Controllerism

Now that I'm no longer one of those "corporate sellout banker gordon gekko wannabe" and have instantly gained all the hipster credibility in the world, Wednesday night I naturally headed out to the Delancey in the Lower East Side, to attend the Warper Party.

I will provide the disclaimer, even with all my hipster credibility, I wasn't exactly invited to this event that is described as a "for us/buy us event to create a community amongst electronic musicians and forward thinking artists in the NY metro area and beyond". Rather, I was shown a website, FreeNYC, by another severance kid, and this event was listed for Wednesday night. A few of us headed over, not knowing what to expect. Needless to say, we were not disappointed.

The first act we saw was basically a singer and guitarist, both dressed as though they were out of Mad Max, who called themselves Prez Powers. The music was okay, but they had two guys, who were wearing hoodies and masks from V for Vendetta, breakdancing as they played, who were both massively entertaining. One of the people in our group was visiting from Wisconsin, and there were definitely those moments where he looked at the rest of us with one of those "is this how you spend your average Wednesday evening????" looks.

What came next absolutely blew my mind. As a big fan of both rock and electronic music, I realized long ago that the two types of artists you really see hero worship towards are DJ's and Guitarists (perhaps a little biased here). I can't count the number of times you hear the word "god" associated with "guitar", and if you've ever seen a big-name DJ perform, the way they control the room is nearly messianic. I have always wondered if any group or band could somehow combine both of these roles. I may have just seen someone who fulfilled this challenge, but even more amazingly, he does it all by himself.

His name was Moldover, and he began the performance with a guitar swung around his back and the most ridiculous electronic contraption in front of him. The music with this insane machine seemed so complicated, yet pleasing, that a few of us were convinced that there was no way it was real and he was just pulling an Ashlee Simpson. He would then alternate, leaving a track playing, and switching over to guitar. His abilities on the guitar were equal to the electronic music creation, as he definitely was shredding in the mode of an Eddie Van Halen. 

I went home thinking it all might've been a figment of my drunken imagination, but after some solid internet'ing, it turns out he actually was a student of guitar from childhood and a grad of the Berkelee School of Music. The electronic contraption he had is one of a number of crazy contraptions he makes, and this whole genre is called "controllerism". Basically, rather than DJ'ing with just turntables and basic mixers, he modifies keyboards and other electronics to allow for much greater control in live remixing. I still really don't know how the fuck any of this actually works, but am definitely going to further research this potential land mine of success.

He also invented something called the Octamasher, which is some sort of collaborative mixing device that allows a whole group of people to simultaneously create music. One thing I absolutely find hilarious about electronic music, if you watch the video below...where else could you find this AMAZING mix of people (Wayne, I'm hoping you're reading this):

And of course, if he becomes popular, I only really liked his older stuff.