Drone rock may not be understood by everyone, and it may induce sleepamong non-believers, but at least it has a sense of melody andmusicianship. Frequency Curtain, a project/experiment by Josh Rosen,John Grzinich and Rick Reed, is drone noise for the noise's sake. Usinganalogue and digital sine wave generators, shortwave radios, and laptopelectronics, the three became an experimental media performance groupthat first began displaying their wares at Intersect 4 in 2001.Improvisational sessions find the members powering up their devices andjust producing sound, tweaking and turning knobs on the fly to marry upthe various sounds produced by the devices. As such, I feel it shouldnot be judged on the quality or style of the sounds, but on the way thedevices interact with each other and the effect the whole performancehas on an audience. There are not many artists with this approach, andwith each that releases a recording of their work, I always feel likeI'm missing a component. This album was compiled from longer sessionsof improvisation, and I feel they probably work better with visualaccompaniment. The sounds that invade the speakers do not seem to bedesigned for listening alone, or at least not for listening enjoyment:they cause the hairs on the back of the neck to rise and fall with eachsquelch and high pitched squeak, and continually irritate the ears evenat low volume. But the different sound generators do blend togethernicely, and produce enough disparity to keep the listen interesting andvaried. The tracks do take quite a while to introduce a variation,however, and by that point many may lose interest. Like manyperformances, it can be summed up by asking Goethe's three questions:"What are they doing?"; "How are they doing it?"; and "Is it worthdoing?" The first two are answered above, and the third is a resounding"Yes." I just feel that it should never be presented in this format, asit loses a great deal of the punch. Read More
