Primus-ripped breakbeats? iPhone-mediated anthropocene dreamscapes? Synth-drenched splendor? Surreal networked environments of light and sound? Psychedelic fractal chickens?!

Why, yes—we brought all this and more to Coaxial Arts in downtown LA earlier this month for our third installment of Plastics Dept, our semi-regular program of live electronic music and video performance that celebrates all sorts of creative interactions with technology. This time, we invited Mike Nigro and Matthew D. Gantt to visit Plastics Dept in the headlining spots as part of their summer tour along the west coast. Bringing Mike's inspired ambient compositions and Matt's otherworldly systems of simulated physics was a joy, and if you haven't taken a moment to read our recent interview with both of them, then by all means, do.

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Rounding out the bill were two local acts, David Rothbaum and Aloe F, both of whom brought unique and complimentary sound worlds to the show. David is a film and television composer and minimalistic beat-weaver extraordinaire, having collaborated with cutting edge acts like clipping, with a recent release of quite-excellent solo tunes available on his bandcamp page. Aloe F is the duo project of performance and sound artists Iiia X and Meredith "Mas" Guerrero, who perform captivating sets of elliding ambience, noise, and beats entirely with two iPhones. Often performing in repose and almost entirely still, they improvise collages of sound that effortlessly deliver both chaos and coldness, characterizing the hypersaturated media environment of modern living and its resultant desensitizing effects in a singular and elegant gesture.

While Matt's set featured his own characteristic audiovisual components, each of the sets before it were treated to the visual alchemy of Mystic Circuits' wiggler-in-chief Eli Pechman, who had a unique system in tow that blended live video feed into a small video processor. While most would expect such a wizard of plugs and jacks to unveil a monstrous modular within his mysterious briefcase, Eli instead spent the night primarily manipulating physical objects—toy chickens and other oddball shapes—and lighting them by hand, creating incredibly rich textures and fractal designs that filled the sonic space with visual wonder.

For this round of Plastics Dept retrospection, we're trying something new. Below you can explore each set from these performers, recorded live at Coaxial Arts, and peer through a window into our world of electronic sound wherever you are. In the meantime, we are planning even more fun for future events, so watch out for new announcements and upcoming shows!

Plastic Sounds

David Rothbaum kicked off the show with his unique blend of minimalist grooves and syncopated synth melodies. Using an Elektron Tonverk alongside a mid-sized modular rig featuring some oft-overlooked classics like the Monome Teletype, the set took a course through shifting syncopations and sliding bleeps, delving in and out of digital inflection as sample rates sputtered and granular playheads garbled their otherwise rich and organic tone.

As rhythms expanded and contracted into diverse and angular forms, David commanded his instruments with a patient curiosity. Attending to parametric tweaks with an exploratory sensibility not unlike a late summer luncher considering the contents and conventions of their mezze plate, knob turns often followed from a lifted brow, as if each instrumental interaction marked both discovery of and pleasant satisfaction in unexpected yet familiar flavors. One notable easter egg in the set is a sample from Primus turned trip-hop excellence, and while I can't assume what Mr. Claypool might think of hardware electronic sets like this, I found the groove injected by the sample to be quite compelling, unable to help myself in nodding along to its crunchy and lo-fi lilt.

Next up was Aloe F, who positioned themselves centrally in the space of Coaxial upon a shared bench, sinking into a calm and comfortable posture as they focused attention towards their axes-of-choice, two iPhones. While many musicians have used iOS and other touch-screen laden portable computing devices in their work, I've never seen the degree of consideration that Aloe F puts into this choice from a performance and conceptual standpoint. Of course, the phones and their many potential apps offer plenty of sonic possibilities that are useful for creating a wide range of captivating sounds; Aloe F's torrent of dreamlike audio collage is evidence of this fact on its own.

Yet, the performances Aloe F creates offer something more than simply using these tools as instruments, as their performance aesthetic makes clear they also mean for them to be seen as phones—welcoming the craned-neck posture, hands held contorted for deft thumb control, and the nearly vacant, all-consumed interiority focused on the libidinal locus of the touch screen—modes of interaction that don't recall metaphors of musical instruments, but instead modern life as mediated through an inescapable technocracy. I'm at risk of over editorializing, to be sure, but as Aloe F's sonic constructions morphed between rubberized delay manipulations, soft hues of droning pads, and punctuating kick drums, the chaos and anxieties within the audio texture seemed to converse naturally with the otherwise dissociated affect displayed by the musicians themselves.

Oxtail Recordings founder and label operator Mike Nigro was first of the touring acts to perform, treating the space to a vast sea of synthesizer and field recording textures. According to Mike, the material performed on this now-concluded west coast tour is meant to become part of his forthcoming new album, and the compositional sensibility I found in the work communicated this practiced perspective without feeling constrained to a strict plan. Mixing elements from a computer and applying live effects using a few MIDI controllers, Nigro's ambient exploration unfolded into motoric basslines, calmly dancing melodies, and the hiss and chatter of digital noise that evoked the exhaust of a complex machine.

Over the course of the set, elements smoothly enter and exit, the texture always shifting between motifs and sonic elements, each with a pulse that keeps things moving forward yet frozen in time all at once. Towards the middle of the set, the lush synthesizer texture evaporated into a filtered window of field recorded sound, which offered a moment of repose from the perpetual motion, drawing my ears ever closer as slow and somber tones again emerged.

Rounding out the night's performances was an excursion through the digital dreamland of Matthew D. Gantt's unique audiovisual performance practice. Pioneering the ultimate power-move in computer music, Gantt's instrumental set-up included not one, but two laptops, fused together in some unholy ritual of avant-gardist adventurism, with a central computer for sound control and another dedicated to the generative 3D environments created and manipulated by video game engine software. At his fingertips were a collection of MIDI controllers, which seemed to be initiating and shaping sonic events, though Gantt's networked assemblage of interactive sound and video made it at times hard to parse clear connections between his physical movements and the changes expressed in light and sound.

Without such deductive possibilities, I was instead satisfied by the barrage of content flung screen and speaker-wise throughout the set, as Matt's playful combinations of MIDI preset instruments and open source graphics assets became playthings in his grand cinematic system. Drones, artist manikins, and crows became characters in a surreal narrative, exploring an increasingly chaotic sunken palace environment as Matt's characterful interplay of processed and mangled synths, the pleasing thwap of modern drum sounds, and MIDI choirs provided a fittingly maximalist score to the unfolding imagery. Even in moments when Matt's world felt unknowable, I wanted to live there awhile, explore its inner reaches and unseen corners, and listen for more of the sounds echoing across its digitally modelled architecture.

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And just like that, another Plastics Dept. has been melted down, reshaped, and circulated. We're already gearing up for another show, with details coming soon—be sure to watch out for details as we announce the new sounds we're bringing out to LA, and we will catch you at the next show!