Wednesday, March 28 was supposed to be one of the landmark nights for the Hamilton noise scene. Local acts were to be joined by genre stalwarts Prurient and Burning Star Core. Thanks to the whims of the border agencies which kept the headliners from entering Canada (obscenity laws!!!), only the local acts were able to perform. Despite the logistical chaos of a wholly improvised show, the evening's performance proved solid enough. Fossils (David Payne, Scott Johnson, and Jeremy Buchan) & Matthew Boughner were able to invoke a variety of harsh soundscapes throughout their short but inspired set.
Sadly, my attempt to preserve an aural record of the evening was foiled by the incapacity of my $2 microphone to not be overdriven simply by the volume of the performance. The MP3 file below requires explanation, as the recording process did indeed alter the sound. First off, I was using a Creative Zen, which records and compresses data to MP3 in real time. To dampen the sound and keep the crappy vocal mic from distorting, I placed the recorder inside a cloth bag, which I then covered with my jacket and some random pieces of clothing that I found on the floor. Furthermore, I used my arm to cover this whole mound of crap for the duration of the recording. Despite my hand and at least five centimetres of cloth in the way, the volume level produced during the performance was enough to overdrive my microphone to the point of distortion. Since I was actually at the show, this new "filter" on the sound is an interesting addition to what was heard that night, and serves as a nice reminder of the aesthetic divergence of performance and the process of archiving. For those of you who were not there, consider this audio file to be tangental to the live performance, and in no way indicative of how the musicians wanted themselves to be heard.
You have been warned / invited to listen.
MP3: - Fossils, live @ Loose Cannon (compressed and contained through a voice recorder direct to MP3)
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