Cracking Some Eggheads

Whenever the 23five Inc. music organization hosts its annual Activating the Medium festival — an ongoing series of avant-garde electronic and minimalist noise performances — you can always count on one thing: Someone, somewhere, will scoff that it's all too goddamn cerebral. Such people have a surprising ally in Zbigniew Karkowski. Born in Poland, educated in Sweden, and currently living in Japan (after residential stretches in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris), Karkowski appeals to the intelligentsia. His music comprises ambient field recordings, dissonant orchestral epics, live sound-bending via infrared motion sensors, electro-acoustic scores inspired by architectural ruins, and so on. But he's also someone who dismisses "intellect as a barrier preventing us from realizing the true values in our lives," and who constantly decries the pedagogic and self-referential mind games of pompous modern composers. Oh, and he can get crazy loud, too. Here he's joined by a brass ensemble, which guarantees more to see than some dude numbly tapping on a MacBook for twenty minutes.

This opening night of Activating the Medium XI also features Australia's Tim Catlin and Switzerland's Jason Kahn and Francisco Meirino.
Sat., Feb. 2, 8 p.m., 2008