DESCRIPTION:
Poulomi Desai (Usurp Art) performing at "The Prophetic Sound of Noise" organised byThe Agency of Noise, The Ballroom, Cavendish Arms, London 7 Feb 2013. Her unique modified sitar embraces elements of chance, challenge and subversion, as she returns to her industrial, post punk, noise influenced performances. Her prepared / bowed sitar is extended with modified cassette decks playing her field recordings, circuit bent toys, distortion pedals, optikinetic instruments, kitchen knives, axes and massage tools. It is a conscious response and reaction to the idea of 'authenticity' seeking to break the rules and expectations of how a 'sacred' instrument should be played, the strictures upon the player, the guru-shishya approach, and the assumptions made upon the identity of the player herself. Her sitar is the primary basis for sonic improvisation and exploration; a metaphorical antidote to the objectification of the 'South Asian woman's body' in 'Bollywood' cinema / 'popular culture' and, in a broader sense, asserting the UK Black resistance - Black Noise and affirming the idea of 'Noise' as protest.

This is part of a long journey over 30 years of kicking up a brutal fuss - for more information see: http://www.flickr.com/people/hounslowartsco-op and here: http://poulomidesai.tumblr.com/

Watch in HD and best listened to with headphones or external hi-fi speakers to pick up all the bass frequencies. The video is dark as it was dark!

From The Agency of Noise's publicity: The Prophetic Sound of Noise was a day and night cabaret suggesting possibilities raised by The Agency of Noise and based on the following ideas: A digital holocaust has occurred. Overnight everything with a microchip has malfunctioned. The world is dark. Does it collapse into chaos or do alternative approaches to communication, organisation and production emerge?

"Music is prophecy. Its styles and economic organization are ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible, that will impose itself and regulate the order of things; it is not only the image of things, but the transcending of the everyday, the herald of the future." (Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music)

But what is music? At what point does the pattern, timbre, pitch, organisation, sequence of sounds become distinguishable from noise. If we agree with Attali's argument for the prophetic power of music then it could be argued that noise must tell us things in an unbridled, unfiltered, less culturally coded way - before it becomes recognised, refined, manipulated and exploited for musical purpose. The Agency of Noise presented a marathon of responses from artists, musicians and thinkers who challenge definitions of noise / music and the tensions between, through sonic-visions of new languages, new modes of composition, new sounds and new ways of processing noise. The event posited the notion of a post-digital era by emphasising works that use little or no digital technology; acts where performativity and liveness are key to the mode of production.

Other contributors included, Ryo Ikeshiro, Inigo Wilkins, Neal Spowage, Polly Fibre, Dane Sutherland, Aharon Amir, Bughouse, Ewa Justka, Benedict Drew, Naomi Davies, Arianna Ferarri, AAS, Steven Dickie, James Shearman.

Many thanks to Christine (aka Polly Fibre) at Agency of Noise. Thanks also to Simon Underwood, Adam Bohman, Abida Parveen and Steve Beresford.

"What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret."

Extract from lyrics to 'Cabaret' by Fred Ebb.