http://www.brown.edu/Students/INDY/c...t/view/352/31/
Fun From None: Live at the
No Fun Fest 2004 & 2005 DVD
Directed by Chris Habib
[Load Records/Visitor Design]
It is tempting to hate this sort of thing—three hours of live music lazily but understandably called “noise,” presented raw, without any sort of exposition or respite. Even the most open-minded of outsiders will likely require saintly patience to sit through the whole knob-twiddling, free jazzy, improvisational electronic affair that is Fun From None, a highlight reel of performances from the first two years of the No Fun Fest.
Since its initial run in 2004, the No Fun Fest has become the premier venue for all things beatless and atonal—festival founder and organizer Carlos Giffoni prefers to call it “extreme”—gathering the old guard (Borbetomagus) and current stars (Wolf Eyes, Hair Police) of experimental music in Brooklyn for a weekend of, well, funlessness. It’s certainly not for everybody, but this film may prove a delightful tonic for those who think there’s nothing interesting happening in music anymore.
Keep in mind, naysayers: your three hours is pittance compared with the three days of eardrum shredding that actual festival-goers endured. Just look at the happy faces and good-natured moshing in the sold-out crowd: these bands must be doing something right. Perhaps the material is more appealing if one views it as performance art. To wit, one member of the Nihilist Assault Group does nothing but sip wine idly while his bandmates have at it with stomp boxes and a turntable. Say what you will about the music; the festival succeeds tremendously as mere spectacle, and the varied treatment of the video footage (grainy high-contrast black and white, slow motion montage, etc. handled by videographer/director/editor Chris Habib) accentuates this fact. The deafening scrape of one song may sound indistinct from that of the others, but without visual aid you’d never know that the one was created by strumming guitars with crushed beer cans, the other by dutifully clicking away at a laptop.
That said, the bands featured in Fun From None put on an impressive show. Dominik Fernow, alias Prurient, kneels shirtless before an amplifier, tweaking a dog whistle squeal while grimacing like a 10-year-old on the verge of a tantrum, only to leap up and thrash his microphones around like a schizophrenic battling invisible demons. Later on, while guest starring during Macronympha’s set, Fernow becomes so absorbed in throwing screws and contact mics around in paint roller trays that he lapses into a fit of dryheaving that may or may not have resulted in actual vomiting. Then there’s noise as punk, best embodied by the guitar- and trumpet-wielding three-piece Heathen Shame, whose members turn in an exhausting performance marked by lightspeed fretboard antics and a bit of shameless stagediving thrown in for good measure.
Lest you think this is little else than art school fallout, keep in mind that Sonic Youth members Lee Ranaldo and Kim Gordon, who make separate appearances, are major label recording artists, and William Hooker, the drummer in Ranaldo’s combo, began his career backing Dionne Warwick and the Isley Brothers. Tied to their day jobs though they may be, these guys prove that improv and noise are not merely the in-joke of trust fund kids with a working knowledge of electronics. Fun From None’s dispatches from the experimental music frontier reveal honest-to-goodness musicianship behind the general battiness.
-- Kevin Sparks