Horacio Pollard
@D22, 27 July 2010

By Sophia, 2010年 7月 30日

During the past few weeks touring Asia, Horacio Pollard has played with the likes of Torturing Nurse in Shanghai and various other musicians spanning many styles including harsh noise, industrial, and ambient. True to basics, Horacio’s mixing setup consists of a rectangular board covered with countless sonic apparatuses which he deftly manipulates.

Pollard’s stance towards the music he makes is to evoke a “very physical reaction”, so much so that “there’s no room to breathe.” Though this brings to mind a homogeneous wall of sound, nothing could be further from the truth. Delicately shifting patterns gave way to clattering electronics and manifold aural textures. Audience members looking to glean some enjoyment from the performance were compelled to look to the noise paradigm: instead of a coherent melodic structure packed with emotive expression, the immediacy and consistency of the sound take precedence. His five or so pieces drifted across the abstract into a world of sounds without conscious sources, providing a welcome break from signification of any sort.

On the opposite end of “experimental noise” was Liu Xinyu. His ambient droning beginnings persisted throughout the set, never really foraying into anything more interesting or nuanced despite the use of a computer (an instrument Pollard omitted.) Disappointingly, D22 was more or less deserted — an exception to the usually reasonably buzzing Tuesday Zoomin’ Night. Though Pollard himself acknowledged that “there’s not really a big noise scene anywhere,” quality noise musicians of any sort in or passing through Beijing are relatively rare; thus I was surprised that this performance, one of the best I’ve seen recently, didn’t interest more people enough to attend.

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