From post-classical guitar, to textured electronica, to no input mixing, noise knows no bounds.
On the night of Oct. 28, independent record store Something Else Records supported Kingston’s local noise scene by welcoming several artists: Slow Man Tofu, Bilal Nasser, and Kahraba. Hosted by CFRC radio show and community programmer NO STATIC‘s Michael Boulos, the event brought together an intimate venue with a small crowd. The relaxing atmosphere acted as the calm before the show’s storm of musical sounds.
A subgenre of experimental music, noise amplifies artistic expression by prioritizing unique, at times high-volume, listening experiences over conventional live-music techniques. With limited structural composition, noise challenges what sound is expected to be.
The show began with Slow Man Tofu, a solo act performed by David Parker, a 2014 master’s graduate from Queen’s School of Computing, starting his set at around 7:30 p.m.
After inviting the crowd to get closer, Parker’s meditative sounds slowly built in volume. His set began with soft field recordings from earlier in June of birds chirping while cars passed by at the Oak Street Community Garden. Then, he recited reflective poetry from a notebook placed on his soundboard. As the set went on, Parker’s noise and vocals echoed, scratched, then wailed through the speakers.
Influenced by DAN School of Drama and Music faculty member and experimental sound artist Matt Rogalsky, Parker told The Journal that his techniques have had a “profound influence” on his work as a mentor, collaborator, and friend, because his techniques have helped him deconstruct “rigid thinking about what sound should be.”
At 8:20 p.m., Palestinian-Canadian post-classical guitarist Bilal Nasser played in Kingston for the first time.
His impressive fingerpicking technique was augmented by hooking his guitar to pedals. Some percussive work appeared when he knocked on the guitar’s wooden body to produce a beat. Paired with dreamy vocals and a string ensemble playing through the speakers, Nasser’s ambient sound captivated the crowd.
On tour across Canada to support his new protest album, Every Martyr is A Universe, Nasser shared with the crowd that he wrote these pieces during his involvement with the University of Windsor’s student encampment after he questioned art’s purpose during the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
“There’s hypocrisy in making music about it. My response is, I’m going to play guitar about it. When, you know, in other historical examples, we did a lot more, and we should be doing much, much more,” Nasser said in an interview with The Journal.
Nasser brought history into his set through his repetitive tape loops, which featured Lebanese composer Marcel Khalife, a lifelong defender of Palestinian rights through music, and Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s “Ahmad emerges from the Ancient Wounds.”
To end the night, NO STATIC’s Michael Boulos experimented with no-input mixing under the stage name Kahraba, the Arabic word for electricity.
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Starting at 9:30 p.m., his short set had a haunting twist, as Boulos veiled himself and his mixing board with a white sheet illuminated by a flashlight. His technique featured looping and distortion, producing sounds that droned throughout the space as the bass vibrated the floor.
Boulos defined his practice to The Journal as “tinkering away” and being open-minded.
“There isn’t technique or years of practice because I lack any sense of regiment or rigor. I did not do well or stick to a lot of the musical instruments that I learned, but I still wanted to play and perform, and this was a way for me to do it,” he said.
Although all sets created distinct sounds that showcased a variety of techniques, all artists experimented with volume. From gentle plucked strings to harsher roars, intense dynamics are a fundamental element of noise.
“If you’re listening to something and it’s all loud all the time, […] it will take you out of that experience, so I think it’s important to have that variation,” Nasser explained. “It’s as if I were talking and I wasn’t stopping to breathe, and it’s just sentence after sentence. You kind of lose that sense of any structure, and maybe sometimes you want that, but most of time you want that breath in there.”
By captivating the crowd through volume, their conveyed messages can be even louder.
Although the sound of Kingston appears like it’s all rock and roll, local noise artists like Slow Man Tofu and Kahraba are showing the Limestone City some much needed genre diversity. And if talented touring musicians like Bilal Nasser are set list promises, then NO STATIC is sure to create more original nights of music that can appease noise enthusiast and newcomers alike.
Tags
Kahraba, local music, Michael Boulos, no input mixing
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