There’s a saying among your grandparents generation that children ought to be “seen and not heard”. At the Aidan Baker show at the Aviary Gallery in Jamaica Plain on Friday, viagra March 29th, I had the converse feeling about “noise” music: it should be heard and, perhaps, not seen.
On Friday, Aidan Baker took the stage, which, at JP’s tiny Aviary Gallery, was a corner of the room. A crowd of about 20 people crouched around the gallery to watch Baker perform. With an electric guitar in his hand and 8 pedals at his feet, and the attention of an attentive and utterly silent crowd, Baker began creating an hour long set of drone-like ambient noise.
“Noise”, in common use, means any “unwanted sound”. Unwanted or not, humans hear noise, but we don’t see it. Toronto experimental/ambient/noise musician Aidan Baker creates noise, both ethereal and complex, using an electric guitar, a series of pedals, and a bow. Baker is an established artist with dozens of albums and a lengthy career with his “drone metal” band Nadja, in addition to his successful solo career.
Aidan Baker’s music is hypnotic and intricate and both thoughtfully created and spontaneously improvised. He creates captivating intrinsic, moody loops to create a trance-like atmosphere. But the challenge with noise music is making it interesting to watch; the only interactive component to Baker’s set was when he took a bow to his guitar to create a hard edge to soft ambient sound.
My friend accompanied me to the Aviary Gallery and commented that Baker’s music would make a suitable soundtrack, but as a live performance, it’s less successful. I had to agree; while Aidan Baker is undoubtedly talented as a live performer, there was something missing. Many electronic artists create interactive shows by playing with different forms of media and visuals. Otherwise, audiences would be witnessing only computers and mixers. The same could be said for noise music: without any interactive feature, audiences are watching someone operate pedals. And in an hour long set, that can grow visually tiresome, despite any success of sound.
Is there a way to watch noise? We’ll see.
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