Performance context: a warehouse studio in downtown Richmond on September 20, 2009.
More detailed account of the secret show by Carey.

Grapefruit Experiment, Private Show, Richmond, 9/20/09 from Wendy Hsu on Vimeo.

The Grapefruit Experiment’s music seemed improvisational in nature, and evolved organically through different movements as I watched. After a few minutes, the sound built to a unified, powerful crescendo, and sounded for a moment or so like a band endlessly holding the final chord of a song, jam-band style. But whereas it’s annoying when jam bands do such things, The Grapefruit Experiment used it to devastating effect, especially after the relative quiet of the earlier parts of their set. Rather than stopping, they moved past this crescendo and into more noise, though the latter part of their set was a bit more structured than the first few moments I heard.

The clanking runs of dissonant notes she played reminded me of a time when I saw Dillinger Escape Plan and their lead guitarist was having an off night; he kept getting out-of-sync when doing his speedy, elaborate runs of single notes, instead playing a bunch of flat, off-key thuds. For The Grapefruit Experiment, though, this was the desired effect, and it mingled well with the deliberately arrhythmic percussion and oscillating bursts of treated noise. It wasn’t a conventionally musical set by any means, but nonetheless The Grapefruit Experiment gave a fascinating performance.

Read the entire article.

It’s great to see that what we do is “understood.” We thank you.

We’re really psyched about collaborating with our friend Kenneth Yates (Caustic Castle) on August 25, 2010 at Strange Matter, formerly Nanci Raygun and Twister – Richmond’s infamous punk venue on Grace Street. Come on out, RVA!

After our Matmos-inspired beat-oriented bike noise set, we sang and dance with everyone involved in the tour. It was a beautiful night. We’re happy and honored to have participated in this collective experience.

Gendered norms in rock music-culture:

There is also the question of buying gear. Haughty gearheads, piles of tiny, useless stuff, bowling shirts that faintly smell of weed—it’s no secret that music stores can be uncomfortable places to visit. Double the discomfort for many women. Carey Sargent plays drums in the local bands Dzian! and the Pinko Communoids, and is a sociologist who has published on the topic of local music stores. “For others with different experiences,” Sargent wrote in a 2006 paper, “such as playing privately, knowing more about hip-hop than rock, or having classical training on the guitar rather than immersion in the rock music practice, the experience can be a struggle to comprehend the language and interactions of the environment. Finding themselves in this position, these musicians may defer to others to perform, speak and choose in their place.”

Larger societal norms oriented by gender ideology:

“Obviously,” Hsu says, “it’s occurred throughout history, where women are not associated with being in public spaces, where women are associated with passivity and quietness. All of these larger cultural values come into play when were talking about rock music.”

One transformative moment, she says, in that history is when “rock and roll”—a form for excited teens in dance halls—became simply “rock.” That happened when these teens grew up, and wanted something more art-related. “It became rock, which was oppositional to pop music. Pop music was more commercialized, more superficial, and more associated with women.” The sheen of pop and the rigidity of classical music took on feminine associations, and none of them fit the rock bill.

Read the original article.

As GFX, we addressed the issue at stake by recording a C-ville Feedback video session, making a statement in the expression of sound, gestures, and embodiment in our unique ways.

At the event, the first half of our set featured me and Carey (GFX); in the second half, we were joined by Dylan Mulshine (aka Rhythm Bandit) and Ken Margolius (local bike mechanic guru!). Ken brought his “most musical bike.” Dylan played percussive sounds while processing them on metallic bike components.  The evening’s program also showcased zine reading, bike story telling by Secretly Y’all. It closed with a final bike noise jam involving members of the audience.

A debut of the Charlottesville Bike Ensemble. Anyone in? We will probably gather again for a summer performance at Random Row Bookstore. Let me (wendy.f.hsu [at] gmail.com) know if you’re interested.

GFX

Charlottesville Bike Ensemble [GFX + Ken Margolius + Dylan Mulshine]

The Everyone Jam

Download all the audio from Archive.org

View the entire Flick photo set from this event

This time, we first played with Kenneth Yates (AKA Caustic Castle) developing on a concept emerged from our FFMUP performance at Princeton. Then Erik DeLuca joined us for a quartet. Everyone seemed thrilled by the harsh-noise-electronics and no-wave-inspired thrashy guitar and drums. The color shifts in the background came from the a live video projection by Ultra Aesthetics Committee.

Video by David Eklund

We were invited to play at Princeton University as part of FFMUP (Free Form Mash Up) series curated by Charity Chan. The set also included the cricket and fiddle drone-scape of Travis Johns and Liz Meredith as well as the dynamic free guitar/drum improv of Not the Wind, Not the Flag on tour from Toronto.

The series took place in Terrace Eating Club, which is better known for its support of alternative culture than for its food (or so we were told). Princeton organizes undergraduate dining after the second year through subsidizing private eating clubs whose social function replaces or at least references the greek fraternity system found at other universities. Our GPS first sent us to the other end of Washington Street, where we found only private houses and warehouses. We began to imagine the eating club as an underground alternative secret society. After searching for too long with that image, (and sing “Eternal Flame” a capella,) we went toward the campus and stopped at the first fancy English-style house we saw. And we were there.

After the show, Charity invited us all to hang out at a graduate student bar subsidized by the university. Debasement Bar is located in the basement of a cathedral-like grad student residence hall. We had a few drinks, some wasabi peas, and chatted about music and grad student life before driving to New Brunswick to stay with Wendy’s cousins.

We enjoyed our short time the immensely – thanks to Charity and the other bands for creating such a wonderful night.

Download audio recording (wav + mp3) from Archive.org [~18 min]

Carey sounded her ever-sustained bells that she bought in China. I played amplified snow using Erik’s hydrophone while playing back samples of snow collected on our walk to the space. Erik played back and processed sounds of snow and vibes that he recorded throughout the day. We played a 28-minute improvised set. Then our set was joined by an impromptu reading (of his elegy to Lydia Gasman) by Steven Margulies.

After a short break, we went into a second set starting with Carey’s bells, live and captured on Erik’s tape recorder. Erik and I then joined Carey with electronic sounds. I used a bit reduction pedal to noisify the sound of snow-crushing. Erik played back and manipulated sounds of Carey’s bells. Then the projected sound started to cut in and out sweeping in as low-frequencies, as Erik gestured the smell of something burning. Thus we ENDED our set. Not only that, we put an END to the speaker, a decrepit JBL dust-collector donated by UVa’s VCCM [Virginia Center for Computer Music].

Organizer Wes Milholen said that they will honor the end of the speaker by shining a spotlight on it. Maybe they will even suspend it mid air.

The End.

Video by David Eklund.