Immaginarium Noveau

The Immaginarium Noveau, a makeshift concert venue/artspace out of Columbia, SC is currently making it safe for Southern experimental music folks to come out at night. I had a chance to interview the Immaginarium’s enigmatic supervisor Jefferson Mayday Mayday via Myspace:

Could you tell me a little about yourself and how you got involved in the Columbia music scene?

I spend a lot of time trying to understanding why music is relevant and its relationship to pop culture. Why it does certain things to people at certain times. How it gets taken up and how music industries are always experimenting. Gaps between interests invoked by politics, nature versus promotional investments, labels versus independent funding. How noise is infiltrating America, and how it could become acceptable on a mass level. I've had success studying sun/solar cycles in pinpointing dates of new waves down to their season.

I know you mentioned that Immaginarium is more of a state of mind than a place of business (I think you described it as "how we party"), so do you feel like the Immaginarium could exist anywhere outside of Columbia? What makes the Immaginarium unique to Columbia? In addition, how did the concept for Immaginarium come about? How long has the space been around? Can you give me a brief history?

We've always been interested in word evolution and that was a great term. It looks good in writing in that it has lots of vertical lines. When it was first used, it was referred to a home study/circuit-bending laboratory. At that time, computer studios had just become a household concept. Meanwhile, our town's recording studio was busy making all these reel-you-in package deals targeted at young punk and hardcore garage acts. It may have been that their sound engineer had partial hearing loss, but everything that was coming out of there was sounding terrible. Kids were trapped in a mentality that spending a month’s pay to get four songs down, and then another month’s pay mixing down was how the music business worked. We were all electronic experimentalists who had an extreme love for analog manipulation and general music alchemy. You can't do that if you’re going by someone else’s book.

Questions of future millennium D.I.Y. come in. Meanwhile, our band started playing shows and sound guys hated us because they didn't know how to mic CD players, theremins, and samplers. These where icing too, so sound checks for our conventional set took up so much time that we never got sound checks [to begin with]. There was also always trouble about wanting to play on their floor. After everything, it sounded terrible either because it was our local club's soundman was so used to booking straightforward, non-contorted sound frequencies, or that he was deaf in one ear.

Can Immaginarium exist outside of Columbia? If there is a problem of people in a town accepting what's imprisoning their imaginations, there exists a reason for a solution and in 2005, it is doubtful there is a place in America that doesn't scream for such a change. We had been throwing really strange freak-out parties for quite some time, and once we realized that having music acts in our town could be possible, we had to create situations where it was viable.

Immaginarium became an official "place" where we held our public dilemmas. But it’s been several places already, and when we play other venues or rented-out spaces, there is so much time invested in setting up and changing atmosphere around that it might as well be a different town you’re in.

To cap it off, I'll say what it has become before it morphs into something else. Seeing a form of entertainment in a light that you wouldn't be able to on a regular basis; an environment that connects to better interpret sound. We are told by so many that Immaginarium has "the best sound in town", but its merely a constant struggle to understand where it is taking us, like a puzzle. Our original "Czha*Baing!" as these events are called was in spring of 2000 but since then there have been a very long list.

I know the Immaginarium caters to more experimental musicians so I wanted to know how you've managed to thrive catering to such a specific segment of the population.

It is really difficult to think up ways to convince people to come to events that feature groups that kids in town don't always grasp. Refusing to pile on tons of local acts to draw bigger crowds makes it even harder-- we've done that before and it’s irrelevant. It seems that it’s all in what stage our moon is in that makes for larger crowds. Overall, people tend to come to see what we're gonna do and how Immaginarium is going to look. Its rearranged completely, cleaned, sometimes repainted before each show, which takes days. It also helps to have press, and there are people who collect our flyers that take hours to make. But word of mouth is where it’s at. But still, I have no idea how we book an act that's kinda making it, and 20 people come, while others will have cars from four different states show up.

What makes Columbia's arts scene special to you?

We are South Carolina's capital and things are really bad off in our joining forces of church and state. There is no way to explain how much Christ-core there is. Not long ago there were book burnings, and there's a lot of forcing kids into Christ. Also, there is a terrible problem of racism. Lots of things we do are in a name of "outer darkness", a concept everybody from Sun Ra to David Lynch have tackled. A basic awareness of an "unknown," a "void," a "myth.” Addressing a random factor as opposed to being so sure of everything. It’s okay to be wrong and admit you know nothing. We use imagery of things like "The Discoverers," people who have taken it upon themselves to venture beyond what's going on and stumble upon phenomena. It’s here in Columbia, and if you peel a layer away you will find something more than judges and police force raping teenage girls in trailers out in BFE to get them out of some traffic violations and planted drug charges.

Who's the most memorable live act you've ever booked?

Hard to say: Books On Tape, Kites, Blame Game, or Meneguar. I really don't know. For me, I get to hang out with these cats and they’re always so cool. I load them up with all my graphic art trash books, posters, and old flyers. They're always kinda confused but have a blast. Over 80% say it was their favorite stop on tour.

Most memorable moments in general from over the years?

“Deformance art” act "Run Jesus Run" getting in a giant see-through container they made (15 feet in diameter) & having a well-executed food fight.

Who are some local Columbia musicians or groups you think are doing something unique and vital these days?

DJ Sheild, DJ Metatron, Anakrid, XMo, and Orgone Accumulator.

Finally, what do you do outside of booking the Immaginarium?

I go to school as an interdisciplinary student where my major basically states that I'm trying to learn how to write really well so I can write up some grant applications to get funding for painting murals on walls to create entrance door ways to parallel dimensions to allow a Pandora’s box to cleanse our world of its problems. How they let me in? I have no idea.

Immaginarium Noveau Contact Info:

Official Website
Myspace