Tampa Bay Noise Lives
I began hanging around the Tampa Bay noise scene in my early twenties. I had a friend who played the genre and knew other local artists who would present their work at the now closed Venture Compound in St. Petersburg, which was a haven for experimental music and artistry in general. Having been introduced at an early age to minimalist composers, I became attracted to more daring styles of musicianship as I went along. Punk rock may be the heirs to the political end of European avant-garde movements like Dada and Surrealism, but noise takes the aesthetic further into the realm of Happenings and Vienna Actionism by abandoning traditional notions of structure for abreaction.
It has been some years since I had been in the scene. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure if there was much of it even going on anymore. The last time I had been at Venture was shortly after my last in-patient stay some two years ago, where I had the pleasure of seeing Derridada perform their droning agitprop-like set, after which I was able to fanboi out with them about post-structuralism and my antipathy for the psychoanalyst Lacan. I also brought my last girlfriend there on our first date.
The genre seems to require a lot of stamina to maintain. Oftentimes performers are solo, and the songs can be long. A 40-minute set may only contain one or two songs. Back in the day I had begun with several friends of mine an avant-garde literary and art publication entitled Übernothing that would feature primarily local writers and visual artists. For this publication I had written a gonzo review of the first Parallels event at Venture (with the Pangea Project being the longest running of their themes) which combined poetry with experimental sounds. Here is an excerpt to get an idea of the setting:
Violent salutations from adjacent warehouse dogs juxtapose against a friendly puppy lulling the courtyard gainway. Earthenware décolletage: ubiquitous dirty white lawn chairs, exposed fire extinguishers, and the genially accepted but never quite questioned abundance of parceled-off wood. The structure is metal and cement.
Inside: a crowd of heads adorned with beards and hats with no clear ratio but an intuitive feeling of how it should of or could have been expected to be. Two couches to stand by. A labyrinth of uncertain conversation wafting past those unknown while the known converge upon each other, all ravenous – or bored. A difference? Postures of fleshly immanence induced by discomforted postures against the generally inhospitable atmosphere of warehouses.
Beer and background music though.
Venue = the Venture Compound. Host/Wayne Williams. Jesse introduces the tuning supergroup which had been providing the ambient noise. The lights darken. Margaret Penny’s projections against the far wall illuminate the instrumentalists strewn across the warehouse floor with fluctuations sublimating what was once an indecipherable menagerie of chords and chromatic shadows into a single substance.
Wayne creates the center. Bradley Morewood brings in the night. The music is to suggest the poetry. Unknowingly, the rhythm will fight it. Heckling encouraged (opportuned by the salutary dogs). The sounds and color intermingle. Anticipation: the atmosphere intensifies as Bradley joins – the manipulation begins. Delightfully the pain of the festivities’ birth encourages the cacophony to separate and merge.
As soon as I had been approached to join MusicFestNews, this is where my mind had gone. Fortunately, although I did not maintain contact with many of the people from that time, I had been Facebook friends with Vallam, who had always been an inspiring presence there and whose artistry I had always admired. I contacted Vallam about featuring them for the publication, and they got back to me, inviting me to a house show that was going on Sunday, May 20th, to celebrate the upcoming tour of one of the performers.
I was excited but, as with all new settings, weary. It is one thing to cover an event at a fairground or warehouse, entirely another to enter someone’s home whom you were not closely affiliated with while not knowing anyone else who would be there. My nerves were up, but I made the trek out to the house in Tampa, known as The In-Between, and made my way back into a scene I had sorely missed.
I arrived just as Vallam was setting up to perform the first set. My entrance was painfully awkward seeing as I didn’t know how I should enter, and those who answered did not know who I was. Those in attendance seemed to already know most that were there, with some minor exceptions, most notably me. Overall, the night probably had twenty people in attendance, many of whom were performing that night. The house was eclectically crowded with stacked television sets, old video game consoles, mannequin parts, and the miles of cords that connected all the equipment needed to manipulate the sounds to be heard that night.
Vallam had set up their equipment on the kitchen counter. I found this strange at first, since the front room had clearly been set up for everyone to perform in, but didn’t think too much about it being that most everyone there at that point was socializing in the living room, and this would have been the easiest place for everyone to see the performance. As I quickly observed, though, Vallam began attaching pickups to kitchenware and appliances – a kitchen pan upon which they began chopping food and, more ominously, a food processor.
One of the things I love about the noise genre is how it utilizes the environment in which it is created as an element of the music. At first you are not always sure if things have even begun. It takes a moment to realize how everything is falling into place. In this instance I found the performance to be highlighting the fact that we were in a home. They were making humus for their guests, the sounds of which were manipulated while it was being done so as to find the music within. The set concluded with the sounds of everyone being individually served the homecooked food by Vallam.
Next to perform was Rest in Satin Silence, a solo act done by Zillah. Another great thing about the noise genre is nothing ever really goes wrong, per se. Their set was fraught with malfunctioning and uncooperative equipment, yet this only added to the environment of the happening, which was the music. Yes, the sound is manipulated and controlled, but it works by following self-forming patters that, if something “wrong” happens, it can be further incorporated into the experience.
Zillah’s performance was reminiscent to me of Walter Benjamin’s “Arcades Project,” in which he characterizes his method of collecting the scattered and discarded elements of the Parisian Arcades as a document of the wanderings of the flaneur. The flaneur is characterized as being an idler, but they are rather a wanderer, their purpose being defined by the result of their aimlessness. Zillah’s chance occurrences were like the unexpected obstacles one encounters that offer detours which allow us to see things from a new perspective.
Emmy Lou (Slime Queen Bingo), the other resident of the house, performed an interactive set complete with electronic children’s toys and music boxes. Like Vallam, it was immersive in that the set begins with the organization of the equipment. The music boxes were placed on top of a metal street sign (reading: Fairfield Ave. S.) with a pickup attached. They then began to introduce themself by introducing everyone in attendance instead while amusing us with their interactions with the setup as they attempted to get everything in working order for our “live entertainment.”
The songs were more stories accompanied by the manipulations of the children’s toys. The final song, referred to as the hologram song and done by Emmy Lou and Jim Grinaker, was masterfully crafted between the duo wherein Emmy conducted the music while prompting questions to Jim that allowed him to offer a schematic rundown of what holograms were and memories related to his life in a repetitive back and forth that crescendoed with the two of them repeating back and forth to each other the words “holographic teeth.”
Given the nature of such performances, it can often take awhile to set up as well as have sets last longer than expected. Although the show was scheduled to be over by 11:30 it was already 12:30 by the time I left without everyone having performed. The last two sets I did get to see were by Dylan Houser and Mullarkey (aka, Run-On Sunshine).
Houser’s was a distortion-riddled guitar set that was more psychedelic influenced than the others. There was slightly more structure than what I was used to from back in the day at Venture and used more a trick of tropes from more standard song structures. Run-On Sunshine’s set, on the other hand, was a lo-fi cassette-based pop-like sound. People began dancing and jumping along to Mullarkey’s enthusiastic performance, whose antics were contagious to all – this being the musician for whom the show was being put on in celebration of their upcoming tour.
So, yes, the Tampa Bay noise scene is alive and well. Faces may have changed, but the same creative energy and ingenuity remain and is a staple of the area. The quality of the compositions is stronger than ever, and, if you look close enough, it can still be found. With the efforts of those involved with The In-Between, which functions as both a venue and newly founded record label, we should be hearing about much more in the future.
Bandcamp for the artists present:
Vallam: https://vallam.bandcamp.com/
Rest in Satin Silence: https://riss.bandcamp.com/
Dylan Houser: https://dhouser.bandcamp.com/
Run-On Sunshine: https://runonsunshine.bandcamp.com/