2003 |
Last updated 15th January 2003
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When the Acid Mothers Collective come to town, a few things are certain - extended improvisations, guest appearances (tonight's honourable psychonaut is none other than Daevid Allen), antics and japes at the keyboards, and hair. Lots and lots of hair: not just on the heads of Makoto Kawabata and Higashi Hiroshi, what with the Camembert Electrique crowd out in force, some spectacular mullets are in evidence in the capacity crowd too.
Even if his shock of pure white hair is thinning a little now, Allen hasn't lost the ability to conjure quintessential niceness from six strings and a more numerous set of effects units. The Acid Mothers interact well with the original Pothead Pixie, and the night concludes on a definite high - though a somewhat early one, given that it's a Thursday night and things end early in London. -Antron S. Meister- |
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Gonzales; I'll be honest: I went for Peaches. Her 93ft East show last year was one of the most bacchanalian gig experiences I've had in recent years, a benevolent riot of loud, fired sexuality and abandon. But, truth be told, I'd really enjoyed the lyrical audacity / buffoonery of the few Gonzales tracks I'd heard. Someone summing themselves up as "a combination Joe Stalin-Woody Allen" has to be good for a laugh or two. But right from the start of this so-called "Pre-retirement" tour show ("Is he or isn't he?" seemed to be the theme, and perhaps purpose, of the tour title), we could see this wasn't going to be some drunken orgy of fuzzed-up beats. One by one, the cast appeared: the "well-dressed" nu-vaudeville gentleman known as Taylor Savvy; the white-suited Vegas never-has-been, Louie Austen; and the Canadian foursome - Mocky (a smooth young rapper), Feist (an understated but impassioned singer-guitarist), Peaches (rightly the most lauded of the bunch), and Chilly Gonzales. On a bare stage, a large image of Gonzales as a backdrop, each singer took a mike for an acapella "The show's about to start!" number. The ironic showbiz angle - postmodern cabaret or lo-fi Las Vegas - persisted through the night. Of course, booming bass, funky Eighties Electronica, seventies sleaze, over-reaching but playful sentiment, Hip-Hop and Rap all played their parts too. It all unfurled quite haphazardly, as rather than the usual band-after-band approach, these collaborative solo artists each took their turns to do a number, take a break and chill with Chilly at the back of the stage, then dive in again for an ensemble bout of synchronised dancing. All naturally revolved around Gonzales and his apparent but hardly believed retirement plans. Thus the time-honoured Vegas tradition of fawning tributes and insincere dedications was drawn on and upturned by a bunch of mates who'll take any excuse to entertain themselves and maybe some others too... Peaches and Feist shone belting out a rousing Disco-style track, each stood boogeying on a stage extension in front of the main speakers. The others all contributed with gusto, Louie Austen happily crooning over his thumping backing tracks, Mocky and Taylor Savvy bouncing around in MC mode. But I never really took to Gonzales as a stage performer. He seemed to possess a definite charisma, but one which - for whatever reason - doesn't project itself tremendously well on stage. Perhaps his eclecticism - singing, dancing, rapping, crooning, piano-playing and more - diffused any rapport he had with the audience. His final piano-based medley had me thinking of Prince's solo piano burst on the Lovesexy live video, but more in terms of trying to see where Gonzales might have absorbed inspiration than any real comparison (which would, let's face it, be sacrilegious). Finally, Gonzales held the stage alone, and asked a favour of the audience: could they all just leave while he's sat on stage, so he can watch them go for the last time? My guess was that this was actually the purpose of the "Pre-retirement" title: at the very least, an excuse to get people to indulge him more than they normally might. So people left, slowly - "Is he going to do another one when half of us are gone?" A few people jumped on stage to hug him, and I heard some very happy people coming out of the venue. The audience never seemed to be rocked at all, though, and I left feeling curiously sober. -Gyrus- |
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Guapo; The Guinea Pig club's second outing finds the experiment being performed through the strange filter of Hyper Kinako, an Anglo-Japanese power Punk Pop band. As they've apparently got classical training to back up their skittish riffs and obscure lyrics, it's no surprise that the delivery is precise in it's chaos, a well-drilled cacophony of rattly percussion and reedy keyboards which includes moments of theatrical silliness. Singer Toko is decked out in a pink feather boa, occasionally donning huge googles to sing maniacally fun songs with titles like "Car & Kettle". Hyper Kinako have a neat ability to leapfrog the 4/4 grind on a track like "Popping Step", which pounces from sharp-anlged beat to Eighties-infected Art Rock skank with glee, and the introduction of glittery pom-pom waving cheerleaders adds further pantomime humour to their set for the catchy singalong number "Tokyo Invention Registration Office", This particular number has a chorus of those words, and a satisfying chant of "T.O.K.Y.O. TOKYO!" to overdrive the fuzzy riff into meta-ridiculous bombast on a wave of super-ironic cheap preset fanfares. Definitely one for singing next time a patent needs filing.
While the facial contortions may provoke a mixture of awe and hilarity among the audience, there are also plenty of forthright declarations that Mr. Smith is the best drummer they've ever heard too. Debatable as that point may be, it's certainly and understandable one, and the gurning offers highly convincing evidence of the concentrated energy being meted out to the skins and cymbals. But it's not all about the drums, as Matt Thompson's bass wriggles to the rhythmic explosions kicking off a metre away, and the keening electric pianos and keyboards make their own decisive contribution to the overall live experience which is Guapo. Another comment on their stagecraft is to compare Guapo with a deviant Emmerson, Lake and Palmer mashed up against Black Sabbath, but playing in the basement of a pub in Islington - and while this and the immediate lurch to bracket the band with the illustrious Goblin are good reference points, they have the distinction of gripping the venue hard for what seems like a small aeon on their own highly-charged merits. -Linus Tossio- |
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Laibach
-Richard Fontenoy- |
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The Legendary Pink Dots The Legendary Pink Dots return to their founders' home country after an absence of a good few years is always a welcome event - that they then play two gigs in a mini-micro tour is an added bonus. First surprise is their appearance at uber-Goth Saturday mainstay club The Slimelight; second that they play the next day in the upstairs pub room with bells on which is the Pressure Point in Brighton. As it turns out, the contrast could have hardly been more different. The Slimlight has been and (mostly) remains the sleaziest, scuzziest and sometimes the most vibrant club in London, for going on two decades now. Dark young things and those old enough not to care any longer if black is the new rock and roll slip in at pub closing time to the back streets of the Angel, in that small forgotten part of Islington behind the Tube station which resists gentrification, if only by the skin of its fangs. Paintball arena by day and multi-roomed megaclub at the weekend, the place reeks of underground cred and sticks to the feet with the same literally tacky adhesive quality it has done since the days of unisex toilets and hardcore weirdos. There may be helpful staff and Council-registered bouncers these days, in-house bars so you don't have to bring your own moonshine any more and even an immense cloakroom for the outer garb to keep the bondage gear covered up on the tube in from all points suburban and halls residential, but The Slimelight is still unique among clubs. The Dots make their live appearance in an upstairs hall, decked with crackly monitors which seem to have been broadcasting the same static since 1993; the room fills up with a motley crew of those few UK Dotsheads who emerge blinking into the darkness from far afield whenever the band touch down in their old home town, and the eyelined staring cybergoths who line the walls on a regular basis. They are in for a treat. Edward Ka-Spel is barefoot as ever, Niels van Hoornblower resplendent in motley suit and confortable skullcap, The Silverman set behind his keyboard as the supreme electronicist at the controls. New guitarist Erik gangles and strums his instrument into life as the electronic arpeggiations of "Casting The Runes" signals a ninety minute diversion from the mundane which any excursion into the width and depth of the Pink Dots catalogue promises. When highly competent bands play live they tend towards several states, the commonest being variations on their recorded work spilt through with improvised tangents, and picture-perfect snapshots of recordings which are akin to sitting in on a studio session with as much variation as watching marionettes play through a setlist. Not so the Dots, whose tightness is exemplary yet manage to put on a show of considerable strength and engaging power on both nights, a feat contributed to in no small measure by the expertise of Raymond Steeg, their sound engineer who tweaks each venue's desks to bring the best possible mix forth, and then some. The Slimelight crowd is welcoming, enthusiatically enraptured into the mesmerising stage presence of Edward, centrepiece of a group whose oddness is unforced and convincing. Ka-Spel creeps and stalks the stage, grasping mic stand for dear life or pounding out dramatic chords at his synth keys, a curious hunch back not actual but emergent, casting him in the role of sinister jester and eldritch tale spinner in front of the perfect audience for the band's particular brand of otherworldy apocalypses and domestic streams of lateral consciousness. By contrast, the Brighton show is before an audience of barely forty souls, just about enough to form a couple of rows in the upstairs room of the recently-remodelled pub/bar/venue Pressure Point. Despite the small (but highly enthusiastic) turnout on a rainy Sunday night in a university town which would seem ripe for the Dots experiment in provincial touring, the band put on a show worthy of a sold-out capacity crowd, and there are some advantages to the intimate (if widely-spaced) setting. As is customary, on both nights Edward and Niels perform their party games with the audience; Ka-Spel taking up with a woman in the crowd for the unsettling monologue "A Certain Stuucky", taking the story close up and personal, looking into her eyes through his ever-present shades and speaking his half of a Sunday morning event at home where something unspecified must be disposed of. When he yells "KILL IT!" the first time, there is an almost visible jump throughout the audience members not expecting such violence and viciousness; pity the poor subject of his attentions as she becomes the focus of (a shoulder-)gripping drama. Niels' tactic is more playful - he steps off stage with his saxophone and wanders the crowd, lighting their faces with a lamp in his instruments' horn, creeping up behind the audience to goose them musically; in Brighton, the combination of Ka-Spel and Hoornblower is comedic, as one harangues and freaks out while the other takes the opportunity to give the entire room a taste of the full-frontal saxophony - and they love it, bar staff and punter alike, some dancing to the grooves and parps or wriggling in the sonic blast, or even when shying away with embarrassed distance, there is still a smile to be found among the alarm and disturbance of the usual barrier between crowd and spectacle. This is what the Dots live show is all about - grasping the audience, wrapping them in another world then stripping away the boundaries between performance and reality. So each night's gig ends on different notes; The Slimelight passes into bustling, preening ultra-Gothic energy and dissolution outwards in search of night buses or the long dance until dawn brings the trek around the corner to the early trains and a day spent recovering; once again, the difference in Brighton is stark; a filtering away in minutes of the few who knew, some to catch the last train to the Smoke. In either case, the Dots are a triumph still, whether before a multitude or the curious and the convinced; proseletysing friends and strangers alike into ultra-Industrial club or the seaside circuit alike, and spreading the word that there is a reason why this truly is a legendary band. -Tango-Mango- |
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Mind Your Head 03: Danielson Famile;
Diamanda Galás
Acid Mothers Gong; The Mind Your Head festival for 2003 is subtitled "Exploring new meanings in sacred music", though this seems more of a loose thread connecting the line-up together somewhat tenuously. However, the intriguing double bill which opens the series at The Queen Elizabeth Hall provides some food for thought on the issue, as do the series' participants in nearly two weeks of events which follow. Carter Tutti is the re-branded identity of stalwarts Chris And Cosey, and their manifestation on stage opens the series with an esoteric concoction of glitch and drone, of male/female interplay and the surge of a powerful psychedelic imperative - which is perhaps what the new sacred music allusions refer to in their particular case. A quantum step on from their CTI ambiences and Electro-Disco songs as C&C, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti's glistens with digital complexity and the sussurating pleasures of feeedback, voice and that eternal harmonious drone. Cosey's words are infrequent, dusting atmospheres and veiled threats or promises, sensual and distant, personal yet pulled into near-abstraction along the way. Carter is set off to one side, not sidelined but almost sequestered in a technological compartment by his PowerMacs and mixers, tweaking the settings of what is essentially an Ambient Dub set while Cosey brings what would otherwise be a sterile visual experience to human life on the eerie delay-effected skirl of harmonica, cornet of muttered words. This is not to say that their is a lack of warmth, or heartbeat bass and groove to the musical underpinnings, but that without her poised performance there would be only another (highly competent) laptop set with digitally-processed animations on offer in the auditorium. The sensuality that Carter Tutti expand upon is not a simple one of signifiers made obvious; there is more subtlety at work in the swirl of DNA-like clusters transformed into eyeballs onscreen, or the curves and tones of human faces and limbs matched to slide-guitar scrawls which unfurl sine-wave tendrils of electric sound to the flicker of digits and plasmatic clouds onscreen. Cosey uses her cornet and guitar, often simultaneously, to punctuate and emphasise the switch between glitchy Electro bubbling into binary-bred beats and sets glissando waves among the precisely-filtered - yet fuzzy - backbrain grooves. The whole is a multi-layered audiovisual experience, one with many underlying codes to unlock, especially on the nature of what of their music is male-derived, what female, and how these conditions are altered and played with by the pair. The Current 93 performance is just that - a carefully set out sequence of songs, presented with grace (in many senses) and steadfast accoplishment by a group who are by now venerable troupers in the field of music with sacred overtones. It is salutory to reflect that their transmutation from Industrial noise merchants via the singalong Noddy Apocalypse period of Folk-noir into the soul-searching reflections of today has been built on spritual foundations, though not necessarily ones which would be acceptable or even recognizable to many religious persuasions. As with the Gnostic tradition which has been such an influence over the years as with the conundra and simplicity of Buddhism, Current 93's music holds its secrets camougflaged in parables and set forth in straightforward ctrokes laid together into complexity; there are songs capable of being sung in the shower like the rousing "Death Of The Corn", but there are many more which require absorbtion into the story, the flow of not only David Tibet's impassioned delivery but the deceptively plain (perhaps in the Amish sense of correct, functional yet harmonious simplicity) arrangements. Pieces like the affectingly sad song of bereavement "Sleep Has His House" hold powerful emotions at their heart, and let them resonate in the timbre of Tibet's voice or the liquid ease of Graham Jeffrey and Maja Elliot's delicate twin pianos, in Joolie Wood's tender violin or child(hood)like recorder trills. Above all, Tibet's compositions are ones which draw the focus into the centre of his driven explorations of the sublime, and yes, even the ridiculous: though a shouted "na na-na-na" for old favourite "Coal Black Smith" is greeted with a wry shake of the head and a definite "no!" The structure rises and falls on a dynamic observed carefully to allow a rise and fall of passion and pathos, the descents into sorrow brought into sharp contrast on waves of raw, brightly-painted imagery of mortality worth celebrating at the extremes of Tibet's limited yet powerful vocal range. From the stark conversational exegisis of "The Inmost Light" to the writhingly-possessed electronics which roll out in accompaniment at the end when Michael Cashmore replace electric guitar with growling bass for "The Locust Summer", the onward march into primeval musical chaostrophy via the shimmering individually-significant depths of the Patripassianist numbers shows that perhaps the noisy side of Current 93 has evolved much as the fiery passions of youth become mellow with age and experience. The next pairing reviewed (other participants in the series included Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve; Max Romeo And The Charmax Players; Dreadzone, Dennis Alcapone and Paul The Girl) of They Came from The Stars, I Saw Them and Danielson Famile finds the sacred spaces occupied to be verging on the ludicrous and mind-boggling respectively - and, perhaps, jointly. They Came from The Stars, I Saw Them have not only an extra-long name but an extended line up, with a dozen players taking the stage. All garbed in white, there is initially some confusion as to whether the Danielson Famile have switched times, or perhaps even the Arkestra have revivified themselves, but with their identity firmly established, the collective strike up a flowing psychedlic jam groove, rolling along on Giles Narang's persuasive drumming. To the accompaniment of horn section, backing singers and guitar strums, the rising synthesizer tomfoolery of resident eccentric Horton Jupiter lurches with alien glee into the fray, and their two lenghty pieces bring an air of offbeat improvisational weirdness to the QEH. On another plane of oddity altogether are the Danielson Famile. Built around the impassioned songs of Daniel Smith, the Famile tonight are his sisters Megan and Rachel (voices, bells, glockenspiels and recorders) and brother Andrew at one of the two drumkits, with honorary family members Sufjan Stevens (the second drumkit) and Chris Palladino (keyboards) completing the line-up. Dressed in white medical garb (to reflect their mission to heal the world through their music) emblazoned with red name and hearts on sleeves, the group is an eccentric presence and no mistake. Their sincerity is not in doubt, espousing Christian family values, but at the very least their sense of fun is tinged with a willingness to bring forth obscure compositional strategies while providing a rollicking good time. From the opening energy-laden gambit of what remains perhaps their signature tune "A No No" with its catchily repeated "I Love My Lord" chant onwards, the Famile's show is one where their spiritual struggles with fleshly concerns are put on display to the tune of Folk music stretched into hitherto unfathomable dimensions on waves of deep buzzing synthetic and electrical bass. Danielson himself is a furious spark of energy, holding the audience captive with his peculiar falsetto vocals while his sisters admonish with wagging fingers and curious synchronised dance steps. As a family band, some of whom have been recording since before their teenage years, the Famile have an accomplished presence and are incredibly tight musically, Megan and Rachel providing a somewhat fixed-smile perkiness to a gig which proves that old fashioned revivalism isn't dead, it's just moved laterally into the fringes of avant-Rock, their songs built with a thoughtful complexity which belies their folksy, happy-clappy even, antecedents. This is no more evident than when the audience are invited to clap along with the furious rhythm of "Flesh Thang" and to and singalong for the choruses of "Cutest Lil' Dragon" and "Sold! To The Rich Man", a piece of inspired joy-bringing, whatever the competence of each crowd member's rhythmic abilities. Joining in with gusto, it is certainly also amark of the Danielson Famile's assured stagecraft that they can get the Queen Elizabeth Hall pulsating with communal glee. Here is one of the markers of Mind Your Head's sacred musical waypoints, found in the connections between strangers that their relentlessly optimistic songs can bring, even at their most scathing of the secular world - and also of Danielson's personal spiritual failings too, laid bare as their sleeve decorations indicate. Filled with a (decidedly non-self-)righteous fervour, this family leave the hall wanting more of this brightly-coloured exposition of youthful intellectual and moral questing, sparked by some kind of certainty in their faith, a performance which leaves one puzzled audience member observing afterwards that they are "unashamedly whatever it is that they are..." A unique, yet faintly disturbing show, one which can only find the Danielson Famile converts to their music, if not their religious persuasion. Perhaps the most astonishing and powerful performance in Mind Your Head comes from Diamanda Galás, an artist of another stature to every other performer on the bill. Her voice is capable of such a range, and her compositions of so involving a level of melodaramatic anguish that anything else seems tame and trivial by comparison. Her dark-shrouded two-part solo appearance in the Festival Hall is one where no spine is left without some severe tingling on the trembling ullalations and raging squalls of a voice which could probably be trained to kill. That Galás has directed her ire against the repressive forces of the world is admirable, and if only her words and almost tangible vocal exertions could strike deep into the souls of genocidal mania, then the feeling she generates is that all human evil would be swept away in the purifying drive of her voice. Instead, the ultimate result is a wailing lament, a searing indicment of the miseries and utter inhumanity of crimes on a scale which pass everyday media understanding. Delivered with a passion that finds her eyes rolling back in the intensity of her performance, she sings the Blues like no other, a Blues which encompasses the Nazi death camps, the blasted villages of ethnic Greeks in Turkey, the existential Parisian decay of Gérard Nerval and the US South itself. Throughout, Diamanda is a poised and tortured figure, flitting between multiple microphones and piano, touched by a chiaroscuro which heigtens the drama as much as it obcures the concert hall surrounding, pinpointing the technical accomplishment of her singing with crimson washes and stark uplit counterpoint to the minimal drones and thunderous chords of her compositions. The series' finale brings three old school psychedelic legends together on the same night's billing, alongside a relatively newer set of cohorts from Japan. The Incredible String Band were once on a par with Jimi Hendrix, a group who were required listening for the drop out Sixties generation and well beyond, their recorded legacy tripping on through the generations. The line up taking to the boards of the Festival Hall for the last night of Mind Your Head is led by original co-founder Mike Heron, and despite the best efforts of him, the the multi-talented Fluff and their two bearded friends, the show would perhaps have been one better performed in more intimate surroundings than this vast concert hall. The String Band's show is accomplished and gently lateral in it's folkishness, enjoyable and pleasurable, but one which seems ultimately drained of life, swallowed up in the bright lights and vast stage. Damo Suzuki is a singer who is still shackled to his past sojourn as Can's wildest singer - itself some acheivement - and has overcome this double-edged legacy to a great exent through his global Netwrok of collaborations with a diverse set of musicians. For this show his group consists of the Switch Doctors, numbering caprine-bearded Gong veteran Mike Howlett on bass guitar and Here & Now's Steve Cassidy on drums among its members, and perhaps their combined years of festival-friendly grooving is responsible for the dubbed-up rhtym section which underpins the set. When Damo gets a collective together for a show, they don't know exactly what it is that they're going to play on each night; somehow though, Suzuki's vocals lead the way into a shimmering realm of hypnotic spiralling texture, his genius lying in an ability to inspire improvised lyricism inthe band as much as through his own streamed-consciousness words. Together, these aged and age-old practitioners of the art of focussing musical energies let the mood and music take the players and audience on a tightly-controlled collective freak out, one where he becomes lost in the sounds and texture, screaming into the mic or shuffling and wandering among the musicians, gazing at the ceiling in distracted communion while Steve Higgins' choppy guitar riffs and Mark Jenkins' wibblingly psychedlic array of keyboards and synths perform hallucinogenic tricks in the mix. The climax comes at the hands of another multinational meeting of Heads in the extraordinary guise of Acid Mothers Gong, where the year's earlier guest spot of Daevid Allen with members of the wider Acid Mothers Soul Collective as Guru + Zero at the Kosmische Club expands to bring Gillie Smyth (words and voice) and Didier Malherbe (sax) of Gong and Josh Pollock (guitar) from Allen's current band the University Of Errors on board to fill the stage up nicely. Flanked by the hirsute stoned-age maniacs Higashi Hiroshi and Cotton Casino (keyboards and electronics) and axe-wielding psychonaut Kawabata Makoto with the AMT rhythm section bring up the rear, somewhat unobtrusively, the gathered ensemble hum and glide into their performance with a suitably spiritual feel, bringing up their voices and drones until their collective trip is unleashed. What a show it is, bubbling over into an anarchic soundclash which soon has a chunk of audience up from their assigned seas and dancing before the grim folded arms of South Bank Security still not entirely used to pixie-hatted shenanigans at the national temple of the Arts. Allen cavorts and roams around, twirling himself into yogic shapes while wearing avariety of funny-peculiar headgear. Gillie Smyth sways slightly as a poised earth-mother statue; she croons and has a spoken word moment of ire for Messers. Bush and Blair; Kawabata sparks Space Rock chords in spangly trousers and a cloak - yes, a cloak. It is a carnival cavalcade brought to the stage, a supremely silly lysergic peformance where the urge to ape Sun Ra is explicit in a Jazzadelic frame of scat and skronk, performed by a bunch of outer space ambassadors, masters of their own particular psychedelic universes, welcoming visitors - though with a warning to take care of their collective cerebella in the Festival Hall. -Richard Fontenoy- |
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Michael Ormiston;
Ben Owen is almost pulled onstage by an imaginary neck-hook, slapstick-style. He acts the gibberish buffoon, gurning and putting limbs into unwholesome positions to raise a chuckle or two. He slips into a Harpo wig for an eye-bulging routine, and a nondesript peaked cap for a Met Police copper on peacekeeping duty in downtown Baghdad. A few quickfire gags ("As I was proceeding down Baghdad High Street, I apprehended a man with a Kalashnikov. I said, where do you think you're going with that then, Sonny? Oh, excuse me, you're a Shi'ite" was the gist of what was simultaneously the best and worst joke) and Owen makes way for Michael Ormiston's first set of the night.
Following a brief twiddle with multiple saxes, flutes and FX boxes from Ben Owen, and some more rattling and thumping from The Undseemly Trio, Michael Ormiston returns with Colin on didgeridoo and a collection of singing bowls. Once again the mood is electronic, but the addition of Oldfield and Garfunkel in more serious improv mood soon brings the room into chaotic throb and sussurus of strings and cunning lung capacities, booming low and scraping harshly between the ears. Ormiston wanders the audience with a heavy-duty hide drum, beating out a steady rhythm to change the mood. Thankfully, the opportunity to excoriate and elevate isn't squandered on self-indulgence, and the slip back to quiet on Ormiston's throat manipulations is measured and appropriate. For a finale, Ormiston performs one more traditional acoustic number, with Mike "Romuald" Oldfield sneaking back for some offset violin accompaniment. What a night; what a club, and the selection of artists and their various elliptical peformances tonight under the gimlet gaze of the ever-eccentric master of ceremonies Hugh Metcalf in his barmy cabbage headgear is something close to the substance of a Klinker experience. -Lester Bangs (allegedly)- |
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It was with some trepidation that I went to Liverpool to see the 21st century's version of the `package tour'. I'd been told, by someone whose opinion I trust, that most of the evening had been crap when he saw it. In fact he was a bit more splenetic than that. Still you have to find out for yourself, don't you ? A ton of print has been spent enthusing over the exciting newness of music coming out of Norway. I agree with some of it. I haven't heard it all. But I have heard Supersilent, who effectively headline this bill. Their last CD in particular is a favourite. I was hoping that they would prove to be a better live experience than on the first night of the tour. More of that later. The evening began, for me, with a question. Why is DJ Strangefruit a part of this line-up ? At a gig like this who wants to watch a guy at the turntables, sifting through his vinyl ? Well, no one really. He spun his scratchy mix as people came in, looked for the optimum seat then sat and chatted. DJ Strangefruit seemed to have been assigned the role reserved for the `support act', drumming up brisk business at the bar. But, as the lights dimmed, he provided a sombre soundscape for Arve Henriksen to build a solo on. Anyone who has heard Henriksen's trumpet sound will know that it owes something to the breathy, ethereal Japanese flute and tonight in a fairly short solo he showed how it's done. I can't reveal the secret but I will say that it was a mournful and moving performance where he breathed and sang into the instrument. I don't think anyone in the audience was breathing. Then he was gone. He was followed by Sidsel Endresen with Christian Wallumrod on keyboards and Jan Bang on other things, like samplers and sequencers. Endresen sings, sometimes in English, sometimes in Norwegian and occasionally in `tongues'. People singing in tongues has never floated my boat much. She sounded better in Norwegian. What I really enjoyed though was Jan Bang's contribution. He had the look of someone who spends a lot of time in front of his machines. But as he sampled Endresen's voice and looped it in a duet with Wallumrod's prepared piano he actually brought some warmth to the proceedings. And Bang's solo, with some strange wrist shaking and whole body shimmying, was worth watching too. After the interval, during which poor Strangefruit played to even fewer customers, the quartet that never discusses or rehearses their music came on. There were no introductions of course. I'm still not sure who two of them are. The stage was littered with electronic hardware, possibly more than Faust cart with them, and the players seemed peripheral. But once they decided to engage there was a mostly fruitful meeting of men and jack plugs. This was going to be the real thing and no chance for Supersilent to take it away, sift and reconstruct the performance, as happens on CD. They began with a fairly muted soundscape, and after appearing to impersonate a well known Rodin figure, drummer Jarle Vespestad came to life gently beating his kit with what looked like bamboo or limp cane. Of course the low key approach didn't last and the piece turned into one of their hardcore, aural batterings. It was still exciting to hear old synthesisers alongside more advanced equipment and even better to hear the sampling of Henriksen replayed against the percussive duelling of keyboards and drums. Despite all the aggression generated this first slab ended with calm washes of keyboard filling the little theatre. A few punters left as the band shaped up for a further improvisational encounter. This time they were not taking prisoners, it was full blown crescendo from the outset, with a further crescendo, if that's possible, when Henriksen put down the trumpet and began a cathartic few minutes exorcising his demons and utilising his remarkable voice amid the tempest howling around him. To be heard at all was some achievement. Supersilent ended, as they had with the first piece, reflectively. I don't know if anyone seated elsewhere noticed but drummer Vespestad spent the last few minutes on his haunches rocking slowly with his arms wrapped around his head. He may not have been alone in this response. But overall it had been a set that tried to balance calm and fury though I have to say the latter was ultimately victorious. -Paul Donnelly- |
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The
Vanity Set;
-Antron S. Meister- |
 © The Contributors and Freq 2003 e.v. |