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Donna Parker continues to experiment with new additions to her feedback-generating rig; tonight she has two microphones to play with, picking up the feedback from one with the other and vice versa. So it's a set of "new material," a lot screechier than the electronic thrumming and roaring that she used to get out of her simpler system. Also, more of the rhythm comes from moving the microphones toward and away from the speaker, rather than from the delay pedals as was previously the case. It's an interesting new set of tools for her to explore, and her instinct for cool textural explorations is as sure as ever, but I hope that as she gets comfortable with these new components, she'll turn them off occasionally and play the older-style pieces as well.
Heathen Shame is another noise act, a three-piece comprising Wayne and Kate from Twisted Village and a trumpeter. Now, I'm not a great fan of the trumpet as a musical instrument, but it turns out to be a killer noise instrument! He does a lot of weird, jagged, fast flurries of notes, screwing around with muting and with pedals. (Is that a wah pedal on a trumpet?!?) Kate and Wayne play mostly delicious washes of tuned feedback on guitars, varying distortion levels and occasionally scraping the strings against whatever's to hand.
Eloe Omoe are a drummer and a bassist, so you could be forgiven for mistaking them for a "rhythm section" until you hear them play. I made this mistake the first time I saw them, and it colored my perception of them rather badly. This time, I have a better idea what to expect, so I can appreciate the traces of rhythm that sometimes creep into what the drummer is doing, rather than fixating on the spastic blasts that take up most of his time. The bass is chunky, incredibly loud and distorted. It's not really tonal, more a dark, muddy slurry of notes, but the texture is again very interesting, particularly with the brighter drum sounds to set it off. They kind of only have one trick, but over the course of a short set they stay fairly interesting.
After all that, I rather expect Miminokoto to be a noise act. Instead, they're a Japanese psych-rock trio; my second this week! Miminokoto seem to have two modes. When the singer/guitarist is singing, it's pretty straightforward, he doesn't have the greatest voice, and I get pretty bored. Then he uncorks fabulous, exploratory, mind-twisting guitar solos. Just really weird, really interesting stuff. Every song, I find myself thinking, "Okay, I'm tired, this is enough, maybe I should leave." And then he gets to the solo, and I'm enthralled.
