The Austrian Cultural Forum is hosting an event called Moving Patterns. Its a 4 day festival featuring muscians from Austria. Beautiful abstract muscians.
Day 1: 4/26, Lokai A duo with laptops (blips and bleeps), an Electric guitar played with a violin bow, and an ongoing assault of imagery (which I later found out was ever-changing real time video stills of roads in Finland. They were stretching vertically on the screen, extending into the distance, summer and winter. Lined with ice and cool in the melting of autumn.
http://www.lokai.at/
Dj Urbs: Direct from Vienna, mixing Soundtracks from the 60’s and 70’s. he rocked. Very smooth and I couldn’t deny i was super impressed by the fact that (unlike so many dj’s) he utilized ACTUAL records.
Its nice to see someone still marveling in the natural scritch scratch sounds of aged vinyl.
http://www.g-stoned.com/artists/urbs/
I went back the next day to hear 2 other performers. They were interesting but for me not as lovely as the first evening. A bit too abrasive. But entertaining none-the-less.
Fritz Ostermayer, laptop and also sang in an eerie vocal that Time Out NY compared to Nick Cave.
I was impressed when he attempted to channel Sigmund Freud in a bizarre combustive dialogue between the artist and his computer screen.
My personal favorite instance was when he noted that the audience was mostly Austrian. He asked who in the audience was American. Only ONE person feebly raised his hand. Um….eeks! I turned to the person seated next to me and said “My God, we’ve all denied ourselves!!” (which is oddly funny and sad at the same time. Because in my opinon, the show was definitely divided 50/50)
www.mego.at/ostermayer.html
Next was “Unfair”
A singer (vocal artist-Henry Rollins look-a-like,…he used all different types of sound, gurggling, rubbing the microphone onto his teeth, etc.) and 2 individuals on laptops. this was actually a TAD bit frightening. His vocal range changed frequently and while interesting it was at times irritating. I did appreciate when he knocked the microphone on his head creating a dull drum-like thud)
www.mosz.org
I then proceeded to end the night mingling around and then meeting up with Dj Urbs and the members of Lokai. We chatted about Vienna, New York City, Coney Island, the Blues Brothers (which I haven’t seen) and Nike and how they are taking over the Soccer World-Commercially-ugh. We then proceeded downtown and had a drink at Beauty Bar. Lovely.