Striking Mechanism

New Experimental Label Debuts in Athens

originally published May 14, 2008

Maybe you just have to really understand the rules before you can break them. That seems to be the case with the artists featured on Quartet Solo Series, the first release from the new experimental label Striking Mechanism. Each featured performer is classically trained with a stellar resume in performance and composition, but the works here are anything but conventional.

"As classical musicians, we're pretty willing when we improvise to just throw all that out the window as much as we can," says label founder and featured artist Jonathan Chen. "Some people might argue that that's not possible, but generally speaking, we can be pretty willing when we really want to do something different than playing covers of Mozart and stuff like that."

There will definitely be no covers at ATHICA tonight. Instead, the four artists featured on the Quartet Solo Series will each perform a 20-minute set of his/her own experimental work. Chen, who has a master's degree in violin performance, will perform a set consisting of creating feedback through various acoustic spaces and altering it through electronics. "The resulting sounds can vary from being uncannily similar to woodwind or brass instruments, to sounding like a car without its muffler," says the official press release.

Andrew Dewar’s set will consist of a work for solo soprano saxophone exploring "the harmonic spectrum and polyphonic possibilities of a single cross-fingered trill through a slow, gradual shift in the performer's embouchure and the seal pressure of the instrument's keys." You don't have to know what that means to appreciate that this will not be a traditional sax solo. Likewise, Marina Peterson will playing her cello in ways you may have never seen before - making use of crumpled paper, clothespins and other objects applied to the strings to alter the sound. Finally, Phillip Schulze joins us from Germany to perform abstract yet compositional electronic improvisations. This is an exploration in sound more than song, but if you're eager to hear something different, then ATHICA is the place to go.

Athens is the official new home for the Striking Mechanism label since Chen moved down here from Chicago in October. He admits the label is still in its formative stages, but was eager to provide an outlet for unconventional musicians to share and distribute their works. "It's just a way to start and represent artists that aren't as noticed in the commercial framework," he says.

Striking Mechanism isn't limited to just sound or music, either. On www.strikingmechanism.com, Chen features experimental video collections submitted from around the world. His latest project, actually launched initially in 2006, calls for artists to submit videos that are either one, two or three seconds in length. It's startling how diverse and innovative these short pieces are, and Chen hopes to release the collection on DVD in the future.

For now, though, the focus is on the Quartet Solo Series. Although the label was Chen's innovation, the first release was really a collaborative effort between Chen and the other musicians whom he met while studying at Northwestern University and Wesleyan University.

"It was really Phillip Schulze's idea to have the first initial releases be solo releases," says Chen. "The thought there was that it would be really focused." Although all the artists are compiled on one physical CD, the spotlight is on each artist independently. "The way I wanted to think of it is as if there were four separate short albums on a CD," Chen explains. Some of the artists have several tracks on their section of the record while others, including Chen, have just one long track.

Chen moved down to Athens at the insistence of his girlfriend, who got her MFA from the University of Georgia. Although he's still new to town, he's been impressed with how eagerly the students and local musicians alike have taken to his experimental projects.

"It's been an extremely open-minded city," says Chen. "I think that's just kind of the intellectual curiosity that people in Athens generally have."

Even for those rock artists who aren't classically trained, Chen has found that the willingness to experiment in sound is driven more by attitude than education.

"My experience with rock musicians in Chicago is that sometimes they tend to be more open-minded than people who have a lot of training behind them, whether it be jazz or classical… Really everything comes down to attitude in a lot of ways. There are people who are really educated, and people who are uneducated, and anyone can have the attitude that nothing new is ever done, and that's when the danger comes in."

Chen says that sometimes having an intimate knowledge of the history of music can feel like a hindrance, because some musicians risk feeling like everything's already been done before them. "When in fact," says Chen, "there may be subtle differences between what you do today and what was done in 1960, for example, and that subtle difference might matter and might be interesting."

Of course, that education can also play a huge part in awakening the creative mind to a new world of sonic exploration. Tonight's performance should be an eye-opening experience for those musicians who feel bound to the rigid guidelines of classical performance, and for the traditional rock musician as well. Even though Chen and the other artists are students of music, he says that an experimental performance doesn't necessarily demand a higher level of understanding or appreciation than any other concert.

"I can go to an experimental show and just have a beer and hang out like anything else," says Chen. "I'm not doing complex math or something while listening to it, or necessarily analyzing it. In a way, I either like it or I don't… and I'd like to think that other people would listen in a similar way."

In addition to the solo performances taking place during the CD release concert on Saturday, May 17, there will also be a free meet and greet with the Striking Mechanism artists on Sunday, May 18 from 2–4 p.m. This will also include a "composition demonstration and collaborative performance."

Michelle Gilzenrat

WHAT: Striking Mechanism CD Release Concert
WHERE: ATHICA
WHEN: Saturday, May 17
HOW MUCH: $6 (suggested donation)