Aural
Detritus 2
Phoenix
Gallery, Brighton, Fri 30th Nov
Somehow,
with the
previous Aural Detritus concert series I managed to attend
all three “cutting-edge UK improvisation strategies”. This time
round, I reverted closer to type and only made the closing night.
Which, needless to say, left me pining for what I hadn't heard in the
other two.
Organiser
Paul Khimasia Morgan commented ”more
by accident than by design, tonight's performances all have strings
in common”, to which I'd add all performances were
relatively restrained and sparing. Both of which are of course grist
to Lucid Frenzy's mill, where all-out free-jazz blurt is not the
order of the day. (I can respect Ornette Coleman as much as the next
man. Just so long as I don't actually have to listen to him.)
Considering
cellist Bela Emerson
is a local lass who performs regularly, and considering how much I've
enjoyed it whenever I have seen her, I've succeded
in seeing her a stupidly short number of times. This collaboration
with Adam Bushell on marimba was the first time I've seen her
collaborate, and I was curious as to how it would work. After all,
her practise of looping and replaying her own lines effectively makes
her her own built-in rhythm track.
As
if acknowledging this, while still stamping on those effects pedals
with abandon, she used loops more sparingly - giving Bushell space.
And perhaps by result the marimba was less a rhythm track and more an
active collaborator, appealing to those of us who like the way impro
eschews instrumental hierarchies. At time the respective instruments
seemed to be morphing into one another, Bushell descending on his
bars with bows while Emerson drummed her fingers along her cello's
body.
Last
time I speculated that a reference to “long duration”
performances was Aural Detritus' raison d'être. It was certainly
duration which made this – it seemed to just get better and better,
the collaborators throwing up new combinations like there was no
tomorrow.
Photo Paul Khimasia Morgan
We
were then shepherded into a smaller, bare room where we sat at the
feet of Angharad Davies as she played unamplified, unaccompanied
violin. Appealingly, her performance worked down
rather than up. As she moved her bow further and further up her
violin's bridge, the sounds became fainter and less recognisable as
notes. And the less, the quieter she played, the further she pushed
things to the edge of hearing, the more our ears were pulled in to
what she was doing.
At
points a newcomer to the room would probably have been dumbfounded as
to what could be holding our attention so raptly. While we who'd been
there from the beginning were committed to the path. Quietness and
even silence become part of the vocabulary of music, like the way an
artist can use white space in his compositions. Enthralling!
In
a scene often dominated by gimmicks and gizmos, it was impressive to
hear not just new but extraordinary sounds emerging from an
instrument dating back to the Renaissance. In fact, so strange seemed
the sounds I realised I had not the slightest idea how technically
accomplished Davies was on the instrument. They could as equally have
come from a complete novice as a classical master. (Though Davies'
range is actually quite wide, click on some sound clips here.)
Here's
something a little similar from another performance eighteen months
ago, only not from Brighton and with industrial clanks as a backing
track...
Up
next, Dominic Lash was like Davies in a distorting mirror, playing
acoustically and unamplified but more fulsomely on a double bass. In
some ways he followed the same schema as Davies' set, starting out in
the safe harbour of more recognisable chords before sailing straight
off the chart. But the uncharted parts seemed more rudderless to me,
as if he was spending more time seeking than finding. There seemed a
Goldilocks point where it worked the best, as if the most abundant
discoveries were at the fringes of the known. In all, a mixed set,
but with high points.
Sarah
Hughes (announced as “all the way from Withdean... that's
Withdean!”) played zither, bows and amplified
found sounds. It was one of those sets you find yourself wanting to
like more than you actually did, there seemed to be more in
there than was actually coming out. Her often delicate sounds
sometimes fell victim to street noise, which doubtless didn't help. I
would like to see her again before saying anything further.
COLOUR
OUT OF SPACE
West
Hill Hall, Brighton, 15th Sept & 24th Nov
Though
I have a huge amount of time for Colour Out of Space, some strange
curse seems to stop me writing about it. I greatly enjoyed last
year's Festival, and assembled a huge bundle of notes, which I never
seemed to write up until it all got far too late. (Even for me.) This
year, alas, there was no major Festival but a mere two evenings at
the West Hill Hall. Which is a quite gloriously inappropriate venue
for such out-there music, a Church Hall whose idea of stage lighting
is plonking down a couple of tasselled standard lamps from some
Fifties front room. (And this bring-your-own-booze business makes a
Saturday night almost affordable!)
Setting
aside ever-present compere Daniel Spicer, there seems strangely
little social overlap between the two events. (Perhaps I should start
some rumour of a feud between the two, accusing one side of lacing
the other's samplers with tunes.) There is perhaps
a difference of emphasis, Colour Out Of Space can tend to noise music
and other wilder affairs, often with a more performative or even
confrontational edge, like a cross between a gig, a pagan rite and a
Fluxus happening. While Aural Detritus events can feel closer to
recitals.
Take
for example Mik Quantius, whose roots are in the Cologne metal scene
and performed a shamanic-style set of droney chanting, even entering
the room playing a drum. By which token I should be a bigger devotee
of COOS, right? Yet life is a perplexing beast and I found Quantius'
set to exemplify the tendency of impro sets to lack structure and
fail to spark interest. It seemed to go nowhere and take a terribly
long time to not get there. For a self-styled shamanic journey, it never really left the Earth. Of these three nights, it was the
restrictive and sparing nature of AD which I ultimately found the most evocative.
Yet
of course it's not a competition and needless to say I greatly enjoyed many
of the other performers, such as Dutch free-form noise-makers Dagora.
I probably enjoyed the second night more, but alas rather uselessly
lost track of who was what! (Well these boho types keep swapping
collaborators and identities, they just won't stay still...) I am
perhaps not quite the devotee of Adam Bohman's found sounds as others
seem to be, I tend to prefer his cut-up readings and deadpan comedy
routines.
Closers King
Alfred Man of Leisure (most likely named after a local
Leisure Centre) displayed the variety on offer by, in this world of
free-floating duos and trios, being quite definitely a band! A
droney, trancey band who would make Kraftwerk sound like Guns and
Roses, but a band nonetheless. They triangulated the place where
Sixties garage beats, lo-fi and out-there coalesce, and then peppered
us with crossfire. One track was a steal from Faust's 'Rainy
Day, Sunshine Girl', but then what better place to steal
from?
Postscript!
News is that
the full Festival will be back next year. (Hurrah!)
Niether
from COOS, King Alfred Man of Leisure in action...
...and
Dagora starting off
from somewhere with a lot of vowels in it and heading straight for
outer space...
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