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  Review 22/Feb/03  
Several of us went down to GTMBA last night. It was worth the 2 hour drive through the horrendous Philadelphia traffic in the rain.

The first set was by Mikronesia. I have heard him at GTMBA once before and his stuff is very interesting. It's hard to figure out exactly how he creates his music because you can't see a lot of equipment on the stage. I suspect he uses a lot of pre-recorded stuff on computer disk and does real-time mixing and some processing. It would be great if Mike would set up a forum here on Electro-Music.com and explain how he works.

His music has elements of percussion running through it most of the time, with lots of electronic sounds (ear candy). It is related to the techno style, but it seems more evolved musically. The music sometimes uses the sounds of processed human voices that are quite interesting. Rarely can you make out the words. The music often sounds like looping, but rarely is it totally repetitive. Most of time, the "loops" are varied in some way each time you hear them. Unlike many practioners of the electronic arts, Mike understands dynamic range. I find his music quite refreshing.

His stage style is laid back in the extreme. When he starts his sets, it often takes several minutes to figure out the the house CD music has stopped and Mike has started performing. Sometimes he appears to be really into what he's playing, and sometimes he'll walk off the stage for a minute while the music goes on via auto pilot. That said, once the audiance figures out he's "on", they sit down and focus intently. He is well appreciated the the GTMBA audiance, for good reason.

Mike was kind enough to give me a CD of his music. I'd love to offer it one the Electro-Music.com store in the future.

The Great Quintini put on two facinating sets. Be sure to check out the pictures. Quintini is a perfromance artist as well as a musician. He's also a poet; usually reading a couple of works at each performance. His poetry is quite thought provoking, and sometimes has a strong political undercurrent; certainly the case last night. I was affraid at one point the FBI would bust in and take him away, but he assured us that the "Federal Goverment is our friend." :shock:

The Great One did several extended percussion performances on instruments of his own constuction. He dazzeled us with his musicianship. His instruments are visually and acoustically very interesting. I was reminded of the late great Harry Parch, but Quintini is not as stuffy.

There was other stuff last night which I won't describe here. We unfortunately missed Scattered Planets because we had to hit the road.

I wish the people that run GTMBA would take these presentations a little more seriously. They never start on time, introduce the performers, or publically thank people who contribute, including Chef Jeff who sometimes brings free food for the audiance, and the people who consistently put on excellent light shows. Considering the level of artists that pefrom there, I think this is amaturish and disrespectful to the artists and to the audiance.

As usual, I took some pictures with my digital camera. I've posted them on my web site. If anybody wants to have pictures with higher resolution, please let me know. The biggest ones on the site are 750 px wide. The originals are about 2500 px wide.
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