Unpacking Big Ears: What I Did on Friday Night

cemetery at First Presbyterian, the venue for Thor Harris' Friday afternoon solo set 

So far, I've covered all the Thursday night sets I saw at Big Ears, the first three sets I caught on Friday, and Saturday night's Water Damage set plus Sunday night's debut of the Nels Cline Consentrik Trio. But the set by Water Damage's expanded lineup wasn't the only time I got to see David Grubbs and  Kramer.

Friday afternoon, after the Nels Cline Singers, the Sun Ra Arkestra with Yo La Tengo, and Thor Harris, I saw the band Squanderers, an experimental trio consisting of Grubbs (Gastr del Sol with Jim O’Rourke, as well as 80s post-hardcore bands Squirrel Bait and Bastro), multi-instrumentalist and producer Kramer (who's worked with folks from John Zorn to Daniel Johnston to Ween, The Fugs, and Galaxie 500), and guitarist Wendy Eisenberg (known for their solo work, the rock band Editrix, and collaborations with Zorn, Billy Martin, and others). As would be expected of these musicians, the music was fairly free-form and improvisational, suggestive of a moody, imaginary soundtrack.  

My next set after Squanders was Mike Reed's Separatist Party, another all-star band consisting of drummer Reed, cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, members of the band Bitchin Bajas (Rob Frye, Cooper Crain, and Dan Quinlivan), and poet and spoken-word artist Marvin Tate. Their eponymous debut album was one of my favorite records of 2024 and they lived up to and even exceeded the excitement and intensity of the album at their Big Ears set.

But as exciting as Separatist Party was, their intensity was dwarfed by free-jazz powerhouse quartet of Pat Thomas (piano), Joel Grip (double bass), Antonin Gerbal (drums), and Seymour Wright (alto saxophone), who perform as حمد [Ahmed], named for composer, bassist and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik (1927-1993). Their set consisted on a single hour-plus improvisation that relentlessly kept building up on itself to incredible levels of intensity. Their creativity and stamina were impressive enough, and I can't even imagine the callouses their bass player must have on his fingers. 

  

 حمد [Ahmed] was one of my standout performances of Big Ears 2025, so much so that I almost (but didn't) go to see them again for their encore set the next night. But for the rest of the weekend, I has so many conversations with other music fans at the festival that began with them saying, "Oh my god, did you see حمد [Ahmed]?"

So after the moody improvisations of Squanderers, the theme of the day was one of increasing intensity, first with the Separatist Party and then with حمد [Ahmed]. That intensity morphed into the outright bizarre with the final set of the night by turntablists (not DJs) Maria Chavez, Mariam Rezaei, and Victoria Shen (aka Evicshen). The principal difference between turntablists and DJs is the former use turntables and records as unique musical instruments and not merely to play music by other artists. Whatever was on the vinyl they used was unrecognizable as they distorted and morphed the sounds, and used their turntables and electronic to create dense layers of musique concrete.

Pioneers of New Turntablism, the three brought elements of free improvisation, noise, techno, and hip-hop into their set through equipment modification, scratching, beat juggling, sampling, and looping. To be honest, it was often difficult for me to tell which of the musicians was producing which of the sounds I was hearing, so alien and unfamiliar were their techniques. 

But the standout performer and show-stealer of their set had to be Victoria Shen, who also brought elements of performance art into the mix. At one point, she blew through a cornet with the bell right over the turntable's arm, so that the sound waves from the horn physically altered the sound the stylus was getting from the vinyl. But as if that wasn't enough, she did this while standing on the table, bent over so that her head was down past her knees and almost touching her toes. Later, she rigged herself with a collar that had electronic pickups attached and a string from the collar to her foot, and she bowed the string using foot movements to modulate the sound with her leg kicked up, Rockettes style, above her head.

Finally, as if all that weren't crazy enough, she produced a bullwhip and loudly cracked it several times at the edge of the stage, missing the audience members on the rail (such as me) by mere inches. Many people around me backed away from the stage as she whirled the whip in the air over our heads, but I hung in there right on the rail with a few other stalwarts. 

There were, however, two problems with her handling of the whip. One, she was cracking it while simultaneously holding a small turntable in front of her face with her free hand and a portable fan held in her teeth. The fan blew of the turntable, distorting the sound, but the turntable obstructed her view as she cracked the whip, which was just insane. Two, her aim with the whip wasn't all that good to begin with, even without the turntable blocking her view. On one snap, she managed to get the whip snagged on the barrier rail between the audience and the stage. Once that got untangled, her next snap hit me on the hand, fortunately for me not on the final downstroke but on the last warmup stroke before the actual crack. It stung, although it didn't draw blood or leave a mark.  But talk about literally breaking the fourth wall. . .

Even if that weren't the last scheduled set of the evening (which it was), that would have been enough for me for one night. I retreated to the cozy comforts of Clancy's Irish Bar and showed all my Big Ears friends the nonexistent mark on my hand where the crazy lady hit me with a whip.

Every year, I have at least one only-at-Big-Ears episode, some bizarre event that would probably happen no where else. This year, it was Victoria Shen's performance alongside Maria Chavez and Mariam Rezaei.