'MINIMALISM UNWRAPPED': THE GAVIN
BRYARS ENSEMBLE
Kings College, London, Sat
24th Oct
'Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me
Yet' is perhaps Gavin Bryars' other
classic composition, a companion to the afore-seen 'Sinking of the Titanic', perhaps equivalent to
Steve Reich's early pairing 'Come Out' and
'It's Gonna Rain'. There are strong similarities
between the two, both wrapping indeterminate compositions around
ghost voices. 'Titanic' used the tune the band
famously played as the ship went down. With 'Jesus'
Blood', as Bryars explained in the pre-show talk, finding
the originating voice was much more the product of synchronicity.
Helping to sound-edit a film on
London's homeless, he happened upon a recording of a frail old man
singing. Deciding to create music around the voice, he went back to
try and find the fellow - but could not. Similarly attempts to source
the original hymn drew a blank, and only then was it realised the old
man had made it up himself. More, despite being recorded for a film,
there were no images of him. All paths led back to him then came to
an abrupt halt. The tape was simply all there was, making it almost
;literally a ghost voice. In the performance the conductor would
signal to an off-stage tape operator, as if gesturing to spirits.
Despite the M-word being used in the
title for the programme, Bryars confessed to feeling somewhat saddled
with the term. And indeed in our last look at him we saw how
different to Reich and Glass he really was. Reich's 'Different
Trains' is set to human speech, but captures brief
utterances to let their cadence create a rhythm. (In that pre-show
talk, Bryars suggested “pulse-pattern music” as a more apt term
for this.) Bryars lets the whole recording play out, creating
surrounding music as the sonic equivalent of a highlighter pen,
bathing it in response. The music somehow always appears to be
swelling, new instruments and new elements joining in. (In fact, like
extras in one of those old BBC battle scenes, they fade out and then
reappear in new guise.)
Like many great works, it succeeds in
straddling a contradiction. Bryars spoke of how he considered John
Cage and Marcel Duchamp as influences, and the piece has some of
Cage's sonic audaciousness – as if you can make music from any old
thing, even the barely tuneful utterances of a tramp. And yet the
music always works in response, never overpowers that original
recording. There's no sense that Bryars has done something terribly
sophisticated to a naïve source, so we should all now toast his
cleverness with our wine glasses. It always feels like a
collaboration, even if it is with a ghost. Bryars has said he intended to create a work “that respected the tramp's nobility
and simple faith... the piece remains as an eloquent, but understated
testimony to his spirit and optimism.”
It partly achieves this through the
music itself being so hymnal. Bryars made a point of noting his
chosen instrument was the double bass, and his compositions tending
to low sonority. Perhaps, rather than Reich or Glass, the closest
comparison would actually be the most recent – Feldman's 'For Samuel Beckett'. Even if Bryars is much more melodious
than Feldman's austerity, there's the same combination of the sombre
with the rapturous. However, as commented last time and a point taken
up by Bryars in the talk, he is much more of an English composer. If
there's a quietness and simplicity to Feldman, there's also an
austere epicness to him. With Bryars there's the word he used in the
quote above - an inherent understatedness. And this places him, in
every sense, in tune with an old man singing with a frail voice. It's
the combination of that understatedness with indeterminacy that earns
the piece's title – a softly spoken power which never stops.
'Jesus' Blood' was
the only Seventies work of the programme and, with one other
exception, all else was post-millennial. Bryars has kept that keen
melodic sense over the years, and the more recent works incorporated
subtle shifts. Alas, however, in that time he's also become more
conventional. 'Jesus' Blood' left me thinking
“genuinely hymnal”. While with the other pieces my thoughts were
more along the lines of “very tasteful, very sophisticated”.
Bryars spoke of how he has extended the length of 'Jesus'
Blood' as technology has allowed, from LP-side to CD
length. And at times I found myself wishing they'd sacrificed some of
the other pieces and chosen something longer than the half-hour they
gave it here.
It may be the paradox of 'Jesus'
Blood' has become a trade-off. Some of his other Seventies
works were much closer to Cage's Dada iconoclasm, much more
anti-music. With his signature works, the balance was struck just
right. While now that side is almost absent.
My favourites among these tended
towards the smaller ensembles, perhaps best retaining that
understatedness. 'The Flower of Friendship' in
particular seemed to justify its title with some mutually supportive
playing. It also epitomised Bryars' singular use of the electric
guitar. If it looked strangely incongruous among the other
'classical' instruments on stage, it was played in so un
rock-and-roll way it could almost be a brand new instrument. Its
timbre was somewhere between a steel guitar and an electric piano,
with a radiating rather than a strident sound.
And from one bass player to another...
SHOBALEADER ONE (aka SQUAREPUSHER)
Concorde 2, Brighton, Fri 23rd
October
Only
six months after seeing Squarepusher's solo set, he's here
again with a live band. This is apparently their first live outing,
despite releasing an album five years ago.
Both are deranged, freak-out dance
music. But its remarkable how different the two things are. Less
polar opposites than chalk and cheese, two things you couldn't get
close enough together to compare.
With bands, its normally not a matter
of how well they're playing but how well they're playing
together. That's why the concept of a supergroup,
where you just place the best bassist next to the best drummer and so
on, was always such a bozo notion. If you want a visual image to pin
it to, at the recent Melvins gig the twin drummers played on a
conjoined kit. But of course that was just a microcosm of the
conjoined way the whole band played, as if they'd become one entity.
And seeing a whole band in Jenkinson's patented fencing masks, never
one speaking to the audience, that seemed to similarly enhance the
feeling of groupthink.
Whereas if you want a visual image of
the Squarepusher solo gig... well the move 'Inside Out'
might be close. Its like its finally become possible to go
inside someone's head, and finding inside it an infinite space filled
with impossibly grand and huge architectural constructs. Like there's
no intermediaries between thought and action.
The live set picked up and discarded
genres like it had music history on speed dial, opening with roots
reggae but within minutes morphing away from it. The predominant
style was probably muscly Seventies funk shot through with frenetic
jazz, bass lines skittering around the number rather than just lying
in place. The best track, perhaps strangely for so noted a bass
player was led by a hauntingly ambient guitar line.
And as a band they work very well
indeed. Had this been my first experience of Squarepusher's music, I
would have been very much impressed. But compared to the solo set it
felt more rooted, more regular, easier to relate to music you'd heard
before. It was like Jenkinson trying to channel his mind through
group consensus involved taking on a standard language, which stopped
his thoughts being so singular. Maybe not all kids play better with
others. It was also a strangely short set, perhaps about fifty
minutes – leading to some audience disbelief.
Should anyone reading this know more
about Squarepusher's back catalogue than me, what was the set mainly
composed of? I listened to a few tracks from the one album on-line,
which didn't sound so much like the gig. (More song-like than
groove-based.) But many tracks seemed to get instant audience
recognition, so I'd guess it was mostly old solo stuff reworked.
From London...
Mentioned in dispatches!
Having previously enthused over Acid Mothers Temple not once but twice, Hey Colossus and the Melvins I don't really have much to add from seeing them
again. Apart from an hour being too short a time for AMT's immersive
psychedelic soundscapes, to the point where I thought the audience
might collectively refuse to go home. But instead of overlooking such
good gigs altogether, let's at least celebrate them with some YouTube
clips. (The first two, usually enough, actually from Brighton.)
Coming soon! More of
this sort of thing...
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