SPECTRUM
OF SOUND 1 (LONDON SINFONIETTA)
Purcell
Room, South Bank Centre, London, Fri 27th Feb
Contemporary
composers, of all the things I dabble in, may be the most dabbled of
all. And if I ever need reminding that all I am to this scene is an
interested if occasionally befuddled outsider, I just need to read
some of the theory that surrounds this stuff. Even when it doesn't
actually feature equations, its less layman challenge than full-on
anxiety dream.
But
I'm not convinced that you really need to digest any of that theory
to enjoy some of this music. As Georg Haas, one of the featured
composers, says in the programme: “I want to compose expressive,
emotional music which moves and takes hold of people.” It's less
important to learn about it than it is to unlearn the habits you
picked up from hearing more popular styles. (You can, should you
wish, imagine I said that in a Yoda voice.)
At
least that's my standard position. But sometimes the Zen exercise of
taking in some of that theory can get you somewhere. Take another
programme quote from another featured composer, Iannis Xenakis: “A
cluster of phenomena assembled by the laws of finite or infinite
groups is a texture... the result is experienced primarily as a
texture and moreover as an interesting one. We are therefore faced
with substances – textures – more complex and complicated than
the phenomena of which they are composed... Because of their
complexity, the textures are on a higher level than the elements of
which they consist.”
Sounds
all Greek? While I've no real idea whether this is what the man meant
himself, it makes me think of something like sonic clusters. It's
normally small bands who make popular music, and you listen to the
interplay between the players like they were actors or acrobats on
the stage. It all gets added together in your mind. Whereas the
larger ensembles who perform this music play parts rather than lines
– what Mark Berry describes as “swarming sounds”. You listen
in the way you'd look at the leaves rustling on a tree, or the
murmuration of birds massing in the sky. You're aware its made up of
individual units, but what you take away from it is the composite
form.
Ironically
then, if Xenakis gave us the key to hear this music, his own piece
'Aroura' turned out to be the biggest musical
obstacle course of the night. The full first third was a series of
musical fragments, like a bunch of jigsaw pieces thrown from the box,
only later forming up into shapes. While some of these fragments did
come to be developed, others (as far as my ears could figure) were
just kind of left latent. If Xenakis has a reputation as a
challenging composer, I find I can take to some of his pieces with
relative ease. 'Aroura', however, seems a text for
the advanced class.
Whereas
his quote came in much more useful for the Haas piece, 'Open
Spaces', (in its UK premiere). Even the two percussionists
often seemed designed to blend in with the sonic clusters than
provide a contrast. As the record shows, I'd previously been much taken by the
Sinfonietta's previous performance of Haas's 'In Vain',
particularly it's great tonal range. And such a range was back,
fading to the borders of hearing then swelling back and surging into
waves of sound.
But
the piece (and night in general) did more than explore the edges of
music. Their tag line was “the music between the notes”,
announcing an intent to break the conventions of musical notation
into microtones - like physicists splitting the atom. As Dr John Dack
comments (again in the programme) “it has long been recognised that
our ears have remarkable powers of discrimination”. In other words,
we have been closing our own ears up all these years and are better
equipped to travel off the familiar symbols of the standard musical
map than we give ourselves credit for. I may well be starting to find
Haas performances unmissable…
Interviewed
before her piece was performed, Mica Levi seemed the very opposite to
all that high-faultin' theory bandied about elsewhere. Youthful
enough to look like a child called to the front of the class, and
correspondingly awkward and fidgety, she seemed unaccustomed to the
business of translating her music into words. I am entirely ignorant
of her work with the band Michacu and the Shapes, but do know her
award-winning and quite splendid soundtrack to the Jonathan Grazer
film 'Under The Skin'.
'Greezy'
(this time a world premiere) had some relationship to the edgy
angularity of that soundtrack, which gave the film so much of its
unsettling mood of defamiliarisation. But only just enough for you to
guess it came from the same hand. The most conventionally melodic of
the pieces performed, it seemed at times even reminiscent of
Beethoven's string works. There was the same rich, sonorous sense of
melody, the same stately pace. Unexpected in this context perhaps,
but still something of a plus. After all, some of us still like
Beethoven!
It
was built around the heartbeat of a simple viola motif, the player
placed centrally on stage, a part almost as minimal as in Riley's 'In C'. Around this the piece ebbed and flowed between the
melodic and the tense, one sometimes overlaid above the other. The
title, so it says in the programme, refers to a state of
remorselessness. For someone still in their Twenties to be producing
such effective pieces, Levi suggests contemporary composers will be
staying contemporary for some time yet.
Claude
Vivier was the wild card of the programme, not a name I even knew
before. He was introduced as “another composer interested in
melody”, meaning they'd saved the more tuneful stuff for after the
interval, like a sweet dish served after a savoury. Like Levi,
'Zipangu' seemed neither insisting on a complete
break from music's past, nor entirely in thrall to it. Its, to again
quote the programme, “blurring harmonic structures” segued with
seeming ease between the harmonious and the adventurous. You get the
sense of a composer with the whole of musical history at his
disposal, without anything ever falling into post-modern pastiche.
The
venue was encouragingly full of punters, in anything weighted towards
younger folk, and all of whom seemed appreciative of such adventurous
music. I've purloined a ticket to the second part next month (which
includes another Haas permiere), so let's see what that brings...
HEY
COLOSSUS
The
Green Door Store, Brighton, Sat 14th Feb
When
Hey Colossus take to the stage with no less than three guitarists,
you're already guessing this is not a band to do things by halves.
They
sound not unlike a more psychedelic version of the Ex; tight, taunt, pulsing riffs, guitars often neatly
interlocking and as often each taking to their own tangent. The
effect is something like watching an overlaid multi-image video, you
see from the stage three separate players, but your ears hear one
composite sound, shifting as if its elements are sliding beneath the
surface. Yet while the (for want of a better term) lead guitarist has
a penchant for shimmering Sixties riffs, there's also a grittier,
garagier sound to them. Try the Ex overlaid over the Fall or the
Melvins. Or something like that anyway.
Then
just when you think you have their style pegged, they morph into much
meatier fare, taking up a metal edge – heads are lowered, the
noiseometer hits the red and they start to sound like the behemoth of
their name. Notably these tracks coincide with the (for want of a
better term) second guitarist coming in on more guttural vocals,
perhaps suggesting the band houses two chief songwriters. (Befitting
this change in sound, the chap is – tonight, Matthew - sporting a
Slayer T-shirt.)
They
focus on riffs and pack changes so neatly and adeptly it takes you a
while to notice they're doing it. With the distorted vocals and
infrequent audience comments, they come across like a band good
enough they don't need to brag about it. Apparently they have been
striding stages for a decade now. And in all honesty I'm not even
sure I'd even heard their name before; I thought to check them out
due to the standard desert of gigs this time of year. Sometimes it
takes me a while to catch up with these things.
The
only criticism, which seems a common occurrence nowadays, is that
many of the tracks get taken in just when they seem to be taking
flight. Okay, the band have a seeming wealth of material they want to
get over. But it feels like the rule of internet browsing, where
nothing is allowed to run longer than three or four minutes lest folk
start clicking on that next YouTube link, now seems so entrenched it
even decrees what can happen in live gigs. Guys, when you've got
wings – fly!
If
you like this (new track 'Sisters And Brothers')...
...try
this. Over half an hour from Camden's Underworld last year...
WALKER/MELCHIOR
Prince
Albert, Brighton, Wed 25th February
While
Russell Walker was a name previously bereft of connections to me, Dan
Melchior had raised a rumpus with both Billy Childish and Holly
Golightly. (And according to a reliable source of gossip is of a garage rock persuasion.)
They arrived together on our southern shores under the tag line
“outsider power duo o-clock”.
Though
with only a drummer for accompaniment, Melchior's guitar was so raw
and fuzzy you probably wouldn't have heard the bass parts beneath it
anyway. Their set seemed based around two notions; Mark E Smith's
celebrated “R+R as primal scream”, tracks as
stream-of-consciousness torrents rather than compositions, combined
with a play on the inherent absurdity of the English playing music so
raw.
And
the two work together surprisingly well. English reserve is normally
played up for the sake of the gag, clipped annunciated vocals
contrasting with the driving beat. But here the awkwardness and the
abandon collided in the figure of singer Walker; hunched over the
mike, eyes closed in both shyness and reverie – Englishness on
edge. Setting out his stall, two Syd Barratt covers were played
early on. It was a blend of the heartfelt and the humourous, at one
point bewailing being banned from the Bull and Bush and not being
able to go back for Sunday lunch. And after all, don't us uptight
English need such moments of release more than anybody else, the
microphone as the valve on the pressure cooker?
But
overall, all that makes it sound better than it actually was. This
naiveté business can be harder than it looks. Outsider music has as
much artifice to it as any other kind of art. You need to maintain a
surface of impassioned bumbling while keeping the proficiency under
the hood, enough of an arrangement to be able to appreciate the
derangement. This gig felt like it had gone a little too native to
its outsiderness. Ironically this studio track, 'I Could Sit
Here Forever' pulls off the trick much better. It's so
dreary it quickly becomes etherial...
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