Room40's Open Frame Show Features Surround Sound And Hypnosis Display

For 15 years Brisbane musician and curator Lawrence English has been helming his acclaimed experimental label Room40, and has found global renown for not only his own sonic explorations but also the extensive roster of like-minded artists that he's assembled from both Australia and abroad.

The Room40 flagship as far as curated events go is his Open Frame festival series, which having been previously held in Brisbane and London is this year being held in Sydney over two nights at Carriageworks (with the bulk of artists also playing at Brisbane's Institute of Modern Art over the following two evenings). As well as familiar Room40 names such as Grouper, Chris Abrahams, Makino Takashi and English himself — all offering pieces never before presented locally — some talented interlopers have also been invited to the party.

"Because it's an anniversary I've invited some people who aren't necessarily part of the label strictly speaking, but for me are really influential," English explains. "People like William Basinski who's a composer — he's created a number of projects over time, including this thing in New York called Arcadia, which for me in some respects [summed up] a lot of how I feel about the recording community — the people who come together to put together these events and who are interested in the same kinds of questions and aesthetic concerns. He did this amazing series in this loft in Brooklyn which has now been restaged in London — it was basically a performance series where he brought together people with totally different interests into this collective space and everyone sort of had this shared experience, and I really like that as an approach to make things happen."

"Then also people like Jim O'Rourke, who for me probably summarises everything about what music should be about. He's someone who's obsessed with writing incredibly sweet, thoughtful, intelligent pop music, but who's also making incredible electro-acoustic experimental synthesiser work. Jim now lives in Japan and he hasn't left Japan in about a decade basically — and he has no interest in leaving Japan — so I was trying to figure out a way for him to be part of it. For me a lot of the records he's been part of — everything from the Sonic Youth records through to the Wilco record that he produced [2004's A Ghost Is Born] — they're incredible records, but at the same time he's made these amazing solo records, collaboratorial projects, free jazz things — he's just one of those guys who's to me so inspirational just through his sheer diversity and hunger for making affective music. I tried to figure out a way to get him to be part of the program, so we came up with this idea where I commissioned him to make a composition that can be played back and it will only be played back at these shows. He's written this incredible 35-minute piece which is going to be spacialised in 5.1 so it will be this surround sound kind of concert. It's so very him, the piece of music — it just felt like exactly what I'd hoped for."

"Then at the same time we've got people like Makino Takashi, who again is one of these guys that has been historically involved and done a piece at Open Frame previously, and Grouper and Paul Clipson are coming, Chris Abrahams, Austin Buckett — I guess these are people who are part of the label proper. But for the shows we've really tried to make so that people are presenting something on the night that hasn't been presented here in Australia before. So Grouper and Paul Clipson are doing this amazing hypnosis display, like a 16mm that she plays a live soundtrack to. In Brisbane we've got Ross Manning playing — he hasn't actually released anything yet but will do later in the year. He does this amazing kinetic sculptural performance stuff, which is totally his own thing.

"So the concerts are about representing in some way what the label's about, which is that you have all of these people that are expressing themselves in very individual ways, but we all share a similar concern — we want to do something that is about listening and the capacity to be really embedded in music and embedded in sound. I think everyone has this experience at different points of their life where you listen to a piece of music and it's just not about that sound in your ears and the tone — it becomes internal, and it becomes embedded in who you are. I'm interested in having that happen, but the opportunity to return to that in the future again and again and still have it is something that can be embedded freshly. There are certain kinds of music you can listen to and it transcends the moment that it was created in — that's the music that I'm interested in doing. It might reference that time and be really deeply rooted in it but somehow it reaches out of that time into where you are right now — that's what I hope the Room40 catalogue becomes in time. And certainly for me because I had to go back and listen to a lot of the really early recordings, I'm hearing them now for the first time in maybe five years — I don't listen to them all the time — and I've heard stuff that I've never heard before. I've listened to these records maybe 50 or 100 times and I'm hearing things for the first time that I've never heard in them, and I was thinking, 'How is it that I've never actually realised that this was in this record?' and that's great that it still holds some interest for me even though I've been highly exposed to those records in a critical way, different to a way someone might listen to them for pleasure. They still hold some magic for me, and it's about that magic. That's what I think is missing in a lot of music today, that somehow sound speaks to us in a way that television and film can't because it's an invitational medium that's going into your ears and it's in your mind and you are constructing this meaning out of that. When you see something you make sense out of it as a series of objects or a narrative or whatever, but music doesn't allow you to do that in the same way and I think when you listen to music deeply it's like a seed in your mind that turns into something else over time."

There's seems to be a cerebral side to what interests English, which involves context and surroundings rather than just the noise and sound itself — does he agree with this summation?

"It's two things for me personally — recorded music and live music," he explains. "A lot of music concerns itself with horizontal times, there's a thing unfolding in time and at the end of that time you've spent with the music you understand it. Like a song has a structure with lyrics that tell a story, or a melodic progression that happens and at the end of that you realise that you can whistle it again and that's great. But what I'm interested in is having that but at the same time having this vertical time that extends up and down either side of that horizontal time. So for example North Indian classical music like ragas, instead of being about this thing happening over four minutes and at the end of the four minutes you understand it, this is happening over a much longer time scale that is going deeper — instead of pushing forward it's pushing down and up at the same time, and there's this kind of expanding thing that happens. I'm super-interested in making records that do that — I want you to be able to put it on in the background and it can happen in time and at the end you appreciate it, or I'm happy for you to put on headphones and be completely invested in this thing and have it basically penetrating you in that way.

"And at the same time as that, in terms of the live music experience I'm very interested in this idea that there are two sets of ears that we have going at any one time — there are the ears attached to our head that are pumping auditory information to our brains, and then there's our body's ear and certainly what in concert I'm doing now is very much about that idea of activating the body and making people realise that there's an inescapable physicality to music which can be confronting and abrasive but it can also be incredibly seductive. It's about sharing that with an audience, and it's individual because each of us is hearing it individually in the room but we're collectively sensing it as well — there's an interesting tension there because the music transcends just the auditory. You can listen to it, but particularly in concert there's this physicality — so there's this synesthetic thing happening between the sensations of listening to the music and the sensation of touch where you're feeling it at the same time, and I think there's a really nice space there which can be really heavy and uncomfortable at times but it can also be incredibly gentle and beautiful. I like that tension between having these really physical, almost uncomfortable 'can I take this?' moments, and then pulling back and you realise that your body is really a part of this performance and that you are as much a part of the performance as the music itself."

Al lot of this deeper analysis of sound seems to involve an element of investment by both parties — does English believe that there's an onus on the listener to buy in to properly experience the music he makes?

"If you're sitting at home making a coffee and you pour some Nescafe into a bowl, then it's a hot drink and that's fine and it probably suits some kind of purpose and you've had an experience with that hot drink," he offers by way of analogy. "But then if you were to sit there and grind the beans yourself and spend time preparing a coffee in a particular way with a particular kind of bean, then the quality of experience that you have with that coffee is nothing like what you have with the Nescafe. I think with music it's the same thing — you can listen to a piece of music, and more and more I think this is the challenge for most musicians, everyone can listen to it once and enjoy it in that way you enjoy anything that you have a sensory experience. But it's how you set up the situation where you're inviting people to enjoy it more deeply than that, and I'd like to think that most of the Room40 catalogue is about that depth of the opportunity to listen — the invitation to listen — deeply, and listen with an agency.

"Historically the exchange of music was a kind of economic exchange in a very pure sense. When the label started in 2000 you went to a record store and you purchased an object that you invested in, and that investment meant that you had to give it time because there's only so much resource cash that you can hand over. So if you read a review and bought something and you were listening to it for the first time and you didn't like it that much, you'd listen to it again because there was an economic exchange that had happened — 'I just spent 30 bucks on this thing, I'm going to give it a go again and again!' — and there was almost a rigour in the way that you experienced music. Whereas now it's almost the complete antithesis in that you have this buffet-style of music, like Spotify is a buffet and you can gorge yourself on anything, but the problem is that at some point you just sort of become obese and fatigued with this opportunity to listen. So I think that now what's happened is that rather than it being about this financial economic exchange the economy is time, and what you're trying to do is set up this situation where you're encouraging a potential audience person to give you the time that your music needs. Ultimately music is a time-based art, and there are certain ways that I think you can encourage people to want to return to it — there's a kind of pay-off that comes with the repeated experience. It's like losing your virginity — you have that experience and it's a good experience, but it's nothing like what happens when you become a lot more acclimatised to your body. You can suddenly make things work a lot more efficiently and the depth of experience you can have from that thing is completely different. That is what I think listening to music is like; I think we can consistently lose our virginity over and over again, but it's boring and fatiguing after a while because what you want is to have that next level of experience. To transcend that moment for the first time into this whole other realm, that's the challenge for people making music — how you convince people to be able to do that transcendent thing.

"You're like me — we've both seen thousands and thousands of bands play — and it's always an enjoyable experience, but what is the qualification that takes it from being an enjoyable way to spend time to something that really affects you in a way that you walk away from it and a month later — or a year or two later in my case — you're thinking, 'That was a really important thing that I experienced because of these reasons'. When ATP was on and there were back-to-back shows and I saw My Bloody Valentine, Swans and Einstürzende Neubauten in about 11 days that to me was probably the most transcendent experience that I've ever had in terms of listening to music in concert and it made me completely rethink what it was to be at a concert as an audience member. And also the opportunity that you have as a musician to affect an audience and have some kind of exchange. It's weird, before that I'd personally had a bit of a disconnection with what a concert meant — I was really giving some serious thought to, 'Why am I actually doing this, what is this about?' — and after that I completely recognised the potential of what sound can do in space and in time. Since then I look forward to every single concert that I play, I'm excited about these tours that are coming up, and with these shows at Open Frame I really feel that there's this exchange that not just can happen but has to happen — that's the excitement now, to activate that."

So much of English's music and music analysis has an emphasis on sound, but he's also of the opinion that lyrics can play an important role in listening and composing.

"I do really admire some songwriters, I have to say," he admits. "But if I'm talking about my own work then I build a story a bit differently to that, just by the nature of what I do I guess. I see the music as a great opportunity to talk to someone much more broadly than what might actually be sonically expressed. For the next record I'm just framing it right now about what the conversation is, and it's kind of to do with this idea of 'cruel optimism'. That basically describes this phenomenon where we desire certain kinds of things — for example the fantasy of the 'good life' that was sold to us in the 20th century — we desire that thing, but actually the desire of that particular version of reality is a hindrance to us actually becoming happy. We desire this thing so much, which is in some respects unattainable, it doesn't even exist, and we fixate so much on that that it becomes a blockade to us actually recognising what the possibilities are. That's the crux of what my next record is as a concept, and it's from this woman Lauren Berlant from Chicago who talks about this idea of how that affects us as a public, and I think there's an interesting expression of that in sound to be had: the fact that we might anticipate one thing but that the desire towards this particular sound becomes the blockade to us actually recognising the possibility of what it actually is that we can have as listeners."

Room40 has achieved incredible traction over the past 15 years; you can often find English or his releases chronicled on important blogs or in esteemed overseas publications like Mojo. Does he remember his mindset at the start of the label's life and has he transcended any expectations he had?

"I remember why I started the label. I'd come across these records and I was surprised that they weren't available," he explains. "A few people around the world had made these albums that were given to me as CDRs at that stage and I wanted to share that music. I felt really compelled to do it because I thought there was something articulated that I wasn't hearing elsewhere. And I think that in Brisbane and Australia at that time we were still really disconnected from the rest of the world; email had just come in, there was no PayPal, it was still very early days. I was interested in building this very outward-looking direction, a bridge to the world in a way in terms of the sound community, and also in some respects building the community here or at least giving it something formal to hang onto so there was some direction. Still today that's what I'm interested in, but what's shifted is that the world is much smaller now — or it feels smaller — and the access that we have to things is far greater than it was 15 years ago, and the nature of the relationship to those things has changed; what it means to have a physical relationship with music is really radically different, and I think that the challenges to how people come to the music and how they stay with it are different as well.

"But I can still say categorically that I still believe in every release that we do, that it's something that should be heard. It's not going to change everyone, but I hope that there are some people who hear it and then suddenly recognise to themselves that 'this is the kind of world that I want to explore'. Just for them to recognise the potential in this sort of music to be meaningful, not just at the moment of listening to it but as something that lingers on. I think as well that the idea of a niche is sort of problematic as well because I think everything is kind of niche because there's so much out there — like classical music that would have been the predominant music of the mid-20th century is now an entirely niche genre, the same as some kinds of punk rock are. The audience might be aged differently and go to different places to experience that music, but there's this kind of universal niche for sound now. What's interesting about that is that instead of there being this idea that somehow you got into this one style of music, now I think what we have is a license to be polygamous — we can be polygamous in a way that might be differently sanctioned to how it was 15 years ago, with the territorial boundaries of space — a certain scene in a certain city, now completely gone. Now we're finding out about things that are happening right now as they happen, like certain genres from West Africa that are happening right now and we know about them, whereas that would have taken years and years to find out about in the past because it would have had to travel through certain circles. That's all gone and now there's this different relationship. So what I want to think about these records is that they open up the possibility for us to be willing to listen deeply and be engaged in the music in a way that maybe isn't as encouraged as much by other forms, and then hopefully that contributes to those forms as well."

English still has his toes in the traditional rock world, having most recently spent time in the studio with Brisbane wunderkinds Blank Realm overseeing their new album, and he takes lessons from his sonic explorations and attitudes with him into the studio.

"It's funny, but I think I've known Daniel from Blank Realm for more than 20 years and known of the other guys about as long," he laughs. "Seems hard to believe that much time has passed really, but it's likely the case. Daniel and my brother went to school together and I ended up coaching them in soccer at some stage.

"I've always been a huge fan of Blank Realm's musical endeavours. I think what I've appreciated most is their sheer restlessness with familiarity. They have roamed over an enormous musical territory and in that process have built up a musical prowess that is very unique. They can move between what feels like incredibly hooky pop structures into freeform noise and back again without you really noticing they've just done it. I think in terms of their fluidity as players also they've got something very special happening. It's a very liquid sense of time, parts orbit in and out of phase with each other and in that freeness there's a really solid spine that always hooks you in. They are a great example of what a family bands should be about, completely open to possibilities as they present themselves, but unified in this determination to find a sound that's very much their own.

"It really was a pleasure to work with them on Illegals In Heaven. Working with Tim Stevens too was amazing, an incredibly supportive and creative engineer. It was a really great few weeks in the studio and I think what struck me most was just how focused they were. Some of the songs, their core at least, was recorded in one or two takes. From there we spent a long time fleshing them out, adding and subtracting different instruments and arrangements to give them this very particular sonic space. I couldn't be more satisfied with how the album turned out."

Aside from our discussion about spacial matters, English believes that locale plays a part in his sound/music experience, and that his hometown of Brisbane has played an intergral part in his journey.

"I think when Room40 started, Brisbane was an entirely different city to the one it is now," he reflects. "It's pretty astounding to think about where it has come from and where it is now. The city, in my opinion, went through a prolonged puberty in the late '90s and '00s. There's been a lot of growing pains and change that has really brought Brisbane into early adulthood. For me, and certainly for Room40, one of the reasons we stayed here was that Brisbane was still taking shape. Unlike some other Australian and international cities, the pieces were just starting to be in play and that meant there was room to really experiment and see what was possible to make happen. I liked the idea of starting with a relative tabula rasa.

"Being honest as well, Brisbane was also incredibly cheap then. That offered a chance to take risks, to push much further than might be possible under the economic conditions the city presents today. If I was starting out a label now, focused on the kinds of music I am interested in, I sense it would be a very difficult proposition. Brisbane is now a very expensive place to live. The first place I rented, a two bedroom flat in Red Hill was $95 for the whole thing in 1998. I'm guessing it'd be four or five times that price now and I'd love to think that wages have also increased equally, but I think we all know that's not the case. So today I think those resources that were available to work on the label would be compromised significantly by the pressures of simple cost of living. I really feel for young artists and creatively minded people who want to try and work at building things in Queensland. It's incredibly challenging and that wasn't helped by the wholesale obliteration of the creative classes under the last government. Their ideological policies did nothing for increasing the cultural capital of this state. We now need half a decade to bring things back into alignment, to encourage that younger (and indeed, older) generation who left to come back and build the creative capacity of Brisbane."

In terms of the sound community, English has worked alongside (and in many instances become friends with some incredible musicians and thinkers in the last 15 years. What are some of his favourite projects in this regard?

"I have to say I do count myself as very blessed with the opportunities I have had the chance to take part in," he smiles. "I owe a great deal of respect to many different musicians and artists who have assisted me over the years in various ways. Right at the beginning of Room40, when we were just starting out with the live events at Brisbane Powerhouse, I had the chance to work with a bunch of musicians whose work had really influenced me. Not just in terms of musical aesthetics, but also the work they did. People like David Toop, Scanner, David Shea and DJ Olive were hugely formative during the earliest days of Room40. I felt they were in some ways — they were the generation above me and they we so generous in offering me opportunities to collaborate with them. As odd as it might sound, those experiences really reinforced my sense that what Room40 was trying to do made sense at an international level, that reaching outward from Brisbane was important to do. For me musically too, having the chance to collaborate with those guys made a huge impact on me. It made me realise I had to take this work seriously. I had to give it a level of respect that it deserved. As enjoyable as it was, it was also something that offered a chance for real transcendence, both for an audience and the artists involved."