GOD, BLUE GOBLINS

[August 31st, 2005]

^GOD

Ebony and ivory live together in perfect dissonant noise.

[EXPERIMENTAL] Recorded live, GOD's first full-length CD, Anti-Sex Anti-Wiretapping (made in Taiwan), is a glacially paced soundtrack to creation. Leif Sundstrom uses an old record player as his instrument, creating thick vibrating bass sounds often resembling a boat being dragged across a wooden boardwalk. Bryan Eubanks commands the more distressing, high-pitch blasts of sine waves and throat-clearing static. This is noise, but it's not gratuitous. Instead of bounding down a trail of extremes-from an onslaught of harsh noise to barely existing sound-installation fodder-GOD exercises a wise control and restraint, allowing sounds to take on a form all their own while remaining focused on the overall journey. The ebony-and-ivory marriage of analog and digital sound sources creates a disorientating, but somehow psychically healing, environment. This Portland duo's unique instrumentation whetted my curiosity, so I asked them how they do it.

Sundstrom: I use old record players and various types of records (vinyl, tin, graphite, drum cymbals, etc.) to produce different frequencies of feedback. Everything from temperature to arrangements within a room can change the type of resonance of the frequencies. This resonant feedback is attenuated with a parametric equalizer in order to arrange specific beating tone patterns. The grooves of the records are rarely used. The speakers and how the room is shared amongst the people in it dictate the end result. A positive attention is what really generates a positive outsource.

Eubanks: I have designed an open-circuit board instrument composed of four former guitar effects pedals that were digital delay/sampling pedals. They have power modulation I installed, and they feed back directly into their circuit boards and each other with wire and alligator clips. It is much simpler than it sounds, sort of a very basic modular synth, with patches created each time I play. It is very dependent upon my physical interaction with the instrument. There are no button-pushing or static effects and/or outcomes. I also use pure sine-wave samples I have created that are stored on various CDs and mixed together, and sometimes field recordings.

^Blue Goblins (Played sunday, aug. 28)

Sam Coomes comes out of hibernation to play a loud, soulful set.

"I'm gonna try to keep it down, but it's probably gonna get pretty brutal," warned Sam Coomes, while fidgeting with miles of cords and a sea of dials and pedals encircling his guitar and keyboard. "I'm just warning you."

Presumably, Coomes, who in his other musical life fronts Quasi, was talking about the volume of his instruments. But the singer, whose solo act is Blues Goblins, failed to sufficiently prepare the audience for the depth and emotion in his heart-rending mini-set opening for Hella at Holocene. Blue Goblins' absence the past two years from live shows-due, in part, to Coomes' role as a new father-revealed itself in a few mechanical interruptions, such as microphones and guitar strings that wouldn't stay put. But by the chorus of the third song, Marc Bolan's ballad "Life's a Gas," Coomes was back in top musical form, belting "It really doesn't matter at all" ferociously.

Screw those pedals, that loud reverb ominously hovering over the entire set-it's that voice that commands attention, an instrument of raw power that's capable of starting on a booming, crystalline note then morphing within seconds into a gruff and ravaged world-weary sound.

Coomes switched from electric guitar to keyboard to end his set with three upbeat tunes, each transition a surprising hybrid of spiritual, classical and psychedelic melodies, the last easing into a rousing, head-bobbing rendition of Curley Weaver's "You Was Born to Die." Coomes repeated, "You make me love you, and you make me cry," a phrase that, as the mechanical glitches returned, seemed directed at his instruments.

Next, Coomes plopped an air-synth into his lap and unleashed "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," his hands intuitively coaxing the instrument into a psych-blues version of the song, his eyes closed, oblivious, as always, to the power of his own voice.