Concord Ballet Orchestra Players 1/9/10

On Saturday, January 9, 2010, Videopoem braved deep-freeze temperatures and ventured to Issue Project Room in Park Slope (Brooklyn) to catch an evening of great ambient, improvised, psychedelic and electronic rock. Fortunately, quite a few other folks did too. The night’s performers included Concord Ballet Orchestra Players, Forma, and A.R. Plovnik (who also provided interesting visual projections for the entire show)

Concord Ballet Orchestra Players (sometimes known as “C.B.O.P.”, pronounced “SEE-bop”) originally convened to perform a one-time live tribute to the 1970s “krautrock” group Faust — but then enjoyed playing together so much that they decided to carry on together with original trout-stream-of-consciousness performances.

Hailing from Somerville, Massachusetts, the group has evolved into an improvising experimental-rock collective who have been represented onstage by anywhere from 3-9 players. The members met while playing in other bands who shared the same rehearsal space — a space that was once occupied by a “Concord School of Ballet”. Apparently a cracked, hand-painted sign for the school still hangs on the wall there.

FORMA began a year ago as a new project of recording artist Mark Dwinell (Bright, Nonloc) and pianist Sophie Lam. Starting with electric combo organ, various analog synths, reverb chamber and a steel string-driven drone instrument designed and built by Mark, their improvisations explore a sonic territory that has much in common with the melodic beauty of early Kraftwerk, Cluster and Harmonia combined with the rhythmic rigor of the American minimalists Glass, Riley and Reich. George Bennett joined in on drums over the summer and along with Dwinell and Lam’s spontaneous compositions created a sound at once hypnotic, expansive and urgent. A selection from their set can be seen Here.

A.R. Plovnik is Andy from Astronaut and Healing Feeling. Astronaut was his project with Daniel Lopatin (now of Oneohtrix Point Never) and Lee Tindall. A.R. let loose with some some kosmische synth workouts, unholy space echoes, and brain-tingling video projections (which he provided for the other acts as well). His set from the night can be seen here.

Links:
- Concord Ballet Orchestra Players
CBOP
ConcordBalletOrchestraPlayers
myspace.com/cbop
- FORMA
formasounds
myspace.com/formasounds
- A.R. Plovnik
myspace.com/hcisolation
- Issue Project Room
issueprojectroom.org

Concord Ballet Orchestra Players 1/9/10 Part 1 from robert dene on Vimeo.

Concord Ballet Orchestra Players 1/9/10 Part 2 from robert dene on Vimeo.