16th March 2011

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Sarah Lipstate + Lee Ranaldo, Kyle Bobby Dunn, Seaven Teares @ Roulette

Last Friday, Roulette (moving to Brooklyn in the Spring, by the way) hosted a performance by Sarah Lipstate and Lee Ranaldo, as well as Kyle Bobby Dunn and Seaven Teares. I was familiar only with Lipstate, from her solo work Noveller, and her time spent with Parts and Labor and Cold Cave, and of course Ranaldo’s work with Sonic Youth. So, my impressions on the rest of these performers are initial ones.

Seaven Teares were first of the night, four-person group consisting of Charred Lucre on guitar and vocals; Amirtha Kidambi on vocals; Robbie Lee on portative organ, woodwinds, and guitar; and Russel Greenberg on percussion. Experimental chamber folk is what I would describe their set as, often ghostly and melancholy, but they did display some high energy pieces as well, which contrasted well with the softer tone of most of their songs.

Kyle Bobby Dunn played in the second slot, using a laptop, a mixer, and a guitar and amplifier. It seemed that most of what he did was manipulate the sound of the guitar feeding back through the amplifier. At one point, he detuned it momentarily, which created a really interesting sound, but after about 20 minutes or so, I’d had my fill. This is of course just a personal opinion, but ambient music can only hold my attention for so long without something else happening. I’d have been much more appreciative, I think, if I’d had something else to do while listening. It wasn’t really the right environment for me to appreciate it.

Lipstate and Ranaldo were the closers, and they held their position well. Lipstate seemed to provide the backbone of the piece; her treatment of the guitar looked more or less traditional (though the results were anything but) and she used several effects to loop and layer the sounds. Ranaldo, on the other hand, seemed to be following the advice of the great Bruce Dickinson, exploring the space with his guitar, and utilizing a great array of extended techniques, bowing the back of the guitar’s neck, knocking on the body, and moving it around to utilize different spacial relations to the amplifier. They also projected images on the wall behind them; it seemed to be looping close-ups of some kind of fibers, and the faster the images changed, the more it started to look like a double-helix. By the end of the set, they were splattered with color. They both created a range of interesting sound, and their set fell on the more interesting side of ambient drone.

Tagged: Sarah LipstateLee RanaldoKyle Bobby DunnSeaven TearesRoulettegetting into a serious thing