POP MUSIC REVIEWS : BUTTON-DOWN MUSIC

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions provided an evening of music for the button-down mind on Sunday when it presented six local musicians premiering pieces composed for and performed on Apple’s Macintosh Computer.

Sounds like a rather dry idea, you say? To describe this music as dry would be to understate the case severely. Glowing with all the warmth of a stethoscope, computer music can be defended in the name of experimentation, but in the end it’s a Frankenstein’s monster that refuses to get up off the table. Beg it, bang it or bump it, music simply refuses to come out of the Macintosh, and the most valiant effort comes off sounding as impressive as a concerto performed on a push-button phone.

Keith Levene, a founding member of Public Image Ltd., was the evening’s big name attraction and he acquitted himself admirably, all things considered. Known for pioneering a style of guitar playing built around washes of jagged, atonal chording, Levene offered compositions that were easily the most rock ‘n’ roll numbers on the bill, but they still sounded a bit pinched and small compared with his past achievements.

Video artist Michael Intriere (also the cellist with veteran L.A. outfit Fat and Fed Up) provided one of the evening’s highlights with a video done to music by L.A. group Blue Daisies, but his live performance of a piece titled “New Year Fear” sounded like a child playing the “Munsters” theme song on a Playskool piano.

Dale Strumpell premiered a number titled “Landscapes” built around layers of sounds including those of rain, tribal drums and various people talking about misery and credit cards; Strunpell’s piece exhibited a humor that was sorely lacking in the rest of the music on the bill. All told, it was a rather disappointing evening; the stage was crammed with enough equipment to launch a cruise missile, but it should’ve been dressed with a Xerox machine and a Sparklett’s cooler.