Thursday, September 4 Opening Night (Listen to a 30-minute MP3 from set 3 of this night here featuring Michael Johnsen, Katt Hernandez, and Neil Feather) First Set: Audrey Chen, solo voice Narrative description: The always-lovely Audrey Chen stepped to the microphone for the convocation of the festival's main concerts.  Her piece was an ecstatic lullabye dirge and lounge roar sung through her own internal distortophone coupled with a wordless dramatic monologue and underscored by what I imagined was a madcap chase going on on the drive-in screen of her mind to which she occasionally contributed sound effects.  She seemed to be tasting the noises as they came out of her mouth, sometimes landing squarely on her own voice after a daring dive from some other sound reality, which she traversed with emotive theatrical gestures of seduction, delight, and mastery.  There were recognizable sounds and rhythms, too, including a long sequence of no's, "NOOOOO NOOO no no no noooooo" interspersed with but's, "NOOOO but NOOOO but", which at first I imagined were impersonations of her young son, and then seemed as much a mom's tantrum as a child's. Thursday night, Second Set: 4 saxophones; John Berndt, John Eaton, Michel Doneda, Gianni Gebbia Narrative description: The four sax players got together and created a machine to catalog the behavior of water and air.  It began with a chorus of wrong sounds, a mechanical/animal process — or mechanical animal machine for traveling over difficult terrain like ice forms, the sea calm but aching in the background.  Pitched a hole into erupting artifice, and the planets came to consensus on volume and duration of rushing, breaking, freezing, spurting. A diminished theme attracts and repels like some WOW flood, enormous interrupted sound building uninterrupted.  Let's do that again like a scary ride at the fair.  But then it's just remembering distant youthful rides while riding the current grownup ride that doesn't go anywhere because it doesn't need to anymore. Gone.  Plaid hills in wind.  Flight urgent with more outside forces involved.  Themes come back like Marlon Brando underneath a sheet of metal, layered in.  (Did I mention dramatic shifts in altitude?) A sudden, delicate duet of wrongs sounds by Michel Doneda and Gianni Gebbia. In the end, machines are cleaned and rotated and limbered. Thursday night, third set Neil Feather on nondo Katt Hernandez on viola Michael Johnson on musical saw !Listen to a 30-minute MP3 from this set here! Heading: Titles for the as-yet non-existent music supplied by Michael Johnson in a tall but tiny voice "The trees came down to the beach and carved their names in the sunbathers bellies" Narrative description: Occasional sounds beyond human endurance underscored by rhythmic, short, even figures of notes underscored by a nondo landscape.  Distant rough textures like roots preparing to leave the earth they breathe like fish preparing to come onto land.  A suggestion of velocity from one piece of metal to the other, suggestion taken then, under its own steam, a slow arrival greeted by the complex musical saw one-saw band. Poetic approximation: Church mouse love island halving beef scroll collection. Timid ample awful land of some softness preparation seeks almond-shaped anonymity Like elephantine grace viewed from above and stewed with saffron for one hour. Mock apples deemed well-trained or well-groomed either way Issued my system From a small glass Platform on the bayou Of tentacles steaming, marching in another time, almost political like the Progressive era steamed, as I said, with great care to blend misty tendrils and sanctimony as if melting, as if ordinary, but plainly a window closed on unending stew. Heading 2: "last one out of this burning building's a rotten egg" Narrative description 2: If all the instruments' voices supply both question and answer, they devise a way to play together by asking similar questions, for example about electrical storms, trees, or colossal antiquities. Poetic approximation 2: [from recording] curving and terribly long, one catching fire from the other monkey's tail (skip) a dance hall for squid opens onto eyes the size of cities outside a dervish is jogging in a hurricane, the traffic of anticipation melts our shoes the viola jumps from the window, flames licking its wooden seams, while the saw and nondo patiently become a cloud for it to land in Saw sings, viola sings (skip, applause) Thursday night, Fourth set Twig Harper on electronics Ron Anderson on lute Chris Cooper on guitar, objects, electronics Heading: Electronic construction site pleasure system Narrative description: A collective fumbling with instruments, theatrical hyjinx involving ladders, chairs, walls and potential structures in general.  Twig loses interest in the electric sea and initiates making a mess by throwing furniture and flapping a metal case like a big puppet mouth at the audience.  Jump cut to Ron's lute with its vernacular vocals, warped where it sits atop a tower of chairs. "Good thing they don't make chairs out of glass anymore," Twig says. Poetic approximation: Who we are: talent from American cities for producing reverberations that are very very lifelike talent from American cities for perfecting the old three headed hydra with nothing but an ax and a terrible stream of alarm clock ankle bracelets a gold pinto downed suddenly reading about it in the paper aboard the Neverland in the sunny harbor of Crete after passing over endless sea flora in perfect symmetry all around our talent from American cities Bakes its muffins with royal ancient abandon Thinking much this way during the holding pattern of my father's restaurant Thursday night, fifth set Paul Neidhardt, drumset Vattel Cherry, acoustic bass Michael Gayle, piano Michel Doneda, saxophone Poetic approximation: Soft cloud colony disintegrated likeness of tame solids, not long after cheetah brain ambush of ten ten ten enormous rides in gondolier imperatives.  I have this chin! (have you! Please!) We rearrange our pastels to fit with our terrible (because strong and enormous) drapes and beds (beads) My pie is an undercover pie whose top crust covers the whole of your cliff-dwelling city ways. My pie is a whole pie nation stationed at rivers and itinerant oceans. A rare rhythm section enclave amid the gossip trees. (expansive) Trio mission morning Aphorism sanctuary A towering salute Sustained over a Large estate peopled by Unusually reflective animals A bright series of breath-like phrases, moving moving to free melody breath-land Ample sand mountain Anticipation Disintegration Degradation Pencil foundation like Polished skin light Sandpaper avalanche Solid signature thresh loom Insisting loom Twisting apart colonies of pressure A lumpy embroidery unraveling fast in the hands of dusk and symptoms of rash Ardour-producing waves