Ed Chang's Blindfold Deluxxxe-Live At Salon Zwerge; No Sides Records, 2024

 

Well well well what have we here? A just under twenty five minute live set from a larger ensemble of improvisors going completely ballistic for large portions of said duration? Indeed that's what's up with Live At Salon Zwerge, last's year's No Sides Records CD/digital document of Ed Chang's Blindfold Deluxxxe. Disaster Amnesiac does not know if Chang was at the time based in Chicago, where this set was pushed/pulled into existence, but since hearing it I have learned that he's currently a New York City-based musician. During that evening or night at Salon Zwerge, Chang assembled a deep group of improvisors and got them to go off on their instruments and their interactions with the sounds of other instruments in really pronounced and even aggressive ways. This latter adverb can particularly be applied to the drumming: it's fierce, with cymbals taking particularly hardened beatings. Harry Pussy drummer Adris Hoyos was clearly having a time pounding away atop the abstract electric guitar, bass, cello, electronics, woodwinds, brass and probably a few others that I've missed. Did people with Sissy Ears make quick exits for somewhere/anywhere away from the racket coaxed out of the axes of Blindfold Deluxxxe? Live At Salon Zwerge shows a band with that kind of energy indeed. There are passages of relatively more restrained group spiel. Did the woodwinds players smile to themselves that finally their statements would rise above the din of the drums and electrically pushed instruments? Was Ed Chang doing any sort of conducting to get these rises and falls to occur? Paired with the more out and out bonkers feels of those more deranged parts of the composition, they make for some interesting contrasts. That said, it's also really enjoyable for this fan of Noise and crazed energy gymnastics to have the ears grazed by the frenetic chaotic times within this document. After the music stops, there are few minutes of quite fascinating recorded banter and after set conversation from various different people, accompanied by someone playing beats and fills on the drum set. Very unique sociological documentation of a very specific scene, I'd say. No Sides still has CD copies of Live At Salon Zwerge. Grab one while you still can. Or just stream it. Either way you'll be treated to a unique event, one of a kind most likely.