NEW YORK — A two-hour spinathon from DJ Food brought the

experimental New York Festival of Electronic Composers and Improvisers

to an end Sunday night with something a little more traditional: the

turntable.

The festival at the Knitting Factory featured six nights of sets by

electronic music innovators, including Suicide and the Silver Apples. And

after performances that saw shopping carts and mouse pads used as musical

instruments, turntable manipulation was a return to something familiar.

(Click

here to view an image gallery of the festival.)

DJ Food members Strictly Kev and PC (Patrick Carpenter) each had two

Technics turntables and a mixer before them — and a box of records

on the floor.

At the outset of their performance, they dove deep into electronic sounds,

with rap, jazz and cloistered chanting, but vinyl scratching carried the

day.

"I used a sampler right at the very beginning, but I forgot about it after

about 10 minutes," PC said afterward.

Shopping Trip

DJ Food followed the Silver Apples, who journeyed from Alabama with a

stolen shopping cart to debut "Shopping Cart Concerto." Synthesizer player

Simeon Coxe, who has led the group since its psychedelic beginnings in

1968, said the cart is a symbol of our modern society.

"This is a shopping culture," Simeon said. "Everybody from people in mink

stoles to the homeless experience shopping carts every day. So I decided

to make a musical instrument out of it."

Simeon said he had planned to push the cart around the room and record

samples of the squeaky sounds its bad wheel made. However, there was no

space on the small stage, or in the packed room, so he settled for a bit

of thrashing-in-place, combined with samples recorded during their sound

check.

The concerto came in two movements: "Midnight at the Piggly Wiggly" and

"Dollar Day at Kmart." It started off with a slow swirl of electronics

and some sampled voices, then it built up with an urgent bassline supplied

by Wilbo Wright and some live drums played by Clem Waldmann.

Simeon madly twirled the knobs on his old Hewlett-Packard tube oscillators,

and the concerto turned into a dance number. Then it petered out, ending

with a sigh as a recording announced, "Thank you for shopping at Kmart."

The Silver Apples had opened their set with the pleasant "Program"

(RealAudio

excerpt) and the ominous, almost military beat of "A Pox on You" — a pair of

nuggets from their first two albums. "Fractal Flow," a comparatively new

song that Simeon and keyboardist Christian Hawkins recorded in 1996, was

about the closest the festival came all week to a straight-ahead pop

performance by a band.

Popular Program

Space was at a premium throughout the festival. Glenn Max, programming

director of the Knitting Factory, said the festival sold out five of the

six nights. The only night the small room didn't reach capacity was Thursday,

when a windy snowstorm prevented electro-pioneer Carl Craig's plane from

landing.

Friday and Saturday were the most crowded of the week, with clear weather

and the promise of rare performances by CBGB veterans Suicide conspiring

to sell out the shows long before they began.

Among those wedged into the room Saturday night to hear Suicide take apart

golden oldies such as "96 Tears" and crush bones with the furor of "Rocket

USA" (RealAudio

excerpt), was former Cars leader Ric Ocasek, producer of three

Suicide albums and the main act the last time the band played a New York club.

"It's the best concert I've ever seen," Ocasek said afterward, smiling

and hugging vocalist Alan Vega backstage.

But this was no punk nostalgia night. As was the case all week, most of

the crowd was young. "Every 10 years or so, people want to hear Suicide,"

Vega said. "At least now we don't have to worry about getting killed."

To open both weekend shows, Vega imported Pan Sonic, a European act known

for its feedback-heavy sampler and sequencer assaults. Ilpo Vaisanen, who

worked the mixer while bandmate Mike Vanio did the echo and effects, said

he enjoys cranking up the feedback close to the pain threshold. "It's

nearly on the edge of what you can handle," he said with a grin.

A Fan Affair

By the time Suicide came on at 11, the room was so hot and so packed that

anyone who passed out would have remained standing for the duration. Vega

strode out in a black and yellow British motorcycle jacket, and both he

and keyboardist Martin Rev wore big, dark sunglasses.

It could have been 30 years ago at CBGB, except no one was throwing anything

at the band, and Vega wasn't taunting the audience.

They opened with a new tune called "Skullfang," as Vega strutted the stage.

Next was "Dominick Christ," the duo's ode to homeless Vietnam War veterans,

followed by a furiously paced "Ghostrider" (RealAudio

excerpt), which sounded like zydeco on crank.

"The whole wide world is coming at you," Vega sang.

Then they played a new ballad, "I Surrender." In the middle of it, a woman

walked onstage and planted a kiss on Vega. He smiled, waltzed a bit with

her, then returned her to the crowd.

"See, that's the difference between now and then," noted Howard Thompson,

a retired A&R man who saw Suicide years ago when they toured Europe with

the Clash and Elvis Costello.

"Most gigs would end in tears or blood," Thompson said. "Alan would be

dodging spit, bottles, shoes — anything that people could throw.

"Now, he's dodging women."

"I never saw her before in my life," Vega said later. "She just walked

on. Great kisser, though."