And you assumed everyone was watching the Golden Globes and making fun of celebrities last night. Out in L.A., PAPERMAG stopped by Public Fiction, a storefront gallery in the
Highland Park area, for a "secret dinner" of about 60 people, entitled
"Transformations, Digestive and Otherwise: Experiments with Voice,
Strings, Percussion and Food." Two room-length communal tables sat
parallel, set with intentionally mismatched plates, silverware, and
napkins, for a night of music and vegetarian dishes.
Attendees were welcomed by a suite of
compositions inspired by winter, written and performed by Butchy Fuego (of Pit
er Pat) and cellist Heather McIntosh (who's the house cellist for Elephant 6 Collective and has played with a ton of bands, including Animal Collective, Cat Power, Lil Wayne).
The duo were well-aware of the
irony of playing anything winter-inspired in mild L.A. -- they even donned
coats, scarves and hats to underscore this point. Their performance featured hauntingly spare drums and
computer-y sounds with looped and re-looped cello.
Then came the food, which was far less
experimental than the music, but still delicious. Once the last of the
cabbage and lentils were down the hatch, the lights dimmed again. Eric
Byers (of the Calder Quartet) sat at his cello and played a
high-register note that he looped and layered in a dynamic
piece, piling chords and scrapes and hums upon each other before descending back into the performance's iinitial note, which looped lonely at the end.
After cupcakes were served, the night ended on weirder note,
with Andrew Bulbrook (also of the Calder Quartet) on
violin accompanying Kathryn Mccullough's alien-sounding vocalizations in
a meandering piece that we may have enjoyed more had we not been stuffed, drunk and tired from all the fun.
