Mr. Hugo Ball
Zit ser mi bit-uahh rama lama fa fa...
...what does a rock & roll telethon for Tourette's sound like? Well it twitched into Sudsy's before a sparse week night audience and I, touched deeply by the show of the "sympaticos," pledged all the pocket lint I could muster.
This was a must see – a Touch & Go act derided by the local underground press for crossing over some arbitrary line into aural abyss. Abyss it was, but noise it wasn't. For anyone paying attention to improvisational jazz for the last few decades, Storm and Stress represent the rock counterpart to movements led by early pioneers Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman and fresh diehards like Jack Wright.
This is NOT music for the weak of heart, but rather, for those with ears for pure, free expression – obscure...dissonant...unpredictable...EDGY as a dog in heat. This traditional rock three-piece (drums, electric guitar, bass) puts out the most non- traditional combinations of notes and spasmodic bursts of energy this side of a steel-molding factory.
At one point, during a quiet moment, the drums were played by ramming them into each other, and another time by throwing spare change over them. the sympaticos hung on every tink and clack. If melody is water to the dehydrated soul then Storm and Stress is pure desert wasteland...no "hooks" here, unless you count the "thrill of the weird" as a hook.
In fact, I thought that the whole performance was unscripted until a friend (who owns a copy of their album) leaned to tell me that the show was almost note for note what was on the recording. I was aghast...my night was complete. Storm and Stress is, like free-jazz, deconstructionist by nature.
The underlying belief is that all musical choices are equally valid; that all musical predispositions are arbitrary, learned, and must be challenged to stay vital.
Technical development is optional, perhaps even detrimental in that it predisposes our judgment as to what is "musical." Even their song titles ring of kitsch manifesto; "We Write Threnodies", "We Write With Explosions", "Today Is Totally Crashing", "Til Records Skips Like Passengers Shift On" and "Guitar Cabinet Stack Way High Is Freedom." Does it hit? I'd say yes, in the way torment hits or dementia strikes...insanity is, after all, just an alternate outlook on life.