St. Louis brims with unknown talent, not unknown in any tragic sense, but unknown because the talents don’t leave home much, like the early days of Bossanova, where musicians played for musicians, in each other’s living rooms. Ask anyone if they’ve heard of STL so-and-so, and they’ll say “no” or “who?” That’s because so-and-so is too busy making the stuff to get caught up on the bad side of art: vanity, narcissism, self-promotion, etc. For the record, it’s not up to the artist to sell their work, it’s up to the listener to discover it. If an artist is always peddling their wares, I find it suspect. When do they find time to make the damn stuff?
So here’s an A/V collision of two talented, brilliant artists from St. Louis who don’t seem to really give a damn if you’re buying it or not. Yet anyone who has passed through their city and crossed paths with ‘em knows they know what they’re selling is experimental gold. Mad engineer Kevin Harris manipulates his custom modular synth (mod synth works are typically tiresome, tedious, and numbing, unless they’re in the hands of someone like Kevin Harris) while Chizzy Chizmo captures the performance through live editing / video feedback using surveillance equipment and analog video hardware. Together, they go down the rabbit hole, one that looks a lot like Eddie Jessup…
Sold.
• Kevin Harris (interview) [Editor’s Note — b/c)]: http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/rftmusic/2010/08/floating_laboratories_…
• Chizmo: http://www.chizmo.tv
More about: Kevin Harris
