If you do not believe in the possibility of time travel, there's no need to read on. But if you have an open mind and open ears, you are invited to take a journey with experimental musician Stephen Tribou.
Such a journey begins with the time machine itself, constructed partially from a musicians' standard on-stage setup, with microphones and guitars. Besides this, Tribou has built for himself a dashboard of additional dials and pedals and racks of equipment, the cockpit from which to pilot his music and the audience through the sonic ether.
Tribou charts his course for each song by starting with a rhythm. His slaps the strings of his pen-and-ink covered acoustic guitar in a simple beat. A tinge of reverb spreads the sound throughout the room. He adjusts some dials and repeats, while the beat continues. More dials and settings adjusted, and now a new sound — electronic drums? — have appeared. It appears that Tribou's initial strumming is being looped as he starts to play something of a riff over the rhythm. More dials and adjustments. The sound is thicker now, and the strumming and the beat are locked in place, like the gyroscopic armature of a time machine whirring at the ready.
All of Tribou's sounds are created live, which is to say, in the present. But what is the present when it is warped and manipulated and repeated and replayed in ongoing variation and density? Tribou patiently layers rhythms and simple lines of notes atop each other, building slowly and patiently a set of themes that hurdle headlong toward full-fledged songs. Watching them form from component elements and electronic processes is like watching a time-lapse video, an unnatural acceleration through complicated development.
The music sounds, not surprisingly, like it's from outer space. His floating, eerie melodies are not as menacing or dissonant as much as they are alien. Gentle chromatic progressions through ambiguous key signatures could sound familiar in the real world but are instead phased and panned and synthed into swirling gyres that fill all frequencies as they expand and contract and repeat. When the sound has reached a critical mass, Tribou sings, clutching the microphone close to his face with both hands, delivering lyrics dripping with reverb, as if calling out to the crowd from the future or the past. The only constant beneath it all is the electronic beat, a helpful reminder that the Earth is still turning.
Joining Tribou on these journeys Thursday was guitarist Brian Jump (of Ben Hardt and his Symphony and a handful of other local acts) whose addition of textures and slender guitar lines added further dimensions to the sound. Sounds of Dire Straits appeared and reappeared in long, five-minute cycles, emerging in new contexts like suggestive madeleines of the Proustian persuasion.
It is not as disquieting as it is mesmerizing to watch Tribou make his music with only the vaguest understanding of how the music is happening. You will wonder what he's strumming now, whether that melody was what you heard a moment ago, where that extra beat come from, and what that dial does. The caution is that all of this works only when you're paying attention to it. The subtlety of variation and engaging repetition is effective only if you notice it, lest the music become a spacey backdrop for a spaced-out conversation.
But if you are paying attention, the music will stay with you long after Tribou has left the stage. He's set it up that way, in fact. When he and Jump finished had playing, put down their instruments and left the stage with their drinks, the final song was still going full strength, animated by their instructions to the machine, which whirred on and on into infinity. After a moment or two the sound guy had to shut it down from the booth, silencing the music only in this world, but leaving the music a persistent memory for good.-Burgh' Sounds report
Good to meet you last night. I honestly felt the "Time Machine" vibe before Brian even mentioned anything about it. I tried to get that feeling in the show writeup we just posted on our profile. Check it out when have a minute. See you again soon
