Stepgaard
Tristan Perich and Lesley Flanigan - the "it couple," if you will, of the experimental electronic music scene - have been hosting parties in the apartment they share on East 24th Street for years now. Recently, however, they decided to turn these informal gatherings into a (roughly) monthly new music series called Stepgaard: basically a BYOB house party, with a performance taking place sometime between 11pm and midnight. On a wet and windy Saturday night, it felt like just the place to hang out, stay late.
Last night's event/party featured Danish sound artist Jacob Kierkegaard, who Lesley met when she spent some time in Amsterdam last year. Kierkegaard performed AION (2006): a spacious, hour-long drone while haunting images of abandoned churches and factories in the Chernobyl radioactive zone were projected onto the wall. Kierkegaard personally made the field recordings in four abandoned spaces: he made a 10 minute sample, then recorded over the playback multiple times until it eventually became a single humming sound with multiple overtones. With the recent nuclear disaster in Japan still very much in the headlines, the relevance was all-too-creepy.
But, this being a party, Jacob switched immediately after to being DJ, playing West African dance music into the wee hours. Or, at least until the beer ran out.
The next Stepgaard will feature pianist Isabelle O'Connell on June 10; details on the website. Bring a drink. Or several.
More pics on Flickr.