Welcome to Plastics Dept.

Last Saturday in downtown Los Angeles was the inaugural concert for Plastics Dept., a new series of electronic music events supported by Perfect Circuit. That evening, a subtly sweet smell of asphalt and gasoline hung in the air as groups of attendees made their way to Coaxial Arts, an important and beloved part of LA's local music community and home to a diverse range of experimental artistic practices with technology.

The windows of Coaxial straddle its currently-cracked glass door, glowing with the hazy exhaust of cathode ray televisions stacked together in totemic testament to the enduring allure of electron flow. Like Homerian sirens, the televisions flicker vividly against the pale streetlight, gathering the enchanted from across the street and beyond a quiet railway, past El Sazón Ktracho No. 3 and the Boss Lady Player's Club, ultimately ushering them inside Coaxial's cool wash of exposed brick and LED hues.

At first glance, Coaxial may not appear quite as profound a place as the people who know it well understand innately. Yet, week after week, the relatively small and sparse concrete room it inhabits is the locus for some of the most wonderfully daring art and music performances in the sprawling city of LA. From harsh noise festivals to long-form video installations, interactive interfaces to hard-hitting techno kicks, Coaxial's dedicated team of operators and volunteers provide a space for experimentation, discovery, and community among like-minded freaks of myriad forms. It is a place where the artistic energy of devoted creatives is both shaped and celebrated, and walking through the door, this energy is palpably felt.

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As I entered, my proclivities for technological obsession immediately drew my attention to the set-ups at the center of the room and along the back wall. Foretelling the sounds to come, laptops lounged beside towering Serge synthesizer panels, various MIDI controllers circled around hardware synths, and a densely patched Eurorack system blinked along in quiet patience. Projected at the back wall was a looping reel of industrial plastics manufacturing beset behind a glowing Perfect Circuit logo, with a dedicated video synthesis and camera feedback set-up off to the side and ready for action.

Out of habit, I walked through the venue and out to the back patio, where attendees gathered in gleeful excitement, catching a breath of fresh air before downbeat. I waited patiently in line to purchase a delectable agua fresca beverage, and as the cucumber lime soda trickled over my tongue, my ears perked at a sudden burst of raw oscillator tones emerging from the patio door. Plastics Dept. was underway.

Behold The Skronk

Opening the show that night was an improvised Serge and laptop set by local performer, composer, and all-around DSP and hardware development wizard Eventuate, the creative moniker for Perfect Circuit's own Jacob Johnson. Those familiar with the PC extended universe should be familiar with Jacob, one of the legendary Patch Pals duo who has brought countless audio experiments, sick demos, and deep belly laughs to synth lovers everywhere. While no doubt capable of silly content generation par excellence, Eventuate's set demonstrated Jacob's serious command of a unique and highly personalized hybrid set-up. Fusing a three-panel Serge system with a number of bespoke designs developed over the years, along with a central laptop running custom software in Max/MSP, Eventuate filled the room with textural noise, organic and evolving pads, and chittering cybernetic sound worlds across a captivating set.

Central to Eventuate's evolving twists and turns of adventurous audio was a small skiff that housed a series of MIDI-controlled matrix mixers, an original design in Serge format which mediated the system's knotted web of patch-programmable possibilities. While direct interaction with the Serge system happened at times over the set, this MIDI-capable mixer leveraged Eventuate's custom software running in Max/MSP for automated control, allowing for immediate, dramatic shifts within the internal dynamics of the chaotic feedback patch created on the synth. Shifting textures emerged both gradually and instantaneously, moving between brain-flossing squeals to lush and enveloping drones, noisy interjections, and artifacts of analog circuits struggling toward states of stability. All the while, Eventuate performed in front of a custom jitter-based video projection which evolved in lock-step with the chaotic audio system, reminiscent of vintage video game graphics caught in the throes of terminal glitches, evoking abstract digital forms in every musical movement.

From my vantage point just beyond the patio door, Eventuate's set appeared as a critical fusion of digital memory and the emergent properties of nonlinear analog systems. Each physical movement negotiated a new modality of signal flow, recalling discrete states of behavior which in turn presented themselves in wildly unpredictable forms with each contextualized iteration. As the performance concluded, the air evaporated into comparative silence as chatter returned amidst the crowd. Still reeling from Eventuate's Serge masterclass, it was soon time for another set.

Next up was Lauren Sarah Hayes, a dynamic improviser using voice and electronics. Like the prior set, Hayes similarly blends custom Max/MSP software with analog synthesizers, yet in dramatically different forms of interactive exchange. Originally from Scotland and now based in Arizona, where she is an associate professor of sound studies at ASU, Hayes' work as a performer and sound artist is closely tied with her research into embodied cognition and the development of enactive interfaces for improvisational electronic performance.

Using a video game controller as a primary interface for performing with a range of electronic devices and custom DSP, Hayes' sounds emerged into cohesive musical form, a deluge of diverse gestures which spilled forth intuitively from the central joysticks under her deft thumbtips. Importantly, the experience Hayes creates for the audience is not one of strict command and control, binary switching, or pre-planned architectures of audio manipulation and development. Rather, each moment is caught in a spiral of multimodal exchange between sound and haptic perception, as textures shift through galactic odysseys of psychedelic vocal sampling, deep kick drum punctuations amidst lush and glassy digital tones, and a sage-like oratory in tongues, bending elegantly between pop sensibility and pure noise.

In the mess of cables and peripheral controls that flooded the venue, Hayes' voice soared above it all, drawing attention to a distinctly organic element at the center of her otherwise futuristic, almost post-human sonic forms. Likewise, the clearly well-attuned relationship exhibited in her dynamic and attentive improvisational sense made evident the role of embodied cognition in developing emergent musical structure. Dancing between knob controls and sliders, using a lower lip to direct the game controller's joysticks when hands were occupied, and leaning in and out of the microphone's audible range to capture yet-mangled audio memory, Hayes' performance showed a striking sensibility forged by cumulative practice and cultural engagement. What I witnessed was not mere recitation of pre-performance planning, but an exhibit in musical life, organismic and buzzing with the artful interplay of perception and action.

The live visuals rig used at the show

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After Hayes' set concluded, it was time for a relatively large changeover before the next set. I took this time to leer over at the video synthesis set-up being piloted for the event. While Coaxial doesn't always feature video projection and art at shows, their involvement in LA's video art scene has made it a recurring aspect of many events at the venue. Two performers that night would use their own custom video software to create visuals for their sets, but I found the visual elements provided by this little set-up quite fundamental to how special the event felt. Using a few video mixers, an iPad-based video synth, hardware video effects, and a camera feedback set-up, both the second and third sets of the night were immersed in spectacular moving lights that accentuated the audio experiments on display. Despite my familiarity with audio technologies, the world of video manipulation remains a somewhat magical endeavor in my imagination, and it was striking to me that such diverse images could be generated from what seemed like a relatively concise array of tools.

Beats from Beyond

As the lights lowered for the next set, I could tell we were in for a treat. Anthony Baldino was next, one of LA's preeminent audio mad scientists working in a diverse range of film, sound design, and music modalities, often blending elements of each with his uniquely ear-catching sonic aesthetic. Over the course of the set, Baldino's chops for creating cinematic atmospheres was on full display, colliding complex rhythms with evocative washes of synthesized sound that left me slack-jawed and mesmerized at one moment, and headbanging in 5/4 time in the next. Underneath Baldino's glitch-forward beats and masterful knob-twiddling, a constant bed of undulating liquid sounds danced between the fray of complex drums, stretched rubber snapping into form in iterative cycles of tension and release.

While incredibly well-mixed and record-ready, the most impressive aspect of Baldino's performance was his keen sense of musical movement. Allowing the tension of odd-time, glitched-out beats to reach an apex of excitement before dropping into a cozy pillow fort of lush sound design textures, Baldino exhibited an exacting treatise on why the term "IDM" falls so flat, leaving us to dance and sway in acknowledgement of brain-tickling, body-moving music without inherent contradiction.

Interestingly, Baldino was the only performer of the night to eschew the use of a laptop. The entire set, seemingly improvised to at least some degree, was performed on a Eurorack system, a daring feat reserved for only the most dedicated of modular minds. Considering he was also the only performer of the night whose solo album, Twelve Twenty Two, inspired a unique module variation from one of Eurorack's most prominent designers, this mastery in the modular realm is perhaps not surprising, yet no less captivating to see and hear firsthand.

Before long, the final performance of the night was upon us, about which I could sense a growing excitement creeping throughout Coaxial's resonant and rectangular space. Australian-born musician, sound designer, and Max For Live mastermind Tom Hall took the stage behind the simplest hardware set-up yet, consisting of a laptop, a few MIDI controllers, and an Ableton Move. The lights lowered, and immediately a flash of spectacular energy emitted from a computer-controlled strobe light as a fog machine filled the space with ethereal mist. Behind Hall, his own custom video projection danced along the screen as he started to twist a few knobs, inviting rich and raw digital tones to radiate in the air, metallic sounds bending in pitch as if we'd just been teleported to a virtual steel plant. This raucous tonal form shifted and sputtered along with the visual elements, exciting an impassioned response from the audience, some of whom seemed familiar with Hall's brand of audiovisual expertise, others caught wide-eyed in clueless anticipation.

Hall exclaimed, "I think this thing might be broken" with a wild smirk, before plunging the sonic mass into his unique rhythmic language. Recently having released the instant-classic solo album Trip Computer, the sounds that followed implemented much of the same material, but not in exact form. Rather, Hall's performance seemed an improvised expression of his own audiovisual system, reacting in whimsical exchange. Commanding his array of custom Max/MSP-based DSP like a drunken master, Hall swayed above his set-up with loose and churning movements which gave way to astoundingly controlled and precise musical expressions. Syncopated digi-bell counterpoint outlined a rhythmic frame on which gurgling glitches bloomed before disappearing into the ether, punctuating a nonlinear wander throughout Hall's well-cultivated garden of sonic delights.

Around a mid-point in Hall's set, the video projection switched to a surreal vision of an empty mall, with a silvery ball of liquid mirror in the center of the frame. As the music twisted and turned into new timbres and rhythmic shapes, evoking the atomic make-up of rave split through a hadron collider, the visuals danced around this central mirror figure. Frenetically exploring this abandoned environment of maze-like consumer excess, eerily-still escalators gave way to concrete pillars and multi-level storefronts, all wrapped in the flashing lights and encompassing fog generated by Hall's additional peripherals. While Hall's mastery of his craft is by no means simplistic, the set stood as a decisive proof of the power in developing a personal practice and aesthetic perspective, leaving the audience, myself included, in sheer amazement at the richly evocative world of light and sound he created from relatively few, though deeply potent elements.

As the night wrapped up and attendees filed back out into the street, a sense of something special having occurred was clearly felt. While only the first in this new series of electronic experiments in live music performance, Plastics Dept. seems well poised to offer a format for exactly the type of creative engagement and community that makes electronic music an enduring source of development in human artistry and interpersonal exchange. Mutable, formless, and ever-changing like plastic itself, it is unclear exactly what the next Plastics Dept. event will present, but I'm excited to see its shape develop in support of daring and dedicated artists like these.

Be sure to check out more music from these artists at the links below, and if you're around LA, don't miss the next event from Plastics Dept.!

Eventuate | Lauren Sarah Hayes | Anthony Baldino | Tom Hall