review of Realicide’s 06/21/07 show at
Halflings’ Loft for the
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2007/07/artseen/realicide
by Warren Fry
"Face melting" does not do Realicide
justice. It's more akin to skull melting and face imploding. The visceral
quality of their primordial screams was buoyed and punctuated by the distressed
noise and tornado thuds issuing from an expertly flitted mixer: the umbra of the
curled fist. You could almost hear their vocal cords offing themselves as
Realicide, the Cincinnati-based noise-core experiment, performed at a small
warehouse apartment in
Robert Inhuman is the locus of Realicide, which
has been touring the noise circuit since 2002. I was introduced to Inhuman's viciously rapine antics in
The group that tours with Inhuman is comprised
of whomever he is working with at any given time. The resulting content and
performance dynamic of Realicide becomes modular and echoes the lived
experience of a creative lifestyle undermining typical notions of a band. This
'changing of the guard' concretely represents Inhuman's
openness to experimentation and collaboration as a field of real-life
engagement rather than a trope or flavor of the month. Realicide seems
invincible. For this tour, Inhuman's brother, Mavis
Concave, played the distortion machinery and mixer while Swill accompanied on
vocals.
Swill initiated the set with a slam poem that
prompted catcalls from some noise aficionados in the rear, but continued to
sputter words until Inhuman leapt in with throat-slaughtering screams and
Concave rapaciously keyed the soundboard, fingers striking buttons like falcons
on mice. Unlike the guitar or other position-restrictive instruments, a
soundboard offers the performer generous freedom of movement. The staple
hunching lurch easily segues into spasmodic fits or leaps at the audience.
These performative characteristics of noise thrust
sound into direct contact with bodily experience. The performer Tik///Tik, out from LA that night, rubbed a contact mic over his neck and face to produce shuttering flakes of
static reverberation and walked towards us hysterically riffing "A-YAY-YAY-YAY-YAY" unassisted by a microphone. One of
the locally based Halflings' musicians repeatedly swung his microphone in
circles at the amp behind him. The resulting distortion careened in and out of
audibility, like a derelict aircraft sweeping low over a citadel. The savage
immediacy of such confrontations is way more satisfyingly potent than the
overproduced bookishness that stultifies many visual arts performances.
Throughout the set, Inhuman maintained the
posture of a zombified baboon, eyes bulging at the
audience. Madness was not far off; it hovered deep inside the textured
arrhythmic layers of vibration and welled up from the cracks in Inhuman's voice. As soon as a satisfying riff was
established, Realicide would break off into sheer cacophony, drowning out the
shrieks of Inhuman and Swill. At one point Swill abandoned his microphone to
shout at the floor, his visual embodiment of a scream carrying its blustery
power to our collective body. In between numbers, Inhuman would explain the
next song or thank his hosts, showing an earnestness that underscores the
community's esprit de corps, an artistic husbandry nourished without
professional discourse or mercantile support. Their wealth is in the homes
where they play, in the free stickers and leaflets they distribute, in the
accessibility of the artists at their events. Realicide's
politics are reflected in this attitude as much as they are in the unhinged
anarchy of their performances, or their lyrics: "punk ain't
comfort."