Impose Magazine

Scene and Heard

Operation: Restore Maximum Freedom IX

Photos by Julia Marino » Somewhere along the veteran biker routes of northern California pulses the thundering heart of the central valley’s DIY music crowd. Tucked loudly and proudly behind Plainfield Station, a random dive north of Davis in rural Yolo County, the local independent radio station KDVS 90.3FM hosts the biannual, non-profit music festival Operation: Restore Maximum Freedom (O:RMF).

Text by Julia Marino
Posted on May 26, 2010

Here, distortion pedals and anti-corporate ideals cut with the same edge as the bikers and brews that make the scene. Founded on a democratic and diverse approach to music, the festival has never featured the same band more than once since ORMF’s start in 2005. Quintessentially, the variety of artists include the Gamelan Ensemble, a group of drum, gong, metallophone and xylophone players that perform songs from the Sunda region of the island of Java; the Sacramento hip-hop collective, Delorean; and fathers of Australian punk, X.

Largely, the sound skews more toward punk and experimental, with the inclusion of many west coast bands rounding robin from stage to grassy horseshoe patch. Highlights include Davis’ Mucky the Ducky that combine unstructured high voltage instrumentation with sweat dripping percussion, and Los Angeles’ Foot Village, an audio colonoscopy created from four drum kits and one speakerphone.

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