NOISE: The experimental scene loses its best Enemy
On July 4 DIY experimental-music venue Enemy ended an extraordinary seven-year run—for a DIY space, seven years is usually a few lifespans—with a show headlined by Baltimore weirdos Nautical Almanac. “Nobody’s shutting us down or anything like that,” says Enemy founder and noise artist Jason Soliday. “We could still keep going.” He simply wants to focus more on his own projects: “I need a break.”
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Soliday has had help from roommates over the years, all of them also musicians—Brent Gutzeit, Geoff Guy, Eric Leonardson, and Ryan Dunn. They’ve booked a huge variety of talented locals, touring bands, and acts from overseas: a short list of highlights would have to include experimental guitarist and banjoist Eugene Chadbourne, unhinged San Francisco rockers Sic Alps, Montreal noise punks AIDS Wolf, Lungfish front man Daniel Higgs, German free-jazz reedist Peter Brötzmann, and percussionist and sound artist Z’ev.
Though Enemy has closed—except for an “epilogue” show Fri 7/20, with Jesse Kenas Collins, a duo of Daniel Fandiño and Jason Stein, and a duo of Soliday and Brian Labycz—Soliday knows the noise scene will find a new anchor. “There will be new spaces,” he says. “I may even be involved in one. Just not for a little while.”
Hill started putting down roots in that scene while in high school, thanks to the Sunday jam sessions at Fred Anderson‘s Velvet Lounge—he eventually ended up in the final incarnation of the house band. The Velvet was where he met some of the players he works with today, among them saxophonist Ernest Dawkins, who’d invite Hill into his long-running New Horizons Ensemble—the trumpeter appears on last year’s The Prairie Prophet (Delmark).
Costello is also Levitan’s collaborator in the musical improv-comedy project Shame That Tune, in which guests are invited onstage to share humiliating stories, which Levitan sets to music on the spot, choosing a style (say, glam rock) and an artist (Ke$ha) by spinning a wheel. Levitan plans to devote more time now to Shame That Tune, and maybe take it out of town occasionally; drummer Peter Andreadis will continue with his side project All City Affairs. Levitan says he’s relieved to leave the indie rat race—he’s skeptical that the big break that often seemed in reach would’ve had much effect anyhow. “Pitchfork darlings aren’t living on estates in Forest Park.”
