Big Noise In Little Haiti: Nick Klein Plays the International Noise Conference

Nick Klein

The moment that Laundry Room Squelchers began playing, immediately following a pummeling set from hometown sludge heroes Holly Hunt, the wildest bar that I've ever been to was brought to a level that would have been considered completely unacceptable anywhere that is not Churchill's Pub in Miami. Tables were flipped and thrown around the room. Dozens of glass bottles were smashed on the floor. Bar stools were broken into pieces. Everyone in the room threw whatever was next to them, yet were all cool enough to to be aware of the destruction they were wreaking. Other than one hard plastic beer pitcher being thrown straight into the face of Space Mountain gallery curator Autumn Casey, resulting in a slightly deep nose gash and thus a new blood red tie-dye blouse, nobody seemed to be seriously injured.

Laundry Room Squelchers, more commonly referred to simply as Squelchers, is the infamous project from Miami's 55 year old humble king of noise Rat Bastard, who books the International Noise Conference (INC), now in it's eleventh year. Rat played his Thursday night closing set of fucked up, demented noise, which was actually manipulated pop songs from the radio, from behind the soundboard as he watched the club that he went to high school down the block from, and has been doing shows at since 1980, and has made into an institution, get completely trashed.

From February 4 to 8, 2014, INC hosted over 140 acts playing fifteen minute or less sets, all taking place at Churchill's. The bar has had the same owner since they opened in 1979, and is located in Little Haiti, a few blocks away from the Zoe Pound gang headquarters. The parking lot of Churchill's can be a tough scene, as the bar does not employ more than one security guard a night, resulting in a micro-economy of self-appointed parking attendants, dudes selling beer, prostitutes, muggers, and other shady characters trolling outside all night. Once inside of Churchill's, it is fairly obvious that, in addition to getting overflowed shit and piss on your shoes if you go to the bathroom, you can get away with doing pretty much anything you want. People do drugs fairly openly, smoke cigarrettes, have sex in the infamous laundry room, and, when Squelchers or Cock E.S.P. play, break everything.

During the closing night of INC, while Kenny Millions yelled on stage about having sex with people's mothers for a dollar, bartender Nicky Bowe, and I want to emphasize that he is a bartender there and was at work, drove a motorcycle into Churchill's, propped it against a column, and burned out for several minutes, filling the entire place with an overwhelming cloud of smoke. If being a debaucherous scumbag is your thing, I would highly recommend spending as much time as possible here if you are in Miami.

Rat Bastard

Even though it is called the International Noise Conference, there were a wide variety of genres represented across the underground music spectrum, from noise to punk to free jazz to cock rock. The lack of concentration of straight white guys common at other DIY festivals was particularly refreshing. Having the chance to see a lot of different types of acts at the same bar for five nights in a row, and at the warm-up show at Space Mountain gallery for a total of six nights, was a nice change of pace. For instance, at the Friday show, about fifty people intently watched a woman literally with no microphone or gear yell like a baby having a temper tantrum while banging chains and whips on the ground. And then all of those people clapped at the end. While I thought the set was obviously garbage, the whole concept and interaction was kind of cool. Where else is that going to happen?

While the chaos of Thursday night's show and Squelchers was a real highlight, musically Saturday night just completely destroyed. All killer, no filler set after set of intense noise, mostly in the spectrum of harsh powerelectronics to techno. The energy in the main room was high, and every single act seemed to vibe off of that really hard. Rat was impressed by the performances as well, and he was supposedly tripping on mushrooms for the entirety of the evening. His comments: “I feel like I threw a no-hitter tonight.”

Every show at INC is free. This of course boosts the attendance, but Rat also believes it maintains the integrity of his festival. “It's not like the artists are being paid and babied and all that bullshit. These artists are saving up, coming down on their own money, playing their fifteen minutes, and watching the other groups. That's why it's still going.” Miami is literally at the end of the country. Once you make it to a Florida, it's still another five hour drive until you get there. That is a long way to go for a touring act if you are guaranteed to not get paid, and it was a long 24 hour drive from New York City, and then back again, for Nick Klein and Miguel Alvariño, two artists who I accompanied to INC. In addition to performing, they were also delivering paintings they were commissioned to do for a real estate company in Miami; if INC won't pay for their noise tour gas, apparently someone else will.

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Nick and Miguel met at New World School of the Arts in Miami, where Miguel says, “Nick was the star. He was the one who was freaking everybody out, like, throwing up in the middle of class as a performance. He was always the one that pushed it. He cut some girl's back up as a performance, like deep wounds in the back, really bleeding… I always look up to him. In every way. He's just been on the creative tip forever, and he defines himself based on that.” Miguel played his second live music set of his life at INC, under his own name doing hard laptop techno, while Nick was coincidentally playing a set in a different room. His first gig was as a very last minute replacement at a show Nick booked with Craow and Outmode two nights before we left for Miami.

Miguel Alvariño

For Nick Klein, INC, which he has been going to since he was a teenager, is a little bit of a loaded coming home. He has been living in New York for two years, carving out his own place in noise scenes in Brooklyn and around the Northeast, playing with, in his words, “people that used to play hardcore and are now immersed in a post- Hospital Productions dark, blackened, gay Hitler haircut version of that stuff.” It is a very different scene in Miami. At INC, he is surrounded by old friends, ex-lovers, the people that he learned to make music with, and a lot of drugs. Brad Lovett, who plays dark techno as Dim Past and has toured with Nick, says, “Nick is one of the dudes from the old guard who's still making an effort to come down to INC and you know, do it for the love of the game, staying pure at heart.”

Nick was raised in West Palm Beach, about an hour's drive north of Miami. His father is a choreographer, and was a Gugenheim fellow and a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient. His mother was a dancer and now runs a dance department at a university in Florida. He had critically successful touring artists as parents, “which obviously affects my attention and my regard for music. This kind of trip to INC is something I've tagged along on my whole life. My mom and dad had this similar 'anytime, anywhere' philosophy as Rat. They would be like, okay, we're going to go dance in this farmhouse in North Carolina for this festival. We don't get paid? Fine. We'll just pack the van full and we'll hang out. I went everywhere with them. They were like the punk version of a dancer. And so that carried over for me and this. It makes sense.”

In high school, Nick booked shows “of a huge variety, from Kylesa, to Bridge 9 hardcore bands, to straight up noise weirdos,” in his parent's dance studio. He played in Weird Wives, Cop City Chill Pillars, Universal Expansion, Holly Hunt, and a whole bunch of other bands. He got more weird at around age 20, and started playing solo under his own name, as he found it difficult to rely on others to contribute creatively in a band setting. He is now 26, and was stoked to be home at INC. “It's all encompassing, it's democratic, it's fair. It's based upon real relationships. It condenses Miami and shows it at it's best, and it's the time when everyone gets to shine around other people from around the country at the same time. Which is important because no one goes to fucking Miami. There's no hype here.”

Nick Klein

Nick Klein is very much a bedroom recording project, accompanied by varied live sets. “It's tape after tape of themes repeating a lot. A lot of meditations on rhythm. And then it takes whatever form it takes from there. I really, really, really like recording in my room. Every show has been a one-off kind of event in the last two years.” He played three sets at INC this year. His first on Thursday night was on the floor of the main room, opening and closing with a recording of Merle Haggard's “No Reason to Quit.” It was performance based with a noose wrapped around his neck, and he played his power dub ballad “Paint Huffer,” with screeching feedback and insanely delayed vocals. When he played again later that evening it was in the tiny Dan Hosker Studio in the back of Churchill's, and was a variation on his first set, with more of an intimate dance mood. He still had the noose and country music, but this time with significantly less clothes on, and played one half of “Paint Huffer” into the captivating Chris & Cosey worship jam “Clear Comedy of a Man Trying Hard to be Forgotten.” His third and final set was the next evening, opening up the Friday show with a proto- new age expansive synthesizer set inspired by 70s Krautrock musician Harald Grosskopf. The set was part B of his “Byronic Hero” cassette on Acid House Productions, and it sounded like the soundtrack to 3D animation in its crudest forms, looping mimicked guitar solos over and over again.

As is the tradition of INC, Rat says he will ask Nick to come back next year. “He's great. He's always got a variety of stuff, you don't know what he's gonna do. He's very unpredictable. You have no fucking clue and it's always on the money. He always has a classic set.”

Watching Nick Klein's sets at INC and several times previously in New York, Rat Bastard and Miami's embracing influence on him is obvious. According to Nick, “Rat's approach is 'play anywhere, anytime, just say when.' He treats it like a job but not a shitty job. It's a working class thing. And I'd like to think that's my general outlook. I don't want to play at, you know, Pianos on the Lower East Side, but like, I guess I would.”

Human Fluid Rot

My Top 15 Sets at INC (in particular order)

Laundry Room Squelchers
Drums Like Machine Guns
Unicorn Hard-on
Fangus Humangus
Holly Hunt
Tinnitustimulus
Nick Klein
Irene Moon
Dim Past
Fuck The Ramones
Secret Boyfriend
Human Fluid Rot
Aspartame
Yohimbe
Ironing