Bringing The “Art Of Noise” To Town

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The Leaky Sockets Festival kicks off at Wayne-O-Rama

In 1913, Luigi Russolo wrote his futurist manifesto called “The Art of Noises,” in which he expressed boredom with orchestral sounds and declared, “We must break at all cost from this restrictive circle of pure sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.”    

Over one hundred years later, Russolo’s spirit is still alive in the musical underground, and one of Chattanooga’s best opportunities to catch a multitude of unusual, ear-opening sounds is the annual Leaky Sockets festival, organized by musician Jerry Reed.

“This line-up is all over the place (in the best way possible) with many corners of ‘noise/experimental’ being represented,” said Reed via email.

In its fifth year, Leaky Sockets will take place on Aug. 5 at Wayne-O-Rama with an astounding roster of 25 different acts, and Reed—a noise performer under the name Rurnt, drummer in the shoegaze band Lacing and Failed Recordings label head—has decided that this will be the final one.

“The main [reason] is that for Leaky Sockets to continue, it would have to be bigger and better every year. I’m talking ‘flying overseas artist in’ big,” said Reed. “Sadly, that’s just something I can’t do. Plus, five just seems to be a good number to go out on.”

For the uninitiated, the music of Matthew Reis from Dayton, Ohio—known as Developer—is “like a dump truck full of scrap metal being dropped on your face, very quickly,” as Reis put it.

Using several iPods like tiny samplers, along with a chain of effects pedals and a tape deck with speed controls, Developer will create intense, visceral and disorienting blasts of noise for the festival.

Lisa Moss and Maggie Ledes—known as the Johnson City, Tenn. duo The Sweet Sound of Chaos—met in the early ‘90s and initially played fuzzy, dissonant garage rock on guitars but soon began building instruments.

“First was a large percussion beast consisting of buckets, tanks and barrels of various sizes, beneath a plank holding an assortment of saucepans, attached to a rack with hanging sheet metal and other scraps of junk,” said Moss.

“When I started learning a bit about ‘hardware hacking,’ as Nicolas Collins puts his art of coaxing sounds from sources not intended for music, I made a few simple synths, many light-sensitive, as well as contact mics to amplify new handmade instruments featuring strings and rods,” said Moss.

“We built our own version of a waterphone, as well as a version of a springboard, with the blessing of its inventor, Eric Leonardson,” said Moss. “At this point, our sound became noticeably creepier.”

For the Atlanta outfit Dux, Chelsea Dunn channels sounds from her cello using a contact microphone to Casey Battaglino’s synthesizers for real-time processing.

“It’s interesting to improvise with someone where the final sonic output is something that neither player can precisely control,” said Dunn “Casey came up with the set up for Dux pretty much the first time we ever played together. We were both pleasantly surprised at the output—our setup gives us both a lot of room to play.”

“Imagine the cello as a percussion instrument and expect a range of sound worlds from screechy scratchy noise to soft textural ambient soundscapes with little bird samples,” said Dunn.

Formed by audio production students who shared an apartment, the Murfreesboro, Tenn. band Mothyards came together with a solid chemistry over a mutual vision and love of gear, including modular synthesizers and effects pedals.

“We wanted to start a project that would be transcendent of ourselves and represent expressions and shifts in emotions that all of us could relate to,” said the band collectively. “We wanted to be less of a music group and more of an experience, not just for others, but for ourselves as well.”

“Each practice session together brought an evolutionary catharsis to the whole group, and pushed us to bring that same release to others,” said the band. “Some sessions are long drawn out drone pieces, others are more rhythmic and tribalistic. We put all of our influences into a pot and let it simmer.”

While the sonic creativity offered by Leaky Sockets is remarkable, what’s also notable is the sense of camaraderie between these artists scattered across the nation, and there’s an irony that while such boldly unconventional music often has the power to repulse, it actually brings people together.

“Be it traveling from out of state to play, or just helping run sound, it really seems like a family of weirdos coming together to make Leaky Sockets the best it can be,” said Reed. “It takes more to ‘Make Chattanooga Weird’ than putting a sticker on your car.”

Leaky Sockets Festival

Saturday, Aug. 5, 6:00 p.m.

Wayne-O-Rama

1800 Rossville Ave., #108

wayneorama.com