This review appeared in TRACE magazine, December 2001

Hear There are No Rules
A Voyage Through the Experimental Psychedelic-Ambient Sounds of Undercity

by Alien Rock!

Welcome to Undercity. This unique weekly event has been taking place at Halcyon, a laid back and magical hotspot on Planet Brooklyn, every Sunday, from 7 p.m. to midnight, since January 2000. For some reason or another I never visited Undercity, probably because Sundays are my day of total relaxation. The event's co-founder, Mercy_killaH, said, "It's the most popular experimental-ambient weekly event in New York City." On Sunday, July 1, 2001, I decided to enter the gates myself and see what all the hype was about.

As I stepped inside the low-lit room with a disco ball circling in the center, I saw the DJ booth in the distance. DJ Spinoza, one of five residents of the night, was spinning a delicate, mellow set of experimental dub. Short, soft melodies and rhythms repeated as they blended into new sounds. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" played silently on a small movie screen behind the booth, which brought to mind a command center for some futuristic launch pad. The music made some of the scenes seem more intense or slower. It didn't happen immediately, but with every new performer, it became clearer to me that something big was brewing in this hangout. It was quite different from the music at clubs, on the radio, or anywhere—but it felt like it may have had one or two thin roots in Techno. It never had that "oontz-oontz" Techno-beat, but some performers occasionally repeated vocals, noise, or sounds. It was truly ambient—as natural to the atmosphere as the sound of subway cars beneath the streets of New York City. Every performer added elements that surprised, irritated, or demanded attention.

"Not many people these days are interested in Rock and Roll, but everyone was into it once upon a time. I'm trying to integrate the feelings and attitudes of that music into all sorts of experimental electronic stuff," Donna Summer (aka Jason Forrest), one of the special guests for the night, said about his preparation. "I just pull a bunch of records and CDs. It's usually whatever I've most recently bought. I usually don't know what's going to happen a few seconds before it happens." This is what I thought the future of music would sound like when I was 11: Musical ‘rules’ didn't matter, you could do anything, and it involved electronics. But there was a lot here I didn't expect. Volumes set too high or too low, animal noises ("Was that a chicken I just heard?"), and racketing noises that refused to go away. Three or four people sat in front of the booth, fixated on each performer's hour-long set. One man there even meditated for most of the night. It was quite humorous looking back, though, and seeing the rest of the room, where everyone just drank their drinks and chatted as if no performance was going on. This musical revolution was probably old hat or unimportant to them.

Mercy_killaH, who co-founded Undercity with Hazmaat, estimates he spends about $200 a week on this "controlled chaos." Along with his original material, he has so many CDs and records that he organizes them by sounds, not artist names or genre. Some of his categories include "the 250 b.p.m. of a jackhammer"; "the spiritual bliss of a Muslim ‘Call to Prayer’"; "Humpback whales singing to one another in the cool depths of the sea"; and organic and inorganic drones. The music he makes is often described as perfect for film soundtracks. "I do not foresee experimental-ambient music the likes of which we create at Undercity becoming a major demand in the mass music market. It is very cerebral. Highly textured. Anti-'pop.’ Unique and avant-garde. A tapestry of sound truly inner city, and that is where the market will always be centered," Mercy_killaH said. On underground trends that breakout, he added, "Here in the New York City music scene and nightlife, original concepts can quickly rise from underground to trend, and trend more often than not affects a vibe in negative ways."

The resident performers also include Sheldon Drake, Clark ov Saturn, DJ Spinoza, and Instruction Shuttle. Undercity invites special guests to each show. This week the guests also included the Mikroknytes (John Coursey and Derek Morton; mikroknytes.com), who are based in Washington, D.C.. Mercy_killaH first heard their self titled debut album at a music store that was testing it out. He liked what he heard, checked out their Web site, saw that their mini tour landed them in Brooklyn the day before Undercity, invited them, and a week later, here they were.

I caught up with the Mikroknytes a few hours before their set.

"Because it's ‘improv’ we're sort of doing this on the fly and there's much room for error, but also room for really excellent surprises," John said. "We might sometimes redo it [a concept], but each time it's going to be different."

Their music calls for a special lack of preparation. "I would say we don't conceptualize it much at all," Derek said. "I'm most drawn to moments of brilliance that just happen spontaneously or by random chance."

They use different setups and equipment configurations quite frequently. John played his Stroh violin, a violin where the sound comes out of horns (for this tour they decided John would only play the violin), while Derek controlled the electronic portion with "cheap samplers, guitar f/x pedals, synths, a mixer," and a "sparingly" used laptop computer. During their show, Derek and John stopped playing and had a quick chat as a sequenced synth sound continued, while Mercy_killaH, who had stepped in and joined them, continued to add, as he put it, "bleeps, bloops, sound-waves, and the occasional vocal sample and loop." Later I asked them what they were talking about. They both couldn't really remember. John said it was just casual conversation, and that at one point he mentioned he liked what Mercy_killaH added to their music. I was shocked that they would let something play without actively controlling it. Their style was a lot more laid back than I ever thought possible.

One especially moving Mikroknytes piece used part of Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech, where he discusses how all men are created equal. It was played over various beats and drones, a metaphor for how these words are still relevant today and for the future. I later found out that it was the well doing of Mercy_killaH that slipped this beautiful speech into the set, tweaking it with a bit of echo to create a hall effect.

Undercity felt like a real underground musical experience and was very enjoyable and mind-expanding. What if this music becomes very commercial? Music that is so free-form, rule-less, and random—isn’t it frightening to think everyone could be listening to this one day? Like jamming to a construction site, dancing to the sound of the ocean and birds. Then the world would really look madder than ever, and the monkeys would be laughing at us, as if they don't already.

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