Brian Slattery Photo
Grunerud.
Nick Grunerud, a.k.a. Underwear, lunged toward the electronic music gear he had wired up on a table in front of him Sunday evening. He’d already set up the gear to lay down a sparse, somewhat moody groove. His hands worked fast over the equipment, sending out glitchy spasms of percussion. He brought the microphone he was holding to his mouth.
“You see me in the forest, baby,” he crooned, “looking for trees.” The audience of about 25 at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art on Trumbull Street laughed, and laughed more as Grunerud unleashed a barrage of noise that was both jarring and yet somehow also sounded like cartoons. The humor and surprise that Grunerud always injects into his music were in full effect. And it was only 9 p.m.
Underwear was the third of a three-act show billed, with good humor and in keeping with the theme of the previous week around the Elm City, as a bake sake for the Ely Center. There were baked goods for sale. But the evening also showed what three solo acts could cook up in a space like the John Slade Ely House, especially with an attentive audience.
First was Adam Matlock, who created a small stage for himself in the space at the foot of the stairs. As the audience formed a horseshoe around the edge of the room that had people sitting on the floor and halfway up the stairs, Matlock began his set in another room, letting the sound of his accordion drift through the space before he walked in and began to sing. His mix of urgent and emotional older and newer compositions filled the space and gripped the audience, priming them for a singalong to “Komm, süsser Tod,” from the second Neon Genesis Evangelion anime film. But Matlock wouldn’t say what the song was at the time.
“If you recognize the song, don’t rat me out. I will not allow you to buy merchandise from me,” he said. The audience laughed. No one ratted him out, and afterward, several did indeed buy merch.
Moving upstairs, some with chairs in tow, people then settled into one of the galleries on the second floor for an almost devotional set from Sam Moth. “My musical life has been one of constant change” lately, she said by way of introduction. She explained that not long ago she was writing pop songs, before taking a sharp turn into noise and experiments. Her set reflected that evolution. For her first number, she played a short film she’d put together and scored. The music combined the sound of water with a pulsing chord and a soothing melody while Moth moved through the audience with a mirror with a few small objects on it — two feathers, a stone, the casing left behind by a moth that hatched. She offered them to people to examine. Some did. Moth then sat down amid the people on the floor to sing two songs, the first of them while gazing into the crowd, the second while blindfolded. The audience broke their silence at the end with cheers.
People then headed back downstairs to one of the gallery rooms where Grunerud had set up his equipment. “I’m going to do a longer set,” he said into the microphone. Those words turned out to be the beginning of the set itself, as he sampled and looped them, and then began building a rhythm beneath them, which he then layered with more samples, further vocals. As he worked his machines and harmonized with himself, the entire set took on the character of a fractured, experimental R&B — that was also funny. The set peaked with a straight-up dance jam that had heads bobbing and a couple legs moving. Still singing, Grunerud then began to unplug the audio cables on the gear, and finally the power cords themselves, dismantling the music around him to the soundtrack of incredulous chuckles from the audience, until it was just his voice. He unplugged his microphone too, and the set was over. It only took a second for the applause to start.
Brian Slattery delivers excellent writing as usual, yet I felt Sam Moth deserved a few more adjectives to capture the mood she set, words like ethereal and angelic. Dressed like Isadora Duncan, she glided around the room like a DaVanci Madonna and then engulfed her audience with her lovely voice, creating a serene and yes, I agree perfectly with Brian here, sacred space.