Eliciting Sensory Deprivation: Universal Light w/ Night Owl, Pete Fosco – Northside Tavern, Cincinnati, OH, October 9, 2024
Sometimes you attend a show and everybody on the bill just fits together, as if they were meant to play with one another. That’s how it felt hearing Universal Light, the improv group comprised of Mike Gangloff, Jesse Sheppard, and Kaily Schenker, their performance bookended by stellar sets by acoustic guitarist Night Owl and electric guitarist Pete Fosco. The evening had me reflecting on the possibilities of a drone, how each instrument establishes, interacts, and intertwines with a drone to serve introspection and create intrigue. As I said while I texted Alex York in between sets, the performances were “that perfect blend of folk, drone, and avant-garde.”
The show began with Night Owl, the acoustic instrumental and singer-songwriter project of Cincinnati’s Rob Mohan. I have heard Mohan perform before and having him start was an excellent choice, as I have yet to hear him rip through an opening piece that doesn’t steal my breath away. His opening instrumental this time around was like a fantasia, a feverish excursion through flourishes that disappeared in a flash as soon as they came. The second song flipped the script entirely, a dreamier work called “Flowering Iris” with harmonics and lush, extended chords. Mohan has this clever way of writing instrumentals that craft these clear, memorable melodies that progress and evolve throughout a piece.
Mohan’s contribution to the evening’s sense of drone came through a work inspired by Highway 1 between San Francisco and Santa Cruz. The expansive, resonant quality of the beginning brought to mind Robbie Basho, before spinning out into something faster, more active. He struck the guitar’s bottom string so aggressively it bent more and more each time, going out of tune in the process. Mohan lamented this fact later in the set, but I personally loved physics taking their course, audibly representing the verve with which he was playing.
Next was Universal Light, a collaboration between Mike Gangloff on fiddle, Jesse Sheppard on twelve-string acoustic guitar, and Kaily Schenker on cello, harmonium, and vocals. I was thrilled at the chance to hear Schenker perform live, because over two years ago now, I interviewed Schenker for this blog to coincide with the release of their Solar Hex album, Tired Eyes. In the years since, I have unfortunately missed catching Schenker each time they passed through Cincinnati to perform. This has finally been rectified, and she was just as fantastic live as I expected, while the whole Universal Light group completely blew me away.
The ensemble wasn’t working with a drone à la La Monte Young, per se. It was more like they were all hovering around the same tonal center, weaving in and out, coming to the fore and then dissolving into the background. The whole time, they were one organism that moved and breathed through different body parts. Their modal, folk-like melodies passed from one person to the next, creating steady shifts in timbre that made the group feel like it was pulsing. Not to be too on the nose, but kind of like a thrumming cluster of Light. They all had an amazing sense of moving the dynamic range together, like where Gangloff would bring the volume up, Schenker simmered it back down. Whenever the group came down in their range, one member would start to shift the atmosphere of the improvisation. There was a big break that allowed for some major shifts, with the introduction of harsh harmonics from Schenker, Sheppard playing behind the guitar bridge, and Gangloff bringing in some small percussion.
You get to a point during improv concerts where you wonder if a group’s whole set will be one, sprawling improvisation, which I did start to consider during the first piece. Universal Light did end up doing three total, and the second was the most unique of the set. I believe it was a rendition of a Peggy Seeger cover by Schenker titled, “The Squirrel is a Pretty Thing,” which featured Schenker singing and playing harmonium. The organ-like drone of the harmonium made the piece feel like it was an old medieval song, with Schenker’s vocals floating on top, their delivery wispy and raw.
Watching Universal Light perform, I truly was in awe about the smoothness of their improvisation, which Schenker described to me afterwards as improv within structured modules. I reflected on how much I loved improvised music, because where the first piece ended was completely different from where it began. I am always floored by how ensembles collectively embark on a journey not entirely knowing where it will go, and they carry the music into places that are miles away from the start. I simply placed my head in my hands at one point, borderline creating sensory deprivation so that all I could hear and feel was their sound. I can’t even tell you anything about the last improvisation because I stopped taking notes so I could simply exist with the sound.
Before the last performance of the evening from Pete Fosco, a northern Kentucky-based electric guitarist, Mohan recruited me from my table about halfway back in the room. He insisted I get a glimpse of Fosco’s playing up close and from the side, which I am truly grateful for. Fosco mesmerized us with one continuous improvisation that toyed with a single drone and the various outcomes that can spiral out of it. Fosco’s right hand technique brought to mind acoustic playing more so than typical electric guitar approaches, his fingers moving so fast at one point the chord sounded like one sustained pitch, like how a hummingbird’s wings move so fast they hum.
Fosco’s work messed with overtones that emerged from the drone, often remaining on one chord and using both manual and pedal effects (especially delay) to bring out the overtones of that chord. Sometimes he manipulated the space between the neck and headstock of the guitar to coax out shimmering harmonics, and later in the set he laid the guitar on his lap and placed a metal bowl by the pickups to do the same. Little wisps of melodies emerged from his playing, all very high in the guitar’s range while the drone sounded from the low end. At around the climax of his improvisation he started to ring a bell, like a little school bell, and he placed it in his mouth so he could play and ring at the same time. The piece was reaching a pinnacle of cacophony, and although I must have imagined it, I swear the lights onstage flickered when he struck his guitar hard enough at one point. In the end, it all came back to that solitary drone, like returning to the ground after being lifted into the sky.
– Hannah Blanchette
October 20, 2024 | Blog