V/A - Circuitfest
 
Last November Arts Industria hosted Circuitfest, an evening of electro / industrial music with live performances by Signal to Noise, Epoch, Assemblage 23, Black Dahlia, and Sphere Lazza.  Held at the Razor in Indianapolis, Circuitfest drew an enormous crowd, but not everyone who would have liked to been there as able to attend.  Thus, Ken at Arts Industria edited together a video tape of the evening, Circuitfest Video Document No. 1.  45 minutes in length, this video shows the highlights of the evening, with live footage of all the bands on the roster.  First up was Ken’s own project, Signal to Noise.  The three StN songs on this tape, The Verge, Today (Like Any Other Day), and Crushed show Ken on the keys and vocals, along with a live guitarist, drummer and second synth player.  Right away I realized that the studio versions of the songs were dubbed over top of the live video.  This is apparent through out, especially in a few places where Ken is singing, but the words vocals do not match his lips.  Also, I listened carefully to the tracks, and soon realized that even though there was a guitar player on the stage, there was no guitar in the song.  I changed my outlook on the tape and than began to watch it as if it were a set of videos rather than a live performance.  This seemed to work much better.  On Crushed, there are several snippets of film, some of which were taken from the Odessa Steps sequence in the 1925 classic, Potemkin.  Visually, this was a grabber.  Mahhole Vortex took the stage next, playing Superhuman Machines.  After that Black Dahlia played Quatrain, and Assemblage 23 played Graverobber.  Lastly, fellow Floridians Sphere Lazza wrapped up with a Dirge and Morpheus, both of which also contained snippets of films.  There are a few places on the video where the live audio was used, one of those being Sphere Lazza’s mini opening song, Mr. Grinch (yes, from the Dr. Seuss cartoon.)  Overall the video is entertaining. In some places the video effects became a bit overused, making it difficult to make out exactly what was going on.  Aside from that, it is well worth the $13 (which includes a CD too!)
 
ARTS INDUSTRIA
425 Lamonte Terrace
South Bend, IN 46616
USA
e-mail: artsindu@skynet.net
ARTS INDUSTRIA homepage:
http://www.sonic-boom.com/ai/