I had the honor of sharing the stage this past weekend with good friends and a legend.
Mark Pino and his project INFINITE PLASTIC INTERNAL, this time featuring Jim Ryan on Kalimba/Sax/Flute and DaDa-isms, were kind enough to join me and my project ALPHASTARE for an improvised session of live noisemaking and general sonic mischief.
Jim Ryan
Infinite Plastic Internal got started off with some modular noise action accompanied by abstract Sax. Mark moved over to percussion and drums as Jim switched on and off between Saxophone, Flute with some pedal manipulation and vocal chants here and there that to me resembled German gibberish, though Mark later told me he was speaking DaDa! Later in the set he played some enchanting rhythmic Kalimba, pretty heavily effected, though the bridge broke at one point where he continued to pull some pliers and a wrench out of his bag while instructing Mark to play while he fixed the ‘Machine’, which he eventually did.
Turns out Jim is quite an accomplished player in the abstract underground scene. He spent some time in Paris in the 60’s and at 80 years old, he brought some authentic avant flavour to the evening. It was even entertaining to watch him fix the Kalimba on the spot after which he said into the microphone ‘You have just witnessed a rescue mission’! I hope to see him perform again some time.
One powerful moment during the set was Mark’s spoken interpretation of Nico’s “Julius Ceasar” off of her timeless album ‘Marble Index’. With nothing other than a shaker for accompaniment, he delivered it with raw emotion and you can enjoy it for yourself in the video below after a collage of short bits from the rest of the set, a visual cut-up of sorts. Please enjoy!
Alphastare
I was feeling a bit anxious for this performance as I recently switched over to a different 4 track player than I have been using. The Tascam 414 MkII is much lighter thus much more portable, though it lacks the range of eq’s that it’s bulkier sister machine the 424 MkII which is what I have been using exclusively for the past couple years. Despite that and the fact that I also never ran that set up through my Ampeg Bass amp, it all went pretty smoothly. The sound was a bit strange to me but the point is really to be able to adapt in the moment and I used that to my advantage. It was fun exploring that and building up layers to play a little flute to!
I had Jon Weiss on 808 and samples, though he had to bail halfway through the set. Mark jumped up and filled in for the duration which culminated in a nice little hell raiser of a percussion jam.
ALPHASTARE
Alphastare:
DaDaEntry23 