Running from Sep. 24-29, 2024, Cincinnati’s inaugural Talk Low Festival featured local, regional, and national artists of experimental and ambient music. Though dominated by performances, the festival also included a film screening, dance party, ambient music jam, and panel on Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening. With all these elements, Talk Low feels less like a traditional festival than a community building exercise. During the three performances I attended, I was struck by how much this kind of space is sorely needed for artists, composers, and fans of experimental “genre-less” music in the Queen City.
The locally-based, punk-infused band Mary Henry was an effective opener on Sep. 24 at DSGN Collective. Alyssa Cassata, Corrie Cicale, Zo Clark, and Clare Shaw moved through a set infused with feminist rage and malaise, showcasing the band’s stunning cohesiveness of sound and communication. The Brooklyn-based solo electronic artist Public Speaking (Jason Anthony Harris) followed with a set that built on the energy established by Mary Henry, taking us through several pieces that highlighted his love of intense, cerebral soundscapes with interlocking loops, samples, and distorted vocals.
claire rousay was the headliner for the evening, and the energy not only mellowed but turned somber. Performing after a long and tiring car ride, rousay spoke about the State of Missouri’s execution of Marcellus Williams, which had occurred earlier that evening. She was weary, infuriated, and cruelly resigned. Her set was characterized by lyrics that, on the surface, were “sad,” but were really emotionally introspective and enhanced by pre-recorded tracks, guitar, and vocals that created a prayerful musical texture.
On Sep. 26,, I returned to DSGN Collective for Five Pointed Stars, Desert Liminal, and KMRU. Like Mary Henry, Five Pointed Stars is a local band of four who merge punk and ambient sensibilities. The group of Eliot Gill, Nina Payiatis, Julian Vanasse, and Patrick Zopff was less unified than Mary Henry and slower to settle in. But they exuded a fierce love for their craft and hit it out of the park in the final number. Their audience was the most rambunctious and participatory I saw throughout the festival: cheers of support and whoops of joy became just as important to the experience as the music itself.
Desert Liminal — Julie C. Mullins
Chicago’s Desert Liminal was beautifully balanced. This was most present in how well Mallory Linehan’s violin spoke over Rob Logan’s fierce, drum-centric texture, and both her and Sarah Jane Quillin’s voices were clear and foregrounded – an issue that had cropped up in the sets by Mary Henry and Five Pointed Stars.
Kenyan-born and Berlin-based KMRU and his team arrived quietly during Desert Liminal’s set. As I stood at the back of the former industrial garage-turned music venue – and immediately outside the door when the humidity of the space got to be too much – I noticed that, unlike other ambient music, his longform electronic work did not overwhelm me physically. Most of the sympathetic/participatory vibrations occurred with the building itself, leading to layers of the music sounding in different parts of the space. It was fascinating to experience, creating an energy among listeners that ranged from intense focus to rapture.
The performance on Sep. 28 featuring SHERMVN, Maria Chavez, and Laraaji was held downtown at The Woodward Theatre. SHERMVN, a local artist, launched a set that was so exciting and invigorating that it seemed to end too soon. With bass saxophone, synth and keyboard, spoken word, and percussion, SHERMVN created sonic episodes that ranged from lyrical to abrasive. His soloing on saxophone evidenced a musician keenly in tune with his instrument and his sense of direction, as well as his love of this creative practice; at one point, he had the audience clap along as he created a loop for a particularly energetic number.
Maria Chávez’s set was also introspective, but in a subdued way that also required audience participation. After showing audiences members how to break a record (you put it at the spot where your leg meets your pelvis) and breaking them together on the count of three, Chávez encouraged them to hold onto their shards as long as possible, until they couldn’t control their instinct to give her a shard to include in her work.
Maria Chávez — Photo by Julie C. Mullins
Chávez began her set with pieces of her own broken records. The materiality of the needle contacting and hitching with the broken pieces created a rhythmically soothing and invigorating collage against a backdrop of satisfying crackles and pops as she added and took away different pieces. After 30 minutes, an audience member handed their shard to Chávez, who laughed quietly as she mixed in and sampled segments of what sounded like a rap/EDM track, a stark contrast to the mellow environment she had been constructing. It was a beautiful moment of what she called “Cincinnati visual concrète:” of the broken records laid out on the stage, their role in the creation of a soundscape ruled by chance, yet deftly crafted by Chávez’s technique and expressive ideas.
All mentions of Laraaji’s name throughout the festival had been met with cheers and whoops, and as someone new to his work, I see why. A contemporary of John Cage and John and Alice Coltrane, Laraaji is an artist where the spiritual and the experimental go hand in hand. His deep, laugh-centric vocalizations – at first confusing, but ultimately entrancing – are part of his praxis of laughter, which involved intoning of vocables like “A-E-I-O-U.” His set showcased his technical mastery of the zither (both plucked and hammered), and his use of recorded samples were less a key feature than a shade he used to color the consonant, magical soundscape.
Talk Low 2024 was beautifully curated, bringing in artists that are rarely featured in this city and providing space for locals that love the experimental, the ambient, and the unassuming yet urgent. It is an important addition to Cincinnati’s music ecosystem, one that I hope we will see next year and for many years to come.
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