From Lance C McGannon Sent Thu, Dec 3rd 1998, 00:16
From Lance C McGannon Sent Thu, Dec 3rd 1998, 00:16
I had the pleasure of seeing Thomas Brinkman play live here in Cleveland= last Saturday evening. Here is a little rundown of how it went. Arrived to Speak In Tongues around 11 pm to a crowd of 50-75 people. Speak= In Tongues is a small causal little little underground venue that doubles= as an apartment when not hosting shows. The show started with the Kent, Ohio duo Twine. They did a live set of dark= scanner-esque experimental electronica and hard panacea-styled d&b playing= for about an hour. I have two of their cds which i will be reviewing in the= near future. During the Twine set i had the pleasure of chatting & sharing= some beers with Thomas Brinkmann. He's a very personable guy with a lot of= fascinating stories. Next up was Pneu. Pneu was two guys, one large table, and almost 15= different music machines plied on top of each other. Pneu did a short set= of live experimental and profan-ish techno. I was especially impressed with= their live, improvised sound. This was the first time i've heard them and= it definitely won't be the last.=20 Thomas Brinkmann finally came on around 12:30am. He had two turntables (one= with the dual-tonearm setup), two mixers, two Yamaha QY-700 sequencers, a= little palmtop computer, and a small crate of records. For the first 20= minutes he played just two records with his dual-tonearm setup. I was= really amazing how he would just keep picking up and dropping the two= tonearms and the track sounded different every time. Brinkmann then started= playing some of his own tracks in with the dual-tonearm setup. He started= in a groovy/complex downtempo style similar to his concept variations then,= over the course of the next two hours, slowly bumped up the tempo and= striped down the sound similar to his ernst/max material. All throughout= his live set he kept mixing records over the top of the tracks he was= creating. He even played his Ernst, Max, and the square records that others= have mentioned (those sqare records are actually Suppose records numbers= 1-6 - limited editions of 1 copy each) which were merely pole-esque noisy= lockgrooves. The overall effect was a giant morphing soundscape of profan,= concepts, suppose, ernst, max, burger/ink, and plastikman type sounds. Kudos to bent crayon for organizing this little event. It was a gem. The only disappointment of the evening was that i didn't get to meet some= fellow listmembers that were supposed to be there - Jeff, Vat, Wayne,= Norton.=20 btw: i've been told that the entire binkmann live set will be available in= mp3 format on the bent crayon website within a week. so soon you will all= be able to hear how good the show really was. Keep checking= http://www.bentcrayon.com for that mp3. It's a must have. -->-Lance--- p.o. box 450715 westlake, ohio 44145 united states