Heatsick, courtesy of Mild Power
This Thursday, February 13, the duo of Jeremy Kannapell and Kevin Harris will debut the first installment of their Mild Power concert series, with a three-act bill at Downtown’s most-intriguing venue, the William Kerr Foundation. The show will highlight three electronic acts, two of them based in St. Louis (Raglani and Black James) and one hailing from Berlin (Heatsick, aka Steven Warwick).
Reached last week before a gig in Grand Center, Kannapell said that Mild Power, as an umbrella name, is a simple way to express to concertgoers that the event has the curatorial stamp of he and Harris. Together and apart, they’ve worked in all sectors of music, as performers, producers and, in this case, presenters.
“This will be the first of a few shows that we’ll have coming up,” Kannapell says. “We’re presenting sound and visuals in different locations, and we’re excited about this one, for sure. For this event, we’ll be running three separate video images in real time during the musical performances. It should be pretty neat if we can pull it off.”
He added that “just to clarify, Mild Power is just a convenient way of titling these shows for presentation. For the first one, the emphasis will be on the concert, rather than the presentation, per se.”
Already well familiar with the space, Kannapell said that he’s been a fan of the multi-roomed Kerr Foundation since first taking in a show there five or six years ago. Located just north of the Arch in a post-industrial neighborhood that’s been adopted by the annual Artica festival, the Kerr’s own structural aesthetic comes through when shows are hosted there.
“For sure, it’s one that has elements of old St. Louis, ones that everyone responds to,” Kannapell says. “It’s a converted bath house that’s now a LEED-certified green building, available for community and nonprofit usage. There’s a unique history to the building that’s kind of fun to explore. Even today, its location is not that far from Downtown, but it’s off the grid. It’s just the right amount away to create a little bit of an intriguing space where it’s not an ordinary, go-to venue. There’s a different set of expectations when you go there. I think that for music or art, that type of space is a necessity at times. I think people get familiarized with the go-to locations, so having shows there is a chance of doing something a little bit different.”
As curators, Kannapell says that he and Harris were excited for this initial trio of acts to perform together.
“For this first concert, we’re presenting three solo electronic artists,” he says. “Each one with their own kind of language, equipment and process. The goal is to highlight that and create an environment outside of the usual spectrum to highlight their voices a little bit, to give a bit of atmosphere and to do it in a location that’s a change from the norm.”
In discussing each act, Kannapell says that “each brings their own musical vocabulary. Joe Raglani ties in a lot of the historical elements of electronic music. He can go from the obscure to the melodic.” Or, as he wrote in the show’s liner notes, “Raglani digs deep into the possibilities of modular synthesis, fusing esoteric electronic knowledge into a music that expands wildly in real time through complex patterns yet remains rooted in melody.”
As for Black James, “Jennifer [McDaniel] is a little bit of a wild card on this bill, in that she does something very different each show, it’s a different performance each time. And, yet, she creates really strong songs.
“The same could be said for Heatsick,” Kannappell added. “He uses a Casio and loop pedals, and from that he’s able to produce a really sensual, catchy version of dance music, through really simple means. Which is also something of a rarity. There’s a lot of emphasis on gear in electronic music lately, but Heatsick is very bare-bones, and a little bit homebrew. He leaves a bit of space for dialogue in his music. He interjects some pretty conceptual elements in his music, some mechanical poetry and concepts of sexual fluidity, things like that. It’s all there in his music, whether or not you want to look for it.”
Some backstory on the acts presented can be found through the links below; you can also track future Mild Power presentations through their Facebook page.
Mild Power: Heatsick, Black James, and Raglani at The William A. Kerr Foundation, 21 O' Fallon. $10, all ages; doors 8 p.m., show 9 p.m.
