Ladiez in Noize is a promising new series curated by the ever-busy Cammisa Forrest, who I originally encountered as the painter in past power-noise group Miami Beach. Self-explanatorily, it centers around female producers or female-driven bands dealing with noise and experimental sound. The second edition of the roving series brought us to Envoy Enterprises, a crisp Lower East Side gallery space that shares an address and connecting passage with Home Sweet Home.
I eased into the darkened gallery partway through the opening set from Cache (Christiana Femano), which sounded like sunlight coming through thick rising dust kicked up by crytpic machinery, rumbling low like breath. Elliptic key passages–circling but never closing–lead the piece, twitching and shifting with continuous timbral micro-adjustment as if conveyed via complexly warped radio signals.
Cammisa followed with her own solo set, as Camis, producing almost all of her sounds through a home-made plaster face: singing into its ears, tapping rhythms onto its hardened cheeks, at one point during soundcheck thumbing its eyes. In fact, the eyes were the only part of the mask outfitted with mic pickups, but by varying her relation and actions towards the instrument, Camis was able to build a range of sounds that echoed and revolved away into reverbed dimness. Setting aside the mask, she followed with a piece of heavier rhythmic feedback, harsh but strangely soothing.
Marcia Bassett’s Zaimph closed out the night with Bassett’s constantly rumbling guitar drones underscored by sweeps of a sort of body-less electric cello from Margarida Garcia. Abstract but avoiding monotony through a constantly shifting skree of growls and squeals, the set built into the slow menace reminiscient of recent Earth or, through the cello phrases, certain passages of Editions Mego drone heavyweights Angel.
And this, apparently, is what we can expect from Ladiez working in the noise-arts these days.
