Boise Experimental Music Festival celebrates obscure sounds

Chad Dryden

Edition Date: 04-25-2006

Pick up a copy of Rolling Stone or Spin, and there's bound to be some cookie-cutter rock band talking about "getting experimental" on their new album. For most musicians, whose creative worlds exist galaxies away from quote-unquote experimental music, this usually means not playing in 4/4 time or jamming on a sitar for eight bars — hardly "experimental" as defined by performers at the first annual Boise Experimental Music Festival.

"Being a rock band or a jazz band or an electronic band and incorporating experimental things doesn't necessarily make you experimental," says BEMF coordinator/performer Krispen Hartung. "In the strict sense of the word, experimental music is very restrictive. It's spontaneous composition, often with no meter or time signature. It will challenge people's traditional conceptions of music."

Indeed, the average listener would likely describe experimental music as weird and inaccessible, and it often is: Instruments heard at the two-day festival will include the theremin (think that wobbly, spacey sound from '50s sci-fi flicks and "Good Vibrations") and the battery-powered fan (exactly what it sounds like). But as with other, more discernable musical classifications, gray areas and academic arguments exist: As Hartung points out on the BEMF Web site, the genres of experimental, avant-garde and free-improvisation have wide spectrums with loose boundaries; it's easier, he says, to label what doesn't fit within the parameters than what does.

"'Experimental' is a catch phrase," says Hartung, an improvisational guitarist who performs using real-time looping, a process of creating multiple layers of sound by digitally recording individual parts and playing them back on top of one another. "There's a lot of material out there, but it's not easily marketable. You can't dance to it; you're not hearing it in bars. You have to look in non-traditional places. You have to create your own venue."

This weekend, Visual Arts Collective will be that venue, playing host to nearly 20 experimental musicians performing solo, in duos or in groups, along with showings of experimental films and videos from across the globe. Three of the festival's 12 main performers are from out of state; the rest are homegrown, and chances are you haven't seen them on the visible end of the Boise music scene.

Most of the BEMF acts fall within the free-improvisational category, with about half of them live loopers like Hartung. One is headliner Rick Walker, a California multi-instrumentalist who has produced more than 20 live looping festivals, including the largest-ever gathering of its kind last year in the Silicon Valley. Walker, like most experimental musicians, does not sell many records, but that's not his motivation for making music anyway.

"We live in a country with an Olympic mentality — if you're going to do something and not get the gold for it, it's not worth the time," he says. "It misses the point. If a human being's expression is to write a simple love song on an acoustic guitar, I see no distinction between that and the most obscure experimental music in the world. There's something liberating about being creative, (and) I have a firm feeling it's vital and necessary to keep pushing the envelope. People like (David) Bowie, Bjork and Madonna watch the fringes and incorporate it into their music."

What initially draws musicians away from conventional music and into the realm of the experimental depends on the individual. For some, it's the purity of creating spontaneous music as opposed to rehearsed compositions. For others, it's a reactionary kiss-off to the music industry's narrow view. For seasoned musicians like Hartung, it's about testing limits — their own, and of sound itself.

"I got into jazz, then jazz fusion, then avant-garde, then said, 'What's beyond this?'" he says. "Rather than being drawn away from those genres, I was attracted to experimental music. To sit down with my instrument and not know what I'm going to play 20 seconds before I play it is kind of liberating. There are no rules. You start with a blank slate, really. Once you taste that sort of musical freedom, it's hard to go back."