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>> Stellaform: supergroup or megajam? by CHRIS YURKIW "When we first started Stellaform, there was no form," says Rick Rigby. "It was just soundscapes and beats. But now there's meat: there's beats and basslines and voices and all kinds of sounds all over it." When he first started Stellaform last July, it was a monthly club night at which an "electronic jam collective" took over the space at Isart. But recently, Rigby was approached by two of the regular contributors--not unknown entities in Jon Asencio (Pest, Starbean) and Bruce Gottlieb (Funkelnagelnau)--to turn the amorphous thing into a band. Stir in a womanly quotient of Funky-Ass Folk Babe Annabelle Chvostek and spoken wordstress Alexis O'Hara, and you have the core of Stellaform, a unit plotting to break out of the relative hinterland of St-Antoine and take its drone a-roving up the Plateau. Rigby's own past in music has led him to a certain nexus of acoustic and electronic music. His previous band, Shine Like Stars!, mixed acoustic hyper-pop with drum-machined beats. He was a singer and co-producer for the sessions that led to Bran Van 3000's alt.electro Glee. And the Stellaform night had its roots in a previous weekly session of Rigby's design at the old Stornaway Gallery: "I wanted to get people who were acoustically inclined and put them in a situation with electronic instruments," he says. "I thought it would be really cool to see one of these hootenannies, where a bunch of folk people get together, and have somebody show up with their SH-1000 or an 808." Not that the members of Stellaform are folkies, but Chvostek is (when she's not singing jazz), and now she's writing bass lines, programming sounds and playing electric guitar for Stellaform. Asencio and Gottlieb spend most of their time at synths, electric piano and bass, Rigby usually handles samples, drum programming and turntables, and O'Hara puts a face and voice to it all, but the roles aren't strict. "We haven't really defined what each of us plays, but that's the whole point," says Rigby. "Jon and I are just punk hacks, but all of us come together on equal ground because we really don't know where it's going. All we know is that it's experimental and that we're all doing things that each of us don't normally do." The group hope to have featured guests for performances (vintage synth tech-head David Kristian is on the wish list) and at times will even encourage audience participation. But shouldn't the notion of a jam band set off a couple of red lights? Phish and the H.O.R.D.E. tour, for example? "But that's cool, though," says Rigby, "an electronic jam thing. I don't care if it's been done before--that's what we do. And ultimately we want people to dance--for it to be dance music--because there's a lot more freedom there. It doesn't necessarily have to be melodic all the time, and you can get away with playing pure noise for a percussive effect."
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Beat-meet manifesto