MONDOmagazine

The Dead of Winter Will Not Be Silent Festival
Various Artists
at The Renaissance Cafe, Toronto
January 25^th and 26^th

By Allana Mayer
Photography by Mondo Lulu

Please don’t blame me, but I went into this festival with an academic mindset, and it stuck with me throughout. Maybe I kindly, paternally thought I was partaking in outsider music and decided to assimilate it into my schemas in the most pretentious way possible; maybe I’ve just been reading this book called Noise too much. In Noise, Jacques Attali states that music in its purest form is that which defies repetition, recording, and personal listening – thus, that which can only be experienced live. Of course, everything can be recorded nowadays, and you can always experience music in a recorded setting without having been to the corresponding live event. And you can draw from these experiences, but Attali insists that it’s simply not the same. From my experience of the Dead of Winter festival, I’d be inclined to agree. Headphones quite simply cannot shake your couch, and even the best speaker set can’t parallel watching, and feeling, someone fuck around. There’s kinesthetic empathy when watching someone dance, sure, but there’s no other art you can really physically feel. I’m tempted to label the whole thing “performance art” and be done with it, rather than try and create a separate category for music that isn’t really music, or improvised work unlike any other in history, but what a mess that would be.

I wish there was time and space to talk about each performer in detail, but often festivals don’t allow you that luxury. And I (and, it seemed, the rest of the crowd) enjoyed each performance for what it brought to the table, so calling highlights and lowlights seems pointless. The differences were more interesting than the total value judgment in this case. One thing my friend and I debated was how the performers went about sustaining their sets. Each performance was a solid block of time, without feeling too long – but some performers obviously came with bags full of props and supplies to play with, while others had minimal setups and simple concepts. Some artists (Six Heads, Bonsai Forestry) felt that variation and experimentation made the time pass, lounging on the floor and fiddling with whatever silly props they had brought along. Sets like Women in Tragedy or Cauterwall, singular performers seated with limited animation, made it a lot easier to just close one’s eyes and listen to (and feel!) their efforts. Others settled into a nice groove, found a pleasing feeling and sound, and relaxed into that experience. Well, “relax” might not be the right word: from the desperate screams of Ptarmigan to the concentrated efforts of Knurl’s metal bowing, some performers seemed at the edge of their physical limits. Parkade’s set was the most physical of the lot, being outdoors and across the street from the Renaissance Cafe, but they didn’t actually seem exerted – a bit of rolling in the snow and some stripping is all. It’s ironic (and I know you hate that word, too, but bear with me) that their set, the quietest of the lot, most easily cast itself into the concept, “The Dead of Winter Will Not Be Silent.” Nobody else got adults to run around in a snowy parkette after dark, or giggle and clap and make noise of their own, and nobody else pulled passersby and homebodies out for a peek, either.

Through the entire festival I was struck by the positivity and negativity of the crowd. I enjoyed everything, though I spent a lot of time taking the piss out of people’s setups, or the running “two-minute break” joke (read: “I’m finished setting up and now I need to go prepare myself mentally and/or smoke up”). I was so pleased, I felt as though nothing truly negative could be said, so everything critical was in jest, just joking around.

Of course, some of the people making snide comments actually meant them, and it took me a while to realize it. I swore about having to leave my comfortable couch for Parkade’s performance across the street, but eventually got up and went. A man sitting behind me, playing the “I didn’t pay twelve bucks to stand in the cold” card, actually refused to join the rest of the audience. His loss, I suppose, and the gain of those befuddled onlookers peering out their windows or passing by on the sidewalk. Something about being part of the “audience”, even in the middle of a park, made me feel free to look straight at those people, wave, laugh, catcall, as if they were part of the show. I even made the mistake of shouting “Yay!” at the end of Cauterwall’s set, which ended because the performer announced his laptop was frozen. I wasn’t celebrating the end of the set, but the fact that the laptop died. You know you’ve put in a lot of quality effort when things break on you. This I can say from experience.

Amidst it all, the most insistent idea that occured to me was that noise is like getting fucked. This is, I guess, gender-specific (or for bottoms, at any rate): there’s a sort of invasive quality that you flinch back from at first, but soon relax into and allow through you. Your body is literally vibrating, rumbling from the tones and volume, and while you’re not entirely sure it’s good for you, your initial clenching soon gives way as you find that strange hidden quality of visceral pleasure within it. There are snatches of recognizable sensations (analogous to some unmodified samples of familiar sources) and then there is simply the overall body sensation, a generalized throb throughout.

It may take a certain amount of masochism to find noise erotic, but I don’t doubt it’s true for at least a few attendees. The other elements involve being gearheads (ooh! Tape recorders, pedals, contact mics! Bowing styrofoam!) and feeling a special kinship with the select assembly of geeks. We’re all just regular people fucking around with toys and tools, wasting money and probably blowing shit up in the process of fiddling. And we all make stupid mistakes and laugh and insult and joke when things go wrong, and I don’t think anyone takes offense. It takes a lot of chutzpah to get onstage and in doing so admit you have no fucking clue what you’re doing. But the genre is almost inherently foolproof: nothing can sound “bad” in noise. Call me crazy, but it seemed as though the best moments occurred when no one really meant them to: a mess of distortion would suddenly coalesce into a pure note, causing me to scribble nonsense like “She wasn’t creating the tone, but she was.” This is why no one really respects it, and that’s okay. We’d do it anyways, I’m sure. After all, if we didn’t care, we wouldn’t have it up so loud.

Special thanks to Ryan Clark for providing me with the festival’s setlist:
Friday, January 25th
Cauterwall
6 heads
Ptarmigan
Roman Pilates
Knurl

Saturday, January 26th
Chris Worden
Bonsai Forestry
Parkade
The Dead Are Those Who Have Died
Almost Blue Sunshine
Women In Tradgedy