Bloomington Electronic is one of the most hugely enthusiastic local music collectives I've ever had the pleasure of being aware of, and the organization's monthly Speed of Sound showcase had its second anniversary at Rachael's Cafe Friday night. I was unfortunately not able to stick around for the sets from Shy Guy Says and Dioxin One, but with all due respect to those acts, I have a hard time believing they would have topped the hour-and-a-half explosion Spencer Hutchinson delivered as Ersatz Modem.
Bass-heavy duo Audiodics opened the festivities, and despite a competent extended cover of King Crimson's "I Talk to the Wind" that was unintentionally enhanced by the whir of a coffee machine in the Rachael's kitchen, their set felt a bit uninspired. The visuals projected never quite seemed to jell with what they were going for, and the songs tended to drone on without much musical dynamism. That would be fine if this were drone music in the vein of Sunn O))), but Audiodics sought a groove without ever really finding it.
Fortunately, it took Ersatz Modem all of 30 seconds to correct the vibe in the room. Spencer Hutchinson used electronics to create almost every musical mood imaginable over the course of 90 minutes, and while it wasn't always totally brilliant, it never ceased to be fascinating. Hutchinson calls the Ersatz Modem sound "intelligent dance music," and he cites Aphex Twin and Squarepusher as major influences. This all makes sense, though I also gathered a certain amount of old DJ Shadow and recent Factory Floor in his approach to sonic dominance. Almost everything he tried worked to some extent, which is amazing considering the sheer quantity of tricks he had up his sleeve.
My notes from Ersatz Modem's set are all over the place, mostly because as soon as I wrote some generalization down it would be immediately invalidated by some new element. The few words that kept popping up almost always stood in opposition with one another - "abrasive" and "melodic," "creation" and "destruction," "glitchy" and "intense" - and I'm certain that was all by Hutchinson's design. Some of the best moments of his set saw all these things taking place at once. Every time a certain groove got going for too long (thus becoming safe and recognizable) he would destroy it with some kind of sonic implosion and start from scratch. The cyclical nature of the set never made it feel predictable, though, since almost every subgenre of electronic music seemed represented at one moment or another. At turns deeply moving, foot-tapping and aggressively disturbing, Ersatz Modem's set was a revelation of electronic sound. And that was just the audio portion.
Spencer Hutchinson has also talked at length about his interest in video and visual performance, which actually came before he started making music. This was evident in the images he chose to project on the 3-D screens during his set. With radically recontextualized clips from videos by pop artists like Paula Abdul and Missy Elliott and trippy actuality footage of city streets and buildings cut in with rhythmic animation reminiscent of those old Windows Media Player visualizations, Hutchinson effectively made sure that the eye was drawn not only to him and his tables full of gear but to the associated video presentation.
It's not always easy to make electronic music compelling for the uninitiated. Hell, I'm fairly uninitiated myself. But the wide range of audio and visual delights that Ersatz Modem brought to the tiny stage at Rachael's on Friday makes me think if anyone can help lost souls find a way into the genre, it's Spencer Hutchinson.
Post by Brad Sanders
