Where few have gone before

By Anthony Carew
March 4, 2005

A sense of musical adventure will reward those who go in search of What is Music, writes Anthony Carew.

The What Is Music? Festival didn't begin as a grand concept, but rather as an excuse for co-founders Oren Ambarchi and Robbie Avenaim to get a gig. "In 1994, in Sydney, there weren't that many venues that were interested in having experimental music shows," recalls Ambarchi.

With each successive year, the festival has grown, and BDO promoter Ken West has come on board for the festival's 10th incarnation. "I think Ken's creatively very frustrated with the Big Day Out, and working with us can remind him why he started the Big Day Out in the first place," Ambarchi says. For his first WIM? West was keen to secure festival headliners the Residents, the American art-pop activists who have kept their identities a closely-guarded secret for 39 years. Alex Murray-Leslie, the Australian member of Berlin-based pop-band and art-collective Chicks On Speed, is particularly keen to see the Residents up close.

"They have this stage-show and all the costumes, all the choreography, all the music goes towards that. All new music we've made in recent years has been going towards making a more 'theatrical' show," Murray-Leslie says, offering COS's new album, Press the Spacebar, as an example.

Bjorn Copeland, guitarist of hipster New Yorker art-noise crew Black Dice, is excited to be playing with the "amazing" line-up, and to an appreciative audience. "Musically we can be quite challenging for listeners, so if you're playing to a sea of confused or upset people, it's hard to feel like your finding any common ground" he says.

Black Dice know their adventurous spirit can be quite confrontational, having started out "trying to make the loudest, most harsh, most f---ed-up sounding music we could".

Yoshimi Yokota - the Boredoms' percussionist-vocalist immortalised by the Flaming Lips on their Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots album - knows the most exciting part of coming to Australia: "I love to see the platypus!" she exclaims. Having twice toured here with Boredoms, this time she's bringing her own band, OOIOO (that's 'oh oh eye oh oh'), an all-girl quartet who play an intuitive brand of psychedelic pop. "I never felt that I couldn't do certain things in Boredoms, it's just that I wanted to play guitar and sing," Yoshimi explains of her band's beginnings.

Also returning to Australia are Pan sonic, the Finnish duo whose macho micro-techno tonalism was a highpoint of the 2001 festival. Their latest release is Kesto, a three-disc box set that showcases their different musical moods, from brutal beats to improvised minimalism. "Our music encompasses lots of different feels, lots of different atmospheres. Sometimes it's aggressive, sometimes it's more quiet," says Ilpo Vaisanen.

Ambarchi is really happy to be bringing Pan sonic back - "most people who saw their shows in 2001 were completely blown away" - but for him, all these acts are just the tip of the iceberg: New Zealand drone-noise pioneers The Dead C, wall-of-sound guitarist Kevin Drumm, and crawl-metal space-cadets Sunn o are also at the top of his list. "I'm excited about getting the chance to see so many of the bands play. We're fans, foremost, and that's exactly why we do What is Music?" he says.

What is Music? is at the Forum Theatre, city, tonight and tomorrow night.