Drone music isn’t just one note

thefader.com:

Last week, Pioneer Works — a hulking warehouse in industrial Red Hook turned concert venue, gallery, and co-working artist space — held an experimental music exhibition, hosting five sets from nine titans of the form.

Headlined by Kali Malone and William Basinski, respectively, the two nights of sound presented radically different conceptions of the drone: the sustained tone that is one of music’s most ancient forms (along with the drum beat) but has been a consistent feature of its avant garde for the better part of a century.

On Wednesday, December 13, organist, composer, and synthesist extraordinaire Kali Malone took over the room, starting off in duet with former Coil and Psychic TV member Drew McDowall.

The joint performance saw Malone and McDowall huddled around a table of modular synths — and, in Malone’s case, a small MIDI keyboard — twisting knobs that slowly morphed the black sound cloud issuing from the venue’s towering speakers and gathering above the room.