That evening, Vienna-based musician Stefan Kushima bid farewell to his close friend and artistic collaborator, Bristol-based Joey Chainsaw, who had passed away a few days earlier. It was Stefan himself who had introduced me to Joey's recordings not too long before, lending me a CD-R anthology he had received from his friend as well as presenting me with their duo release In The Spiral Door. Joey's music sounds uncompromising, and uncompromisingly DIY, crude, intense and certainly diverse in its exploratory character. I hear Joey, whom I never got to meet, was a gentle and sweet character. These musical and personal attributes are not necessarily ones often thought analogous in everyday usage – a discrepancy that can be frustrating, presumably for the artists in particular, but also useful, even possible to harness. This "secret Joey farewell" similarly defied these characterizations.
The concert took place at the Lust Gallery, a space close to the Donaukanal and, at the time of the concert, visited by a crowd probably attending an exhibition event. The concert itself was not publicized, and exhibition attendants mixed with the group of people interested in Joey's and Stefan's work. The handful of times I had seen Stefan play live recently, usually under his Cruise Family guise, his work embraced a certain pop pluralism. It has been tending towards, as he might call it, the "technoid", an imaginative melting and molding of musical ideas easily identified as the work of a voracious listener: visit Stefan's apartment and you're as likely to hear Ol' Dirty Bastard as Orphan Fairytale, while :zoviet*france: share speakers and headspace with Mariah Carey…
Still, at this concert, Stefan's music was probably closer to the raw, murky drone / noise of In The Spiral Door, a move that in what has been called today's "post-noise underground" here and there could almost be tagged "back to the roots"; however, it appears more beneficial to consider these sounds strands of a broadening field of artistic possibilities. It is fitting that Stefan has recently released a tape (Orbital Express) on Not Not Fun Records, a label whose quasi-postmodern pluralism is a particularly successful example of these tendencies (and whose website very aptly described Stefan's most recent exploits as those of a "neo-rave laser-rider").
As is his wont, Stefan spent most of the gig hunched over keyboards and pedals. In addition to a photo depicting Joey, some fond and playful tribute artwork and the circulation of a water bottle filled with vodka, Joey-style, he incorporated recordings of Joey's into his set, looping them and weaving them into his dense soundscapes. I finally got to see Stefan use his violin live, both vocalizing into it and stroking it with his bow during what felt like the concert's second third. The last part included percussive elements and, I believe, featured one of Joey's recordings looped on its own for a while.
I can't tell what the (presumably) unknowing bystanders thought of the set; did it just appear to be one ungodly racket (which it certainly was in the best possible sense), or did they perceive how Stefan's feelings for Joey (obviously, to me) fed into his physical approach towards his gear? While its vocal sounds were almost unrecognizable, the violin-centered section certainly matched signifiers of intensity and emotionality. The percussive section could doubtlessly be called ritualistic, or ritual-like in its emphasis on repetition and shifting tempi.
(Joey and Stefan live, July 2010)
Stefan's set, not just in its obvious musical and performative aspects, did that and more. Through the incorporation of Joey's music, photo, artwork dedicated to him, through Stefan's own bodily involvement, through one's knowledge of the concert's occasion as well as the personal and, indivisibly and indistinguishably from it, artistic friendship between Joey and Stefan, visitors were able to connect to a very unique field of intensity. Stefan's sometime collaborator Vanessa Arn (of Primordial Undermind) commented on his set that he was a "channeller"; if he was a channeller, he was also an enabler, invoking not one objective image of Joey Chainsaw but performing, harnessing and offering diverse aspects of their relations and experiences. Anyone engaging with Stefan's set and its background is likely to have developed very inspiring ideas of what Joey Chainsaw and his connection to this evening's performer were about.
The music's formless character itself arguably was not the evening's very central factor in the sense of a deterministic mood-shifter, but rather was a realization of daily and yet not-daily artistic DIY praxis integral to the farewell performance. This was not functional music subject to a specific topic and occasion, but certainly not untouched thereby either. Stefan has expressed frustration about the relatively small size of Joey's listener base, but the complex of music, artwork, DIY tactics, memories and care he helped manifest at the Lust Gallery has certainly helped make Joey unforgettable to some people and will help further investigations and connections be made.
Dead Pilot Records: RIP Joey Chainsaw
Lava Thief: RIP Joey Chainsaw
Rottenmeats: Joey Chainsaw Rest in Peace
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