Derek Rogers Brings Ambient Drone to Life in Los Angeles

Consisting of minimalist noise and intermittent snippets of discernible “music,” ambient drone can feel overwhelming or serene, psychedelic or horrifying, focused or completely scattered. In a live setting, that broad range of sounds can result in a lively, bustling audience, or a meditative, intensely focused one. Los Angeles’ tiny, intimate Pehrspace venue hosted all of these sounds and self-expressions in a four-hour, four-act dronefest that came complete with trippy visuals and enough floor space for onlookers to either rock out or sprawl out.

The first three acts were all connected–opening Black Hat is currently on touring with the third act, Good Willsmith. Good Willsmith shares a group member with the second act, L’éternèbre. Despite the incestuous nature of these band’s relationship, the sounds these groups put together were drastically different, with the Seattle-based Black Hat implementing more rhythmic elements than any other act of the night. Coming off his Spectral Disorder and Covalence EPs, Black Hat began most of his pieces with persistently looping beats, layering of new textures to create a kaleidoscope of tones. The audience was upbeat, bobbing their heads and waving their arms as the tones flowed from post-apocalyptic to lush, tribal to heavily mechanized. The set left a great impression, and charmed the audience with its consistent pulses and varied soundscapes.

Next up was L’éternèbre, a duo whose music felt less structured than Black Hat’s, and whose layering and instrumentation climaxed in some unsettling sonic structures. Manning the synths was Natalie Chami, who is also a member of Good Willsmith, and who plucked at what looked like a psaltery to create a jarring-but-dreamy string sound. The visuals during the set were dark, and added a sense of brooding to the morose sections while emphasizing the quiet, relaxed moments of resolution. The set was transfixing and had a tendency to zone out, causing a good portion of the audience to sit down and relax to better focus on the sounds.

The audience was bustling and on foot when the three Chicagoans of Good Willsmith readied their equipment. With Chami fresh off her set as L’éternèbre, the group jumped right in, piling stacks atop stacks of bombastic noise from the very get-go: Rhythmic Kraftwerkian blips paddled upwards to fight submersion. A thousand machines scraped at the walls with a thousand different sonic tendrils. Somewhere underneath it all could be heard the crumpling of cardstock.

About ten minutes in, above the swirling layers of noise, came one of the most enlightened moments of the night, as the bearded and bespectacled Doug Kaplan, who had until that point scissor-scraped an analog record and yelled point blank into a microphone, produced an electric guitar and just wailed on it for a good three to four minutes. It was an oddly grounded moment, one whose Maggot Brain-reminiscent psych-soul sliced through everything else with its odd familiarity. As Kaplan wrapped up his solo, he threw the guitar noises on a loop, and as he put away the guitar, there it was again — that massive, looming tapestry of sounds.

Closing the night was Derek Rogers, whose work Pitchfork said could “rank among 2012′s best– drone or otherwise.” Rogers’ setup felt much more minimalistic in comparison to his gadget-heavy predecessors: sitting at a table with his Mac Powerbook, Rogers rested straight-faced between an electric guitarist and an acoustic violinist, both of whom were plugged into the computer. The logistics of the triptych were easily apparent: The violinist would stroke or scrape or pluck, and Rogers would sculpt the sound into something else. Rogers’ set was mostly peaceful, with a more focused emphasis on dynamic shifts and tonality, and featured lots of improvised solos from the instrumentalists on the wings. Rogers’ set lasted for around 40 minutes, offering a surprisingly wide array of sounds that wrapped up the night in a lush, psychedelic serenity that brought the whole event full circle.

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Josh Calixto

Josh has always been a dedicated music fan, but only started to explore deeper artists as a journalism student at Northwestern University. With no favorite genre and much love for musicians including The Sundays, Curren$y, Colin Stetson, and The Blood Brothers, he prides himself on a wide-ranging musical taste and willingness to listen to just about anything. Right now, Josh is particularly into female-fronted dreampop, energetic psych-rock, and trap music.