Pitchfork

Photos and write up by Daphne Carr Above: Thurston Moore and Nancy Garcia

Standing outside smoking or rifling around downstairs in the sub-basement merch area-- that's where the action is at No Fun. A three-day festival curated by brazen Brooklyn impresario Carlos Giffoni, No Fun is a semi-annual gathering of the noise tribes in a convenient locale for trade, talk, criticism, and rage. Noise is the currency, and it is valued primarily in units of harshness, measured in volume and consumed on the skin as much as in the ears.

This year, No Fun moved to Manhattan after four years at the extreme outlying venue the Hook. As suspected, the three-room, two-stage Knitting Factory setup provided city-club problems as the upstairs "mainstream" folks and the downstairs drones went back-to-back, not concurrently, causing a siege rush approximately every 35 minutes for the 21 or so hours that made up this year's fest. The Knit's needfully tight security had the thankless job of policing the order and flow of a crowd convened in celebration of disorder and chaos. No Fun patrons and the Knit staff clashed particularly in the downstairs room, where the "stage" is level with the audience, thus conducive to moshing. This morning, a noise message board was already filled with complaints about the "Black Panther" discipline of the venue's mostly black security, a critique lodged in the morality-free zone that is the noise underground. The problem is one for Giffoni, of course, since he has the equally thankless job of bringing over 50 artists who shall not be contained into a commercial setting without being put in jail, going bankrupt, or going insane-- kudos to him for the effort.

Carlos Giffoni

At No Fun, the jokes wrote themselves: Day one's schedule of bands opened with Sickness and day three ended with the Haters. All emotions between would be explored in time. But the term "noise" can be expansive, so the bill was open. Krautrocking electronic legends Cluster were the big draw for Saturday, and were the purveyors of the most consonant, melodic moments of the weekend. As befitted Hans-Joachim Roedelius' flowing white tunic, the Cluster show went the high road of scientific experimentalism but was met with the considerable challenge of finding now technology for their 70s future sound. They ended up with a musique conrete meets synth showroom experiment that explored sub-rumbles against tintinnabulation samples.

Cluster

Friday highlighted drone legend Tony Conrad in collaboration with M.V. Carbon (formerly of Bride of No No and currently of Metalux). As an elder statesperson, Conrad didn't have to make his set loud to be heard. First with an electric monochord, then amplified violin, and then ukulele, Conrad amplified primarily through his considerable magnificent gestures, his eyes lulling behind great glasses, tongue dragging in his lips in concentration, body rolling to its own seasick pitch. Carbon primarily played electric cello, playing straight woman to Conrad with her stock position and stern face. Her tones turned into a fruitful, noisy conversation with Conrad's as his strings splintered.

Tony Conrad and M.V. Carbon

Thurston Moore's Friday collaboration with dancer/musician Nancy Garcia was considerably less well-wrought. Moore looms large over No Fun, and his presence is a requirement but not really a highlight. His guitar noise gave Garcia a promising beginning for her Flashdance/ballet mashup, but as she crawled from dance to drums to guitar and back to body, Moore never left his lockgroove, as if he were the constant and she the novelty. Rather, her considerable palette of sounds and gestures demanded a dynamic response.

Thurston Moore and Nancy Garcia

Drama was explicit in the Sunday closing set from the Haters. GX Jupitter-Larsen placed his Untitled Title Belt instrument over the shoulder of a hooded figure in a wrestling mask and brown wig. Two executioners and a man in a leather hangman's mask stood around the "her," noise erupting, them gently prodding the person until he/she fell to the ground. The hangman dragged a mic from stage to chair. The fallen man/woman's resistance was the determining factor in the event duration. She fell in fewer than 15 minutes. In its briefness, weird calm, and undeterminable sound origin, the Haters' was the most unsettling set of the festival.

But even with all the drama, the Haters couldn't come close to the intensity of Consumer Electronics' set, which immediately preceded them. Philip Best (also of power electronics pioneers Whitehouse) was in rare form, with Dominick Fernow of Prurient at the laptop controls for the set. Stripping, screaming at the stage, fucking the wall, smearing spit on the crowd-- Best was all that the crowd wanted. A woman in front of me took off her shirt and unzipped her pants, clawing at Best whenever he came near. Boys smashing forward to be touched by Best stopped to take pictures of her. Noise's own girl gone wild! It was all very confusing, or as Sasha Frere-Jones would say, "hard to parse." Pleasure, power, spectacle caught in camera flashes at maximum volume, with Best barking about "you fxcking cxnts."

Consumer Electronics

On Saturday, rage was similarly focused after Tovah Olson's set was cut by an angry soundwoman who wanted the crowd to "stop punching each other in the face." The murmur before the following set was that it was going to get brutal just cuz. All boundaries and authority must be smashed! Hair Police thus delivered, controlling the crowd with bursts of drums and held-back moments of mesmerizing black metal sing-scream calls of "I cannot/and will not." The response came silently and totally from the crowd, as spazzing drums sounded and the sweating, stinking, writhing sea of boys and men slammed into one another, just daring to be told, dared, or forced to stop by someone in control. Their set ended and wild, fist-pumping applause rang out-- another successful, confusing, and dark night in the noise basement.

Hair Police