Local musician Hal McGee stood in front of a crowd of about 40 people Saturday night, picking names out of a beer pitcher.
That night, at The Laboratory, 818 W. University Ave., musicians were put in pairs and given nine minutes to improvise together.
The improv session, called Laboratory Music 3, was the third in an open-ended series that McGee holds when he feels like it, he said.
On Saturday, Andrew Chadwick, who performs under the name Ironing, was paired with Travis Johnson.
When it was their turn to perform, Johnson made his way to the floor-level, hardwood stage and sat in a chair with his electric guitar.
He pulled out a pink balloon, blew only a few breaths into it, tied it off and slid it under his guitar strings next to a pickup.
Then, he took out an orange balloon, blew it up more than the first and set it down.
Chadwick sat on the floor with an old record player in front of him. He took records from a case and began to lay them out. Some were in good condition and some were broken, crescent-shaped chunks of vinyl.
The clock started, and the improvisation session began. Johnson picked, slapped and strummed his guitar, his thumbs dancing like those of someone unaccustomed to using a video game controller. He grabbed the orange balloon, placed it on top of his strings and started rubbing his fingers across it, sometimes licking them to reduce the friction.
Chadwick layered records on his record player. He put a 12-inch album on. Then he put a piece of a broken record on top of it. Then he added a 45. He placed the needle onto the vinyl and took it off in a rhythm, giving listeners a second’s worth of the three albums in intervals as they spun.
The stage manager began to dance.
Some people bobbed their heads to the noise.
“There are few venues that actively welcome experimental music and noise,” McGee said during one of the breaks and not long before he tripped over the snake pit of cables on stage.
He thanked the staff for helping out. They wore black shirts with “LM³” on them. One wore a lab coat to go a long with the science theme of the cafe.
Above the door to The Laboratory, the words “A Cafe of Science,” were written in yellow letters. Some attendees drank from various beakers. A skeleton in a lab coat hung in the front window.
McGee, the event organizer, said Laboratory Music began with experimental performances at his home in 2008 and 2009. The last event at The Laboratory was in January.
Although McGee moved to Florida in the late 1980s, he didn’t get into the scene until about four years ago.
“I got to know just how diverse the experimental music scene in Florida is,” McGee said.
When it was his turn, he used a no-input mixer to perform with drummer Adam Devlin.
Devlin played scattered drumming rhythms that slowed to silence at points and evolved into machine gun-paced quickness at others.
McGee danced like his body was being riddled with bullets. He felt every squeal of the mixer, which sounded like C3PO on hallucinogens desperately pleading for someone to short his circuits.
Nick Boutwell, 22, came from Fort Myers to perform. Sunday was his third time participating in Laboratory Music.
Boutwell, who performs under the name Whitey Alabastard, said he performs experimental music “just for expression without creative differences with band members.”
There are no standards, he said.
