Okay, I’m going to be the first to admit that there must be something major that I am missing about drone music. In fact, I’m not sure that the term ‘music’ can be used to describe it, at least not in the way I define it. For something to be classified as music- as opposed to noise or sound- it must have some semblance of melody, rhythm, harmony… a beat. Wikipedia defines drone music as “a minimalist musical style that emphasizes the use of sustained or repeated sounds, notes, or tone-clusters – called drones.” They pretty much nailed it.
The First Annual Drone Summit of the Carolina’s was held at Stella’s on January 28th. Three performances were scheduled, beginning at 10pm. Arriving just before then, to find about 8 people in the bar, I thought that the term ‘summit’ was maybe a little overly ambitious. Though as the clock hit ten, a fairly steady trickle of people came through the door, and the crowd capped around fifty.
Before the first performance, the stage was set-up with a Gibson hollow-body guitar, a keyboard covered in animal jawbones, two large amps, and an array of pedals & effects boxes. I was very curious about the skeletal teeth, and the orientation of the instruments. They were directly in front of the amps, facing away from the audience. As the first performers, Noose, a duo made up of Eric Foster and Nate Andrews walked onto the stage they did, in fact, kneel down on the floor, as if in humble supplication before their amps, with their backs to the audience. Not my conventional idea of a performance. The house music came down, and the keyboardist hit a low note and held it. The tone was filtered through processors and effects and blasted through an amp into a mic, which sent the sound through the house. To my ears, it seemed like the goal was to get as much distortion as possible, before offensive feedback. To my surprise, he then reached for one of the aforementioned jawbones, and wedged it between the keyboard key and the console, forcing it to stay pressed down, sustaining the drone sound. This continued until he had 4 or 5 jawbones wedged into his keyboard. The rest of the 10 or so minute performance consisted of the duo constantly turning knobs on various boxes and pedals. The guitarist would hit a note now and then, but it was very hard to differentiate individual sounds. After about 9 minutes, the keyboardist suddenly screamed into a vocal mic, startling nearly everyone in the bar. He continued to do this for another minute or two and then, it was quiet. Noose started packing up their pedals, and unplugging cables making way for the next performance.
The house music came up, as did the volume of the conversation. The audience seemed comprised mainly of college-aged kids. There were a lot of skinny jeans, pea-coats, and thick-framed glasses, but little discussion about the drone performance. During the 30 minute changeover the next performer, Kima Moore, set up a table, a stool, and his MacBook. He ran a cable from the output jack to the house soundboard, stood up and thanked everyone for coming. The room quieted down, a few people sat down on the floor in front of him, and we waited. After a few awkward minutes, he quipped, “that’s the thing about computer music…. still loading…” Eventually we heard a sound, like one my old MacBook made when the hard drive crashed, sort of like a digital tea kettle whistle. Several layers of those digital whistles were added to the initial sound. The result was what I imagine the death-throes of a Q-Bert arcade game might sound like. This is when I left.
There was a third performance scheduled and that may have been the one to turn me on to drone music, but I can’t say because I couldn’t take anymore. I’m sure this will seem close-minded, and likely stems partially from my lack of understanding of the genre, but we can’t all like everything now can we?
