less of a presence this time, and that’s disappointing because I feel she really brings the best out of Alexandre and Arnaud. Overall I thought ideas were not flowing as freely as last year. But it still was about trying a lot of stuff, developing some for a short while, crashing down and starting in another direction. Bobby Moo is definitely not about consistency, and even though there were many valleys, I only really care about the peaks, and there were some mighty ones in there.