When I visited Tony Youngblood’s basement studio I expected to wade through a tangle of electrical wires, half-deconstructed machines, and sound equipment. Youngblood is a DJ, sound artist, and experimental musician—particular guilds, to say the least—and I prepared to meet the Junk Pile King. I was surprised, then, when Youngblood greeted me at the door and apologized for the mess. Everything seemed in order—by definition, ordinary—except for a pile of objects lying in the center of the floor which included a Christmas present. Youngblood handed me the present and said:
“Flip it.”
I did, and the box hinged open. The interior motor worked a hidden gear, and a wooden “finger” reached out, reversed the switch, and retreated back, just as the box closed again. I laughed at the personality of the machine, my own surprise, and the creativity of its inventor. The box’s reaction to being opened was completely human, and gave a crotchety “bah-humbug” to good-natured giving.
While I can’t say this Christmas present is typical of Youngblood’s work, it does embody a similar spirit. As a sound artist, Youngblood works with an array of turntables, mixers, foot pedals, and circuit-bent instruments; he uses these tools to create an electronic universe, yet his works are decidedly human. Youngblood’s inspiration comes from the voices he hears around him—he’ll often record audience members directly before he goes on stage, with these recordings becoming the focal point of his performance. This technique allows for improvisation, and also displays Youngblood’s confidence and agility as a performer. Youngblood performs under the alias Adventure Bomb, and he’s released an exclusive audio clip to Art Art Zine, entitled Secrets (2011):
“Secrets”
From the first listen, Secrets is vocally driven, but in an older, almost medieval way. As Webster’s defines it, this is polyphonic music—“a texture consisting of two or more independent melodicvoices”—with a circuit bender’s twist. Youngblood’s excerpt begins with a male vocalist’s tilting “I’ve got a secret.” The mood is playful, even joshing. The second section (“I peed in the shower this morning”) is equally innocuous. But then comes the saxophone, and a man’s admission: “I was a male prostitute.” Within this short clip, “Dave” is Youngblood’s best-developed character. The transition to his dialogue is the harshest and contains the most effects. Once Dave begins to speak, Youngblood steps back, letting him talk candidly (if tautly) about “going into dark alleys and meeting all sorts of interesting people.” Humor is seen throughout Youngblood’s work, but Secrets shows Youngblood’s willingness to deal with dark (and difficult) themes on the fly. During my visit, I asked Youngblood about Secrets.
JG: Tell me about Secrets, and how it came about.
TY: “Secrets” is the piece I did at Betty's [Bar & Grill] on April 5th [2011]. Right before the performance, I sampled the other musicians of the night, including Robbie Hunsinger, Craig Schenker, and William Davis. I stuck a microphone in people's faces and asked them to tell me a dark secret. I then took all of those samples, burned them to two CD-Rs, and used CD turntables, looping pedals, and effects to create the performance. I call this method Scoop & Loop: basically being spontaneous, throwing samples in the air and trying to juggle what I can catch.
JG: How do you begin a performance? What comes first?
TY: Often I’ll have no idea, right up until five minutes before the show. Sometimes I won’t even have a theme. I’ll ask, well, how should I lead into the show? Was there something someone in the audience said that would make a good intro? Or that drum hit, or that guitar, would that be a good starting loop?
JG: Do certain sounds act as a foundation?
TY: It’s improv. It’s wide open. It all depends on the samples of the night. I know what materials I’m working with—the CD turntables and the effects pedals—so that gives me some kind of starting point. Limitation is good.
JG: Where did you record the sound samples for Secrets?
TY: At Betty’s. We were in the men’s bathroom, right before the show, with people screaming outside. People were probably thinking, “What are they doing in there?”
While circuit-bent instruments are an important part of Youngblood’s work, he also draws on archived sounds, and clips he finds online. For another piece, entitled Forecasting (2011), Youngblood took sound bites from YouTube and molded them into a unified soundscape. Forecasting continues on a theme Youngblood began in February 2010, shortly after the earthquake in Chile. In the days following the disaster, Youngblood assembled a group of musicians in his studio and recorded Helpless(2010). Youngblood queried for terms related to the disaster on Twitter, and then had a computer read the Tweets aloud as the musicians performed. Many of these messages were being picked up seconds after they’d been written, and Youngblood described their freshness, combined with the suffering described, as a sobering experience. Forecasting was included in the exhibition Japan 2010 2011日本 at gallery F of the Scarritt-Bennett Center (June 11 – August 20, 2011), and responded to the recent earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in Japan:
“Forecasting”
JG: Was this a difficult project to undertake?
TY: It was. I had to spend hours culling through clips. I went on YouTube and other sources to find videos of news stories, personal accounts, home movies, blogs. It was hard to sit through it, and I learned about the disasters in a personal way. Before it was just a news story in the background. The start of this excerpt is where, in my mind, the earthquake started to happen.
JG: There’s a moment, about four minutes in, which sounds like a home movie being taken during the earthquake. Do you remember where you found this clip?
TY: I do. There were people in a small apartment, presumably high up in a building. Their bookshelves were shaking, everything was falling to the ground, and you could hear them crying in the background. That was probably the heaviest clip, to see that happening.
JG: How does Forecasting compare to Helpless (2010), the piece you did on the Chilean earthquake?
TY: Yeah, they’re both really similar. The difference would be that with Forecasting, I had some perspective on it, because we did the performance three months later. WithHelpless, it was happening. The earthquake happened right before we rolled tape—a few hours or less. With that show we searched for words, I think “tsunami” and “earthquake,” in the Twitter feed, and I had a computer program that converted that into a robotic female voice. It played on the show, and the musicians reacted to what the voice was saying. It was very of the moment. We were processing it as it happened.
Beyond his own artistic practice, Youngblood is an advocate for avant-garde, noise, and experimental music in Nashville. His blog and podcast, ~ORE~ Theatre Intangible, is a rallying point for the area’s alternative music scene. Youngblood is continually making music in his basement studio, bringing artists to town, and throwing concerts at a venue is his backyard. I asked Youngblood about these events, and Nashville’s experimental music scene:
JG: So what are you up to now?
TY: I've been trying to keep the pace of three new Theatre Intangible podcasts a month. Since that involves coming up with a theme, organizing a group of improvisers, recording, mixing, and mastering, it can sometimes be a challenge. On February 26, Theatre Intangible will kick off a bi-monthly live improv series at gallery F. The first will feature Houston, Texas, double-bassist Thomas Helton. Thomas plays every inch of his double bass—bowing, plucking, beating, and scratching out otherworldly timbres. I'm incredibly excited to hear him improv with saxophonist Craig Schenker and trumpet player Jamison Sevits.
I've been experimenting with new techniques for Adventure Bomb; and if all goes as planned, I'll be doing a collaborative sound/light/dance improvisation with Robbie Hunsinger, Benton Bainbridge, Perrin Ireland, and Erin Law. My roommate Tommy Stangroom is planning a show at our house, Noa Noa, in February. I can't yet reveal the acts, but we're very excited about it.
JG: What was the last concert you threw?
TY: Tommy and I co-organized a show featuring Bird Names (Athens, GA), Renee Louise Carafice, Hepatitties, Hands Off Cuba, and Coupler. It was pretty epic. I don't know how we crammed all those people into our basement!
We only started doing shows last summer. We were very lucky to have instrument designer and ambient improviser Tim Kaiser headline our first show. That show also featured Lawrence Crow, Cycles, Pimpdaddysupreme, and Ken Soper. Ken modified a children’s toy to translate his thoughts into control voltage, which he then routed into analogue synthesizers. He literally made music with his mind, it was pretty amazing.
JG: What’s the state of experimental of music in Nashville?
TY: I think you can partially credit Leslie Keffer, with Betty’s. She doesn’t want Betty’s to be known as an experimental venue, but a great deal of what she does is experimental music (noise music, avant-garde, noise pop), and it’s become the place for people to play. Also Open Lot, with [former director] Jonathan Lisenby; I couldn’t give him enough credit for fostering a scene that wasn’t there before. So it feels like we’re in the golden age. We don’t really know what it is yet, but we know it’s exciting, and we know it has potential. I think that’s the most exciting time to be in any “scene,” so to speak.
JG: How does that compare to what’s happening in other cities?
TY: Yeah, other cities are farther along. Cincinnati, OH has got a really prospering scene. Chicago, IL is probably the biggest community. Also Minneapolis, and Minnesota in general. The Bent Festival has been there before, and the Short Circuit Festival. And of course New York. Everything’s big in New York.
Keeping tabs on Youngblood can be difficult, but if you’d like to stay up on what he’s doing, subscribe to his podcast, ~ORE~ Theater Intangible. Most of all, make time to see Youngblood live. He’s something you have to see (and hear) for yourself.
