Sonicommentarian

It has long been my belief that art is meant to unsettle without the audience even realizing they are being unsettled. I have repeated this belief as a critical heuristic often, but never have I experienced a truly unexpected unsettling of sufficient magnitude to bring the concept from the theoretical to the embodied. That is, not until last Thursday at the Milton Playhouse when I discovered the only thing in this wide world that can make me spontaneously burst into tears: seven trombones and a drum kit known collectively as Squakerz.

At the arrangement of a mutual friend, I was meant to meet an attractive Spaniard at the Squakerz show and accompany her to dinner afterward. As far as blind dates go, it seemed like a slam-dunk; I was supposed to review the band anyhow, so if the date went poorly at least I could get ahead of a deadline. The work and pleasure of a critic are hopelessly entangled. 

I arrived at the Milton Playhouse at six minutes to eight and found my date waiting for me beside the will-call window. Her white denim jacket blended so seamlessly into the poster board advertising the Knuckletoes McGee revival that she appeared to step out of the blindingly sterile operating room to meet me. We shook hands and headed inside for the show. 

At five minutes past the hour, we were spared from our banal introductory small talk by the dimming of house lights. The audience settled, the curtain rose on a darkened stage, and in the mothball silence of the city's eldest stage venue a single trombone began to play. My left eye began to itch. Another trombone joined and a tear formed. A third trombone, the tear fell. A fourth brought my right eye into the conversation. Five, six, seven: my eyes were streaming and my lips quivering. Then a peal of drums to complete an eight note scale, the one Schubert called "Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope, aspiration for a better world," soulful B-flat major. The notes were held for a measure and suddenly stopped as the bright stage lights sparked to life. A sob choked me and the floodgates opened as Squakerz launched into their rocking seven-part harmonies. 

My eyes streamed and my breathing came in short gasps, my knuckles white on the armrests of my seat. The music of the horns was unlike anything I had ever heard, and I felt myself buoyed up above the crowd and began to laugh through my weeping. On stage, bandleader Derk Bailey put his trombonists through their paces, laying down a grueling rhythm from behind an eclectic drum kit made up of primarily timpani, triple stacked tambourines, and tarnished xylophones. Arrayed about him in a wide semicircle were the trombonists, three to a side and soloist in the center, Hank, Perry, Johannes, Bradley, Tripp, Garth, and Jim Hofspelter, all cousins. They wound their way about the stage, trading places but forever maintaining an arc around Bailey, their crashing heartbeat. I could feel my eyes becoming puffy. 

I can only imagine what my date was thinking. The hysterics that her prospective romantic partner was exhibiting could not have been encouraging. I am an ugly crier, and I was really letting myself feel the music. Squakerz is best described as a brass jam band, and their often improvisational compositions escape the bounds of genre and last for up to fifteen minutes. I had stitches in my ribs by the third song, from being racked with sobs. That beautiful Spaniard beside me handed me a tissue and I waved it away. Three minutes later she placed the entire package of them on my lap, an icy gesture that only served to spur my lacrimal glands into overdrive. The concert was not even halfway over.

I shall spare us all the gory details, but suffice to say the date was an unmitigated disaster. Instead of enjoying a concert with a gorgeous new acquaintance and plying her with musical trivia over tapas, I cried my mascara into curtains of sorrow and had an asthma attack just before the end of the show. As I stumbled into the night air to catch my breath, I hazarded a look up at the face of my Spanish consort. Though my vision was hazy, I could sense the cold Iberian disappointment behind her tortoiseshell glasses. I gurgled some excuse to her and we parted. 

As I stumbled my way down the block, I turned for one last look. She walked in and out of marquis lights, her white jacket capturing colors which my blurred vision transformed into impressionist projections. Faintly, as through a window far away, I heard the crescendo of seven horns and a high-hat. My soul was utterly unsettled. With a pitiable wail I turned to shamble along faster and ran smack into a light pole. 

Hurry and catch Squakerz at the Milton Playhouse before they leave for their European tour next month. Their two excellent albums Cool Hand Lars and Oatmeal Digressions can be found at any reputable music shop with a decent experimental collection. 

-CS

Through tunnels of blistering neon and billowing dry ice steam, I made my way to Lounge 8 (the penultimate stage of the often ballyhooed Untergrind perma-fest), narthex to Hell, the punk cathedral beyond. Clean air was at a premium here in subterranean hollows beneath derelict warehouses of the Old Port, and fumy hashish made my eyes water. It was here that I encountered Corporate Carpet. 

Amidst the ecstasy-induced bacchanal of post-industrial noise and baroque thrash sets, a sense of awed stillness pervaded the Lounge 8 crowd. Moshers here, as opposed to the throbbing carnival of spandex and leather surrounding them, were done up in professional office attire, and the pit was as calm as a quarterly ethics meeting. A collective breath was held as a single tone, that of a disconnected phone line, pulsed through the speakers. I asked a young man how long the dial tone had been playing, and he sneered at me. 

"Only forty minutes, dude."

Onstage, Corporate Carpet continued to perform their longform found audio piece entitled "Cold Call" for another eighteen and one half minutes. Delicately interwoven into the analog phone sounds, I could discern the warbled hum of fluorescent lights and the intermittent percussion of a fax machine as heard through several wooden doors. With a crash of handset-in-cradle and a double kick-drum bang, the crowd erupted into raucous applause. Without skipping a beat, the band launched into their next tune, "Transcriptionist Empathy," and we were serenaded by the staccato of a dozen typewriters, underscored by dueling basslines. It was magical.

Envisioned as a post-post-white collar muzak group, Corporate Carpet has found an unexpected niche in the city's (literally) underground rave scene. The band stands out by standing down, strongly juxtaposed against frenetic acts like High-Wattage Onion and Rat Noose. Twin bassists Ray and Cuthbert Brinckley act as tag-team frontmen for the band. Their driving, independent rhythms bend in and out of discord, and their sharp navy suits and conservative ties brand them more as bankers than rockers. On drums, Kelly Harmon styles a sharkskin pantsuit and delivers bombastic office-themed percussion. Tying it all together is the man behind the mixer: District Manager. (Yes, that is his legal name.) 

Manager founded Corporate Carpet soon after being hurled from the roof of Sunspot Records by an as yet-undetermined record exec in 2008. Changing his name and taking to the forgotten basements of the financial district, Manager jammed by night and stealthily recorded corporate audio by day. His guerrilla sets soon captured the attention of the Brinckleys and Harmon, then playing as a DnB trio called Bytch. Their first meeting in 2019 has already gone down in sub-urban legend as one of the decade's ultimate band foundings.

Corporate Carpet took up residence at Lounge 8 in 2019 at the behest of Untergrind founder and performer DJ Drift Plunder, who said that the group's subdued style is an asset to the festival.

"Look, we got eleven stages out there that you gotta get through before you get to Hell. People need a palette cleanser after all that before they go in for the main event. Corporate Carpet manages to soothe the crowd while still exhibiting profound artistry. You wouldn't begin to guess how many people have spiritual awakenings in Lounge 8."

Looking around, I could see what DJ Drift meant. As Manager spun up the subtle crackle of a used Keurig over Harmon's taut cymbal work, some half dozen revelers sank to their knees, torsos festooned with glow-in-the-dark paint. Near me, a tall fan in a pinstripe suit knelt beside one of these wayward souls, helped them back to their feet. He shrugged off the suit jacket, revealing a smaller blazer underneath, and handed the striped garment to the glowing supplicant. Arms over each others' business professional shoulders, they swayed in time to the drone of Ray and Cuthbert's deadpan reading of this week's Financial Times. The scene was sublime. 

You can find Corporate Carpet's newest album, Severants, for sale (on cassette only) at one of Untergrind's roving merchandise caravans. 

-CS