WILL
GREGORY MOOG ENSEMBLE
All
Saints Church, Hove, Thurs 15th May
As
the record shows, we the undersigned were much taken with Will Gregory's co-authored live score to the classic movie 'The Passion of Joan of Arc', three Festivals back. And now here he is again, in a performance which promised eight Moog synthesisters a-beeping, “to create new sounds and
reinvent old ones”.
Let's
take those two declarations in reverse order.
They
started the first half with a synthesised rendition of Handel and an
excerpt from 1968's 'Switched On Bach'. As the man said, meh. Synthesising the classical
always feels to me like string quartets trying to approximate rock
tracks, something trying to be something it's not. With a predictable
neither/nor result. The appeal of classic instruments lies largely in
their rich timbres. Synthesisers are neither well-equipt to emulate
that, nor are they exploring things they can uniquely do themselves.
This was made all the more galling by the salubrious Church setting,
and the silent presence of huge yet unused organ pipes rising up
above the folks hunched over tiny boxes.
Gregory
seemed to take such criticisms head-on, insisting more than one they
were “poor relations to real things”. Leading me to imagine they
weren't doing what they were doing badly, it was just something in
which I had little interest.
I
suspect that, while my eyes sezied on the word “synth” in the
Festival brochure, the key term to them was “Moog”. They seemed
keen to explore the Moog's deficiencies over its possibilities, it's
retro appeal. To them it was a piece of Seventies culture, like
sideburns, bottles of Blue Nun or rickets. Gregory compared one model
to a Ford Escort. Yet to me, it's tinny efforts aren't really 'off'
enough to be humorous or strange.
And
if acoustic instruments are like sailboats, there to take you to
foreign shores, synths are like space rockets, able to reach much
more distant destinations – new worlds and new civilizations. (My
first hearing electronic music in the context of SF soundtracks may
of course have had some effect here.)
While
this first half was highly eclectic, taking in both Bach and
Bacharach, they seemed most at home during the 'Escape From
New York' soundtrack. And, true, there is
something to that era. Of course it was spurred by film studios
realizing a geek with a keyboard came up with a score much more
cheaply than an orchestra full of Musician's Union members. The
result was usually gravitas on the cheap.
But,
as ever, restrictions enable. Something like Moroder's
classic 'Clockwork Orange' soundtrack creatively exploits
the distinction between a Beethoven-blasting orchestra and the hollow
grandeur of the synths. It conjurs up a dystopian future,
simultaneously opulent and barren. I'm just not sure any of that made
it into a set more concerned with novelty sideburns.
The
second half, the promised section of “new sounds”, was given over
to a Gregory composition, a live score to the film 'The
Service of Tim Henman'. Some might claim this was as
Eighties as 'Escape From New York', and it sounded
at times like New Order with a higher staffing level.
But,
you know, I like New Order. And it was in its own
way more adventurous and successful. The pieces were essentially
composed of overlaid rhythm tracks, formally at least following the
conventions of beat music. Yet that's a restrictive, bean-counting
way to listen to music, too fixated on formal innovation. The magic
lies more in the detail. By dispensing with a lot of the traditional
aural 'handholds' of instruments, such as pitch, the dish is
something more richly rewarding than the recipe might suggest. Us old
folks remember the days of LPs and turntables, and the warped sounds
that emerged if you got the play speed wrong. Whereas with this music
the tempo never sounds quite right. Its like it
could be speeded or slowed quite considerably, and rather than going
wrong it would just become something new.
Despite
my SF analogies of earlier, when I listen to this music my mind's eye
doesn't picture the de rigeur starfields. The music's more like a
geometric abstract by, say, Malevich somehow rendered into sound, a
landscape of shapes floating above and around one another.
But
if visuals too closely match the music they become superfluous,
reiterating what's already going on, they bring nothing to the party.
The super-slo-mo film of Henman racket-raising worked much better by
initially appearing unexpected, but soon becoming fitting. It took
something we think we know, and defamiliarised it to the point where
a whole new space opened up. And if like me you're a nerdy non-sports
fan, who has probably never previously concentrated on the tennis,
that just added to the effect.
Let's
chalk it up as another example of slow being the new fast. Disruptions to timescale work in a
similar fashion to disruptions in spatial scale. When what's 'normal'
to us is taken away, the human eye can have trouble differentiating
an aerial view across a vast landscape from a vastly magnified
close-up. It only takes in the vastness. Similarly, the human brain
associates the stretching of a short sequence with time lapse
photography – of flowers blooming in Spring and the like. If it's
not the entirely new, its the familiar from an unfamiliar angle.
All
in all, perhaps not quite the hoped-for evening of life not as we
know it. But after an uninspiring start it came to feature life not
as we normally see it. Which, I think you'll agree, is pretty cool.
There
now follows a short instructional video...
WRECKLESS
ERIC + BAND
The
Prince Albert, Brighton, Wed 14th May
There
are three things to note about this gig by punk 'survivor' Wreckless
Eric...
Firstly,
he tells us with some glee they're starting off by playing the whole
of an album no-one liked much when it came out, which he describes as
“the musical equivalent of a comb-over”. (Well this is the guy
who found he was “too maverick for punk”.)
Not being as acquainted with the Wreckless oeuvre
as I should be, it's not an album I know. I'm not even entirely sure
I previously knew it existed.
Also,
his personal and musical partner Ann Rigby follows up by describing
them as “the budget Paul and Linda McCartney”. And indeed 'Le
Beat Group Electrique' is an album of a Sixties stripe.
Thirdly,
the drummer plays a cardboard box which some suspect covered a real
drum beneath. And wasn't the whole of punk like that? Its poorly
concealed secret was that beneath the “no Beatles, no Stones”
rhetoric it marked a return to the stripped-down beat music of the
Sixties. And woe betide anyone who admitted any of that at the time.
Eric however was initially part of the Stiff records scene, a
slightly later growth less fixated on combing over those roots and
happier to admit that songwriting was going on. And here he is with
music which very much revels in the drum under the box. (Yeah, okay,
in actuality they kept the box. Just go with the
metaphor, will you?)
The
essence of Sixties beat music was to blend the raucous with the
melodic. Which is why it always needed two bands to headline it, the
Beatles and the Stones. In fact songs here pretty much split evenly
between Beatles-like and Stonesy, neat-haircut harmonies alternating
with slurry drawling. (Bassist Andre Barreau was in fact a founder of
the Bootleg Beatles.) A structure which may get a little schematic,
when the point was more to mix the two things up. And while the jury
remains permanently out on that whole Beatles vs. Stones thing
overall, here it's definitely the Stonesy songs which win out. They
sound spirited, while the Beatles-like can stray towards the
pastichy.
A
bit like the phrase 'just gay enough', in some ways it feels 'just
post-modern enough'. It's neither an ape-like Oasis mimicking, nor
some smartarse deconstruction. It's a knowing and witty take, while
still tearing into the music with gusto. It's perhaps best summed up
by the lyric “I'm a boy, of course/And you're a girl” - the two
words “of course” giving the thing a slight twist. Plus there's
the extra level of us listening to this now, to
songs of long-gone hot summers.
The
later part of the set was, stylistically at least, more familiar. Of
the three times I've seen him, it may be the first where he actually
played his hit 'Whole Wide World'. I'd enjoyed the
last time I'd seen him playing alongside Rigby, their musical styles
complementing one another. So it was perhaps a shame she only got one
song here. He comments, amused but apparently seriously, they he
recently got a record contract but she didn't.
And
while we're on the subject of the Bootleg Beatles, I was never quite
sure how all that worked. Did they start their sets in collar-less
suits, then take psychedelic drugs in the interval and come back on
with tuning-up symphony orchestras? And wouldn't they have to grow
their hair during the interval, too? Perhaps they had some
Getafix-style potion...
Footage
from London a few days later. For the attentive, subtle clues are
scattered as to Eric's age. (His birthday was actually the day
after, but close enough.) And they're playing... oh, you guessed...
EMMYLOU
HARRIS
Brighton
Dome, Fri 23rd May
Emmylou
Harris' status as a great of country music was cemented, at least in
my mind, by her inclusion in Gillian Welch's 'I Dream A Highway', a song which (among many other
things) sets out a subjective alternative history of country. “You
be Emmylou and I'll be Gram” refers to her early duets with Gram
Parsons, the first in an almost stellar list of collaborations which
took in Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Most probably, and like many
people, I chiefly know her through those collaborations. But it's
never too late and now here she is in town...
Of
course, she's in possession of one of the great characterful voices
of country, simultaneously tremulous and sinewy. It's a little like
the distinction between a good-looking face and a merely pretty one,
pleasing in its blandness. Harris has one of the great good-looking
voices.
And
her voice is chiefly known for harmonising, something I'm never sure
I've really got to the bottom of. Strong voices are usually like malt
whiskies, best served neat. But here it's often when set against the
backing vocals that her voice is set off the strongest.
Perhaps
deriving from that voice, the key word for the set might be
'organic'. You can't imagine these songs being composed, annotated or
arranged. They just seem to appear, in the moment,
tumbling out one after another. Even as you exalt in how good they
are, you half-imagine they're simply making them up on the spot.
It
seems to me people can have a strange blind spot over country music.
I'm often asked if this-or-that piece of music would appeal to those
who don't normally go for country. I honestly don't know what they're
talking about. But, before I'm asked, I really can't imagine a music
lover not taking to this gig. If I wasn't one of
the amassed hardened fans eagerly clapping the start of each number,
I was joining in with them at the end.
For
the second time in two weeks, the bulk of the set's given over to a
track-list-order recital – this time of 'Wrecking
Ball', now one year shy of its twentieth anniversary. And
it sounds a pretty fine album indeed. Though that didn't stop one
audience member briefly halting proceedings by protesting this.
(Harris responded with her best Southern manners, but notably without
budging an inch.) Now it may be a little late in
the day to protest a set-list once the gig's already underway. It
kind of presumes bands show up with a back-up plan, in case their
first option gets voted down. And as in neither case did I know the
albums beforehand, over-familiarity was scarcely likely to bother me.
But overall it's not a fashion I'm keen on, even if I don't choose to
shout about it in crowded rooms. It leads to, as Harris said herself,
“no surprises”. And I can get no surprises without even leaving
the flat.
But
rather than ending on that flatter note, let's go out with a
demonstration of how good the gig really was. After telling you two
things about the gig, that it was all songs off one album, and that
Harris exels most when harmonising, here's 'Pancho and
Lefty' - which exhibits neither of those things. It's still
a great clip. It goes a bit 'director's cut' in the middle, but the
sound quality is good. So much of it is in the bittersweet way she
sings “it was a kindness, I suppose”...
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