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Monday, September 26, 2005

Decibel: An Appreciation

Posted by on September 26 at 17:53 PM

This year’s Decibel festival, according to everyone I spoke to and from absorbing the overwhelmingly positive vibe permeating every show I attended over the last four nights, was an unabashed success (don’t know about the financials, but artistically and organizationally, it was indisputably a triumph; much credit should go to world-class sound engineer Vance Galloway and the donated KV2 sound system). While last year’s debut abounded with fantastic performances, it also experienced flaws typical to new large-scale music events. This year, most of the glitches observed were intentionally coming out of the PowerBooks of several producers. As it should be…

Like Montreal's revered MUTEK festival, there were so many highlights at Decibel, it's hard to narrow them down to a manageable summary (and I know only a tiny percentage of you care anyway). So I'll try to quickly underscore the highlights and make you feel as regretful as possible for not attending this inspirational extravaganza dedicated to the advancement of advanced digital media production and consumption, with gear clinics, panel discussions, visual art, and, of course, music showcases.

Thursday night at Chop Suey, Deceptikon, Deru, and Machinedrum represented spectacularly for Merck Records, pushing IDM, hiphop, and dancehall into strange new territories.

Friday night began at Barça with a superbly groovy and intelligent tech-house set by DJ Eddie. Then at Chop Suey again, Germany's Shitkatapult renewed my appreciation for bunker-busting techno beats and alpha-male dynamics, thanks to rugged, jagged sets by Seattle's Jerry Abstract, Detroit's Kero, and Germany's Apparat.

Saturday at Broadway Performance Hall's Experimental Showcase, Seattle's Son of Rose damn near stole the show from the much more acclaimed Fennesz. The former forged a dazzling array of microtones and drones that boldfaced and italicized lowercase sound with stunning vividness. Fennesz's guitar/laptop machinations opened the floodgates of young and not-so-young punters with elegant, majestic slabs of meticulously layered sound ideal for christening new cathedrals. Later that night at Neumo's, Musique Risquée artists Bruno Pronsato, Deadbeat, and Akufen played techno, dub, and house that struck the perfect balance between experimental and crowd-moving, propulsive and quirky, playful and challenging, making ye olde 4/4 rhythm do some weird calisthenics. Afterhours at Cascadia Film Collective blew several minds, with Paul Edwards, Jerry Abstract, and Kris Moon tearing through acid techno's greatest blitzes till sunrise.

Sunday's Broadway Performance Hall's Ambient Showcase offered a beatific, mostly beatless respite with Loscil, Lusine, and Pan American crafting heavenly soundscapes that seemed to caress every hair on your body. Spain's Aeroc (Geoff White) strayed from protocol with a surprisingly funky set of acoustic-guitar-laced instrumental hiphop.

Later at Neumo's, the Headfuk Showcase concluded Decibel on a euphoric note. German tech-house maestros Thomas Fehlmann and Isolée triggered more ecstatic whoops from the crowd than any other artists, and they earned every one of them with the sort of inventive techno that's made their country the genre's superpower. Festival-goers who were running on fumes were still mad for it till Isolée's final fade out at 1:45 am. At which point Decibel creative director Abstract—overcome with emotion and hating to see Seattle's finest moment in electronic-music history end—hoarsely bellowed about how devastating next year's fest was going to be. Only a fool would doubt him.