Adam Morosky, aka TimeGhost, had set up his custom synth on the floor of Café Nine in front of the stage, next to a backlit screen fronted with slatted shades. He had light sensors, pressure pads, and a coneless speaker to bring his creations to life. The crowd had moved in closely to observe his set with more scrutiny.
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“Sometimes noise music is not very weird, and sometimes it is weird,” Morosky said. He also noted that sometimes it’s played on a Tuesday night in New Haven — in this case, for the first of two nights of third annual Elm City Noise Fest.
Four acts — two local, two non-local — shared the stage and the floor to bring this specific genre of music to its extremely devoted fans. The festival concludes tonight at Cafe Nine.
“Noise music for me is about man jumping into the machine. Soul develops in the machine,” said Michael Miglietta — who booked Noise Fest along with Margaret Milano and who play a set during the second night (tonight) as Parlay Droner. He wanted Noise Fest to include local acts as well as acts that New Haveners may not have had the opportunity to see before, “bands I enjoy myself that I want others to hear, music that goes beyond the typical.”
Karen Ponzio photo
Ross Menze, from New Haven, opened the show with two extended pieces created in a large modular synth stacked on a table in front of the stage. Initially the beat of the first piece created was a more pulsing industrial sound that got heavier and more insistent as it progressed, before it transitioned into a more ethereal selection of chiming and string sounds. These were then layered with an buzzing that melded together to get a few of the audience members (including this reporter) dancing along in their seats. The next piece added drumming, metallic sounds, like what you might hear if you were in your car during a torrential rain, or hail storm — where you’re maybe a little unsure of what is going to happen, but are enthralled that it is happening at all.
Next up, also on the floor in front of the stage, was the New Haven-based Human Flourishing, made up of Conor Perreault on guitar (and pedals) and Michael Larocca on drums. They played a funkier jazzier music, starting slowly but persistently until it became a full onslaught of sound. Perreault put his full body into the instrument, even ending up on the floor with his guitar to the side to manipulate more sound directly from his pedal board. Larocca added other percussion to the mix throughout the set, with his foot on his drum at one point. Like Menze, they created an atmosphere that made it almost impossible to not sway along.
Dead Rider, a three-piece band hailing from Chicago, took to the actual stage for their multilayered and genre-blurring set. Comprised of Todd Rittmann on guitar and vocals, Jake Samson on bass and keyboards, and Matthew Espy on drums, these performers took just about every musical move you could think of with their instruments and made them all feel just right. At times they played near straight-on rock ‘n’ roll, but with a bluesy jam vibe, layered in with both electronic and more traditional drum beats and keyboards. Their sound had the growing crowd enraptured and enthralled as to what they might do next.
Even when Rittmann took off his guitar and went to the keyboards, saying “I’m going to create a tender moment,” it eventually became infused with heavy drum and bass from his bandmates. Maybe by then it wasn’t tender anymore. But it definitively vibrated in the bodies of its listeners, as well as their actual seats. The crowd responded wildly.
TimeGhost’s set was an exercise in phase shifting. The sound created through the synth made balls jump up in accordance. A material changed from liquid to solid and back again as the sound and light were manipulated. The crowd stayed close to Morosky and his performance throughout, quiet and still, as if witnessing the birth of something entirely new to this world. There are videos out there of it, but it was something to experience live. His short, intense final set ended the evening on a high note with sounds of wonder and delight from the crowd.
This reporter thought long after the show about the Frankenstein story Rittmann had referenced, where the animation of something previously deemed lifeless became an unique being, I also thought about Miglietta’s remarks about the noise artist’s commitment to “fabricating their medium and vision” — how it’s not about chords and progression and technique, but about giving sentience to an object and letting it live, in a way, on its own. On this night, all of this was witnessed by a few who took the chance to be part of something that, as Miglietta put it, develops soul in the machine. Not bad for a Tuesday night in New Haven. And it’s all happening again tonight.
Elm City Noise Fest concludes Wed. Oct. 18 at Cafe Nine, 250 State Street. Doors at 9:30 p.m., show at 10 p.m. Click here for tickets and more information.