i was fortunate enough to attend (with a couple friends) all three days of this year's
No Fun Fest, an ongoing celebration of noise, power electronics, and other abrasive experimental underground music held in the greater New York City area. Curated since 2004 by noise artist Carlos Giffoni, NFF has been held over the space of three to four nights in various locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan attracting such noisy luminaries as Wolf Eyes et. al, Merzbow, Macronympha, Keiji Haino, Cluster, many
many members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, and regular appearances from Sonic Youth members Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and Lee Ranaldo. this year's three-night fest was held at the
Knitting Factory in Manhattan after three very successful years at Brooklyn's
The Hook. the change in venue was not very welcome, with several clashes with security and audience members (and performers), but the show managed to be quite a hit regardless.
highlights include Randy Yau's noise set featuring several contact microphones on the throat combined with the voracious devouring of a stalk of celery, the spacy synth videoscapes of Demons, Aaron Dilloway playing a wheelbarrow with a shovel as part of The Nevari Butchers, Hair Police producing yet another manic pit in their fourth festival appearance in five years, Ahlzagailzehguh's double basement encore, Lee Ranaldo's "
Blind Piece #2" performance, and Philip Best getting down, dirty and totally perverted with an absolutely filthy Consumer Electronics set. pictures from a good portion of the performances are on my flickr page
here, along with
pictures from last year's fest.
200
100
100
