What does experimental music sound like? I’ve been listening to it all my adult life and I still have no good answer.
Rock music sounds like rock music. Big guitars. Hip-hop sounds like hip hop. Booming beats. Pop sounds like pop. Slick textures and a bright mix.
We all have a sense of what these types of music are “supposed” to sound like. Satisfying our musical appetite with respect to established genres involves a delicate dance of meeting expectations to give us a sense of warm familiarity while subverting the rest to offer us something new.
But what is experimental music “supposed” to sound like? The notion of experimental music as a genre with fixed formal characteristics seems like a contradiction.
I put the question to Heather Timmons. Heather should know. She’s a booker and sound engineer at local clubs such as The Jungle, Midway Cafe and The Rockwell, where she ran the soundboard recently for experimental musicians Claire Rousay and Kelly Bray.
Heather sifts through more music in a week than most of us get through in a year. What’s more, she thinks more deeply about the way the pieces of an evening’s program of music fit together. Working closely with artists at all sorts of events, from concerts to theatrical productions, Heather finds ways to turn the sounds they’re dreaming up in their heads into physical realities coming out of the PA.
When the targeted sounds fall within the parameters of recognized genres, such as rock, hip-hop and pop, there’s a common point of reference to help guide Heather and the musicians to their final destination. But with experimental music, all bets are off.
“These shows are definitely different than the music shows I usually work, which made it fun,” Heather remarked.
“For this particular show, Bray and Rousay had their own setups really dialed in and contained which streamlined the mixing process. They both shaped what the majority of the show was going to sound like beforehand. I just made minor adjustments to help complement their visions and keep things running smoothly.”
If I hear what Heather is saying, it seems like experimental music isn’t “supposed” to sound like anything in particular, other than what the musician dreams up. And the sound engineer serves the function of communicating that vision through the PA with as little interference as possible.
I think Heather is being a little modest here about what her own insights, technique and experience positively add to the end result, but I’ll take her at her word that experimental artists sound like themselves, if they sound like anything at all. It’s not the answer I was looking for, but maybe it’s the one I should’ve expected.
Hit this
Friday: Let’s Rock Cancer! (Crystal Ballroom, Somerville)
The benefit to cure cancer returns to Crystal Ballroom for its third edition. While the presenting outfit has changed over the years (Indie617 took over the duties from Light of Day Records), the lineup has remained pretty consistent. Vapors of Morphine is the big draw for many. The band cracked the code years ago on how to make a saxophone sound like it’s been dipped in Tom Waits-flavored pixie dust. Catch them live before they trot off on a South American tour in the spring. The Chelsea Curve, Muck & the Mires, The Ray Liriano Experience and … Go! also perform in support of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Cancer Care Access Program.
Saturday: Doss, Waterfall Strainer, Tiffy (Lilypad, Cambridge)
New York indie rock outfit Waterfall Strainer rolls through town on the heels of its latest album “Expiration Date.” The album cover depicts a fresh strawberry in half-focus, which offers itself as a mundane subject for observation but looks stranger the longer you look at it. You’ll be able to take a good look at the band in the comfy confines of the Inman Square spot that’s too small for you to excuse yourself to the single-use restroom without everybody noticing. No worries, we’re only human. Locals Doss and Tiffy give this bill its Boston rock bona fides.
Dec. 19: Bella’s Bartok, Rupert Selection (Middle East, Cambridge)
Has it already been two years since Bella’s Bartok released its uplifting gypsy punk record “Apocalypse Wow!”? Wow, time flies. Crackerjack songwriting, singalong refrains and engaging crowd work makes this band a must-see. I last saw them at a packed show at The Rockwell in 2023. If its tour history at Songkick is accurate, that was the last show they played within spitting distance of the lavish offices of Cambridge Day. The Amherst band tends to skirt the Boston area rather than gig through it, so it might be another two years before it returns to our doorsteps. Get ‘em while they’re hot. Local alt rockers The Rupert Selection open.
Live: Claire Rousay at The Rockwell
The Rockwell played host Dec. 4 to two musicians, Claire Rousay and Kelly Bray, who earn their bread snatching sonic epiphanies out of the mouth of chaos, and vice versa.
I’ll set aside the question of what experimental is “supposed” to sound like (see above – hat tip, Heather Timmons) and simply relate what it, in fact, sounded like at the show.
All things considered, it was a night of ambient electronic music with regular interventions by “found sound,” field recordings and prepared instruments.
Headliner Rousay is a musical animal with a nearly continuous molting season. The artist’s prolific output is marked by oscillations between varied styles. The two most common have been, so far, a signature brand of ambient music (well represented by the latest LP “a little death”) and an electronica sound that reins in the open-ended vagaries of ambient experiment into the marginally more restrictive harness of pop composition (the full length “sentiment” fits this description).
Armed with guitar, laptop, keyboard and samplers galore, Rousay came prepared to do battle on a number of fronts. The audience, well-stocked with “connoisseurs of sound” (read: older white men with serious expression and dark clothing), was ready for anything. What we heard was a healthy dose of offerings from the latest album, including a rendition of the song “somehow,” which I expounded upon in these pages just two weeks ago.
Avant pop or ambient? Ultimately, genre is bunk as a theoretical concept. What decides the difference between types of sounds in a live show is how the audience responds. And since there were no song breaks and the audience clapped only twice – at the start of the set and at the end – this could only have been an ambient set.
Local avant jazz noisemaker Kelly Bray opened with a bracing set of highs and lows, employing a trumpet fed through a sampler fed through god knows what else. What would Louis Armstrong say if he were alive today? He’d say he loves it, then ask why people are using AI to shoehorn his voice into a New Orleans jazz version of Flo Rida’s “Low (Apple Bottom Jeans).”
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
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