Greg Kelley blew notelessly through his trumpet, a duet of sorts with
bottles and ice at the bar (it was probably the wrong night for Tonic to
introduce a drink minimum). The others sat in prolonged silence, while
Kelly applied a thin sheet of metal to the side of his trumpet, putting a
subtle scrape to the whoosh. The performance opened with as much
sound emanating from the performers as was occurring in the room.
The trio set up in front of the stage with chairs in a semicircle around
them and played quietly without amplification. Vic Rawlings created sine
waves from a rig of opened electronics and his cello, which he bowed
not at the strings but on a thin wooden rod mounted at the bridge. He
ran his cello through a variety of effects, the only amplification used,
and worked the sounds of live wires connected to speaker cones set out
on the club floor. Sean Meehan used his snare as a sound chamber,
pushing a small cymbal against the head to make static pops.
Slowly, very slowly, they moved into the geography of tone, Meehan
creating ringing sounds by rubbing a thin rod against the edges of a
cymbal atop the snare, Kelley and Rawlings actually letting a note come
out of their instruments every so often.
What they played was slow but also visual, events happening in discrete
blocks, sonic situations that would occur with little change for 5 to 15
seconds, sometimes overlapping, sometimes creating tandem effects,
but primarily hanging in the air. It's difficult to say if it was entertaining,
but it was certainly transfixing.
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