COLOUR OUT OF SPACE 7
Yes, Colour Out of Space has hit seven!
Self-described as an “international experimental sound and art
festival”, with the alternative guide Eyeball guaranteeing “maximum weird shit”. As ever, it
was a solid three-day festival and what follows is by necessity
sketchy and incomplete...
This year one whole day was given over
to Fylkingen, a Stockholm-based contemporary music collective who've been
operational since (yes really) 1933, with a record label from 1966
and venue from 1971. What was indicative about their group interview
was how insistently up the wrong tree it barked. Again and again it
was asked what they had in common while they continued to insist the
only answer was a negative – they didn't want anything that had
been done before, anything being done elsewhere. And, after seven
years, we can safely say the same is true of the Colour Out of Space
programme.
And so perhaps inevitably, as ever with
COOS, with the Fylkingen folks or over the whole weekend, things went
from the compelling to the excruciating, from acts you willed to be
over to those you never wanted to end. But it's worth taking the
rough with the smooth. For one thing, it's good to deprive yourself
of the fast-forward button. There's much music which I initially
hated, then through slow exposure came to love. Yet these digital
days, when you can so easily just click away, you can forage while
actually stay in your box. Which leaves the live setting as the only
chance music has to get to work on you. Admittedly, there wasn't one
instance of this happening all weekend. (Excluding acts which simply
took a little time to get going.) But still, it's a good habit to
keep up.
To misquote Frank Zappa, does humour
belong in noise? Interviewed for the previous Festival, chief curator Dylan Nyoukis
recalls his Mother attending and asking him if it was okay to laugh.
Which is pretty funny in it's own right. And despite the dour
stereotype some conceive of, many acts come ready-aware of their own
absurdity. But there's also no shortage of outright humourous pieces,
which serve to break up what might otherwise be a relentless
drill-bit intensity – the clowns between the circus acts. Perhaps
accounts of previous years have followed the tortured artists and
skipped over the funny stuff a bit too much.
And what's interesting is that even if
your only aim is to act ridiculous, it can be as hard to cut it as a
clown as a musician. Fylkingen's WOL, despite an
overlong preamble which was really just an extended setting-up,
managed to masterfully twang stretches of sellotape. And by
'masterfully' I mean their ability to perfectly pull the 'pained
concentration' face of the classical pianist, as if stretched tape
was their chosen means of expressing their art. It's never what the
clown does which makes him funny, it's his hopelessly serious intent.
Whereas Anne Pajunen
(also of Fylkingen) seemed to knowingly nudge you in the ribs with
her inverted-commas absurdity. Such performances seem a form of 'safe
space shock'. While Dada aimed to antagonise audiences this feels
aimed at in-the-know hipsters, ready to laugh along, wanting the
self-congratulatory part of outrage while avoiding any actual
outrage.
I wouldn't be sure in what category to
put W Mark Sutherland. Intoning Russian Futurist
poetry in amassed anti-languages, he jumped off stage, traversed the
auditorium and finally passed through the exit door. An usher
confirmed he was still proclaiming the stuff as he left the building.
Perhaps I'll cross paths with him in a couple of weeks, down some
Brighton sidestreet, as he continues to Klang and Zaum.
After I've seen a great impro
performance I'm almost apprehensive over seeing them again. Will the
magic work a second time? So it was with Angharad
Davies, who I last saw surpassing superlatives at Aural Detritus.
She was again playing unamplified
violin, this time in a duo with Lina Lapelyte. I
always take to a good visual corollary for the music in the staging,
and they placed themselves in the centre of the room, back-to-back
and circling one another. In impro music, too often one provides the
click track for the other to extemporise around. But here neither
took on a fixed role, but played continually interwoven lines – a
true collaboration. Their playing went from strident bowing to
ethereally exploring the edge of hearing and back again. Fantastic
stuff!
As said in previous years, acts which
are simply novel means of sound sourcing (such as sticking a contact
mike down your throat), quickly become merely gimmicky. An antidote
of sorts was Fylkingen's Marja-Leena Sillanpaaset -
who set up a power electronics system and simply stepped back,
allowing it to develop without her. It was powered, insofar as I
could tell, by a detuned radio which set up resonances among the rest
of the kit.
The willingness to surrender authorial intent, to trust
to the elements, was Cagean – even if the resultant music sounded
nothing like him. I looked round afterwards to see someone sopping
wet. He'd found it so oppressive he couldn't even stay in the same
building, so had stood it out in the rain. Whereas for me it was
exhilarating...
Phantom Chips was an
act of two halves. The first part reproduced the eternally
multitasking nature of the modern mind, unable to actually settle on
a single thought, like a TV flitting through a thousand channels as
if they all require watching at once. Something usually conveyed by
frenetic skittering beats, a device which only ups the ante while
actually providing a point of continuity. Chips' act was more like a
myriad of sound sources, overlapping without overtyping one another.
And, interestingly, rather than an anti-modern critique it more
conveyed the exhilarating buzz which embracing the electronic flow
can bring on.
Half-way through, she introduced her
patented squeeze-nodule and stretch-string instruments - which she
promptly handed out among the audience. Her infectiously cheery
Aussie character did undo the usual laptop stereotype, the outsider
who never actually steps outside the house. And her choosing a child
to conduct the various players was appealing. But it fell between the
stools of performance and workshop. Overall, I preferred the Phantom
to the Chips.
Another Fylkingen fellow, Mikael
Preys' music-and-film combinations seemed to me like
fractal black holes. The film seemed continually going into greater
and greater close-up as the music grew into greater and greater
intensity, like perpetually crossing over the event horizon with no
handbrake. You were metaphorically and literally drawn in at the same
time.
Cassis Cornuta
played an amassed array of eight Korgi keyboards. So many they just
had to be set up before the start of the evening, then left on stage
awaiting him - like Chekov's gun. Like a jumbo jet it was slow and
rumbling in take off, but once going it soared powerfully.
I wasn't sure whether Daniel
and Marcelvs L Lowenbruck's piece counted as sound art,
instillation or an exercise in crowd psychology. Only when we didn't
get handed questionnaires at the end did I start to rule out the last
one. Let's call in an environmental work, something which needed that
particular setting for it's effect.
In a darkened room they unleashed a
sonic maelstrom, including what sounded like farmyard genocide, while
a strobe randomly fired at us. Intoning performers weaved in and out
of the crowd. Passing in and out of hearing, it sounded like there
might be some 'stage' element you hadn't spotted yet, and people
started to shuffle around in search of it. Whereupon you started to
smell smoke... There should surely be a strong distinction between
jockeying for a view-spot and the flight instinct triggered by fire,
and yet the two did seem to readily combine.
Having endured some of the daftest
excesses of the industrial scene, I'm normally skeptical of 'extreme'
music, figuring extremes are normally where the dead ends are. But
whatever it was the Lownbrucks' did has some gut-level,
reason-bypassing effectiveness, like some old shamanic ritual
designed to scare you out of your old skin. And it's appealing to
come across works which are not photo-ops or YouTubeable. Sometimes
you really have to be there, however out of fashion that is.
Matt Krefting simply
played tapes. Yes, old cassette tapes on a range of old players, and
seemingly mixing them only via the bass and volume dials with which
they came. Given this lowest-of-lo-fi in the devices at his disposal,
I'm unable to explain how he made the sounds he did or how it all
worked so effectively. As far as I could ascertain, each cassette
became an instrument in a minimalist composition, a means by which he
could set up resonances between them. So the effectiveness of the
headline act on Friday night became not how many punters the vinyl DJ
got jumping, but how many bodies the tape player got reclining flat
on the floor. He didn't wish us pleasant dreams, but I'm sure most
had them anyway.
Whereas the Sunday night led to dreams
of a very different nature...
Though I know Romanian spectralist
composer Iancu Dumitrescu more by reputation, what
little I've heard has confirmed his high reputation. As the record shows, I'm an enthusiastic ignoramus where
Spectralism is concerned. So had the programme been him and Coldplay
on bongos, I'd have probably got myself a ticket.
Accompanied by fellow composer,
collaborator and wife Ana-Marie Avram for his
afternoon interview, they proved so gloriously eccentric, so fitting
of the deranged genius composer role, that I half wondered if they
hired character actors to play themselves. Perhaps while remaining
safely ensconced back in Bucharest catching up on soaps. I did manage
to pick up... at least I think I did... that while influenced by
Modernist music they were as equally steeped in the still-strong folk
tradition of Transylvania. (Which remains a part of the world not
overly troubled by modernity.) But they didn't seek to synthesise the
two so much as find their commonalities, re-opening the links where
classical music had driven a wedge. Those folk connections seemed to
lead to them feeling very much of an Eastern tradition, where Bartok
was a star in their sky while Messiaen not.
Looking back over my comments from
previous years, it seems every festival there is a storm to which I
compare one of the acts. Well, this year there was another storm
and... Actually, they sound less like a simple storm than a whole
weather system, an array of elemental forces at work. Playing with
their own Hyperiorn Ensemble, sounds would cluster powerfully
together then as quickly fragment – like violent squalls followed
by eerie calm.
Morton Feldman said the process of
creating music should seem a mystery to the listener. And that's true
here, even though we know a little of how Dumitrescu does it. The
ensemble play with standard classical instruments (a double bass,
timpanis), already pushed to the limits of their sound range and then
electronically treated by the man. My lowbrow comparison would be
that pure electronica can be like CGI in films. Anything can be done,
and then it is. And yet it feels somehow synthetic, removed from our
world. While with Dumitrescu you can never quite fix on a point where
the natural instruments lose their sound, and the resultant
experience is gloriously disorienting. Like Modernist music going
back to Stravinsky, it sounds primal and unearthly at the very same
time.
The middle worked solely featured
Avran's voice (well with a little of Dumitrescu's), so presumably was
one of her compositions. And while it was not as iconoclastically
striking as his, it was possibly even more effective. Her singing
would be multi-tracked and delayed, but every time it built up to a
crescendo it would twist into an entirely new direction. Perhaps
hearing the human voice break the bounds of possibility is more
effective than with classical instruments.
One day I hope to know enough about
Spectralist music to say something coherent about it. Partly so I can
call the piece 'Spectralism is Haunting Europe'.
For now... when caught out by the clock, Dumitrescu promised us he'd
return soon. Let's hope he holds to it.
ALVIN LUCIER: A RETROSPECTIVE CONCERT
Friends Centre, Brighton, Fri
25th Nov
Alvin Lucier is an American composer of
music and sound instillations, a former member of the Sonic Arts Union, who mixes conventional instruments with
unusual sound sources, and straight scores with process works.
Adam Bushell, doubling as participant
and compere, made for an engaging presence, introducing Lucier
without wrapping him up in over-fancy terminology. Though Lucier's
best-known for his Sixties work, the programme's oldest piece was
from 1980, while three were post-millennial. (Bushell explained this
was largely due to difficulties staging the more instillation-based
pieces.)
The programme ran the range for me,
with some I was waiting to be over almost as soon as they began, and
others... well, let's focus on some of those others.
'I Remember'
featured no less than eight participants who blew an array of objects
to create a drone tone, while in turn reciting memories. (The score
requesting you find and use your own memory.) Unamplified, you mostly
couldn't hear what these personal memories were, they barely rose
above the drone hum. But then I don't think they were the point. The
idea, I'd surmise, was to create an environment where it's made
easier for you to recall your own memories. The drone tones evoke a
sense of timelessness and instil a meditative state, while the
participants' memories merely joggers to make your own recall easier.
Except it was less a mechanism to dig
up memories, than a frame in which to consider memory. It's strange
after all the way we so readily accept our memories aren't neatly
logged like computer files, but weave in and out of reach like a
short wave radio band. And the way the voices arose, but only
semi-arose, from the drone static conveyed that.
'Precious Metals'
created quadrophonic sound by the simple expedient of placing
speakers in the four corers of the room, emitting more drone tones.
Brass players, stationed by each speaker, would break in at
intervals. Rather than have their own lines they'd always play
precisely on top of one another, so their various timbres would
combine. It was as if a single instrument was able to produce some
multi-level sound, like a 3D shape for the ears. It felt
non-durational, like it was some eternal piece which we were only
hearing a random section from.
But my favourite piece was the opening,
and most recent, number - 'Criss Cross'. One
string was permanently held down on two guitars, in fact the same
string for each, providing an even tone. The playing came through
simply altered it's tuning. Like much of Steve Reich's work, the resonances created from this
simple-seeming input became richer and richer as the piece
progressed. It started sounding like no guitars you'd ever heard, and
went stranger from there. Several numbers were 'duets' between sound
sources (for example another featured the human voice and an
oscillator), but of them this was by far the most effective.
It might be some kind of fool's errand
to try and find commonalities between the various pieces. But... if
Lucier's chiefly associated with the Sixties, his music couldn't be
less dramatic or iconoclastic, or sounding like it arose from a
cultural firmament. Instead it's calm, perhaps even sombre. And it
seems less formally experimental (in the “what would happen if..?”
sense) than evocative, interested in what effect it has upon the
listener.
'Criss Cross'...
Criss-Cross - Alvin
Lucier (2013) from Agata Urbaniak
on https://vimeo.com">Vimeo
.
..with more vids here.
RICHARD YOUNGS
The Rose Hill, Brighton, Mon
14th Nov
Though I know precisely one Richard
Youngs album, the early 'Advent', my mind has
somehow formed itself into a quite definite notion of what he does. Wikipedia describes him as possessed of “a prolific and diverse output”, but more importantly he has a knack of bringing diverse sources
together and naturalising them. He can slip between folk, drone and
experimental styles like a thing between, what are walls to others
being nothing to him.
At this gig he clips down the guitar
neck, with a device I later learn is called a capo, then strums away.
As he works through the numbers he moves the capo down the neck
through each fret in turn, never forming a single chord with his
fingers. He calls this approach “high concept, low technique”.
With that single-chord strumming going on with the guitar, you might
assume it was being used as a straight man for some more active
vocals. In fact he mostly sings simple, straightforward phrases over
and over until they become like mantras.
Yet rather than being some academic
exercise it’s strangely melodic. You're never quite sure where the
melodies are arising from, but they're there. He's singing songs, of
sorts. He frequently enlists the audience as backing vocalists and
hand clappers, a sure sign of a folk gig. But like many old folk
songs they seem straightforward while at the same time feel slightly
elusive, like you can’t quite catch what’s going on.
And yet at the same time it doesn’t
seem entirely fitting for people to clap each track individually,
that they're really components of a greater whole. (Though I did
appreciate people’s perverse insistence to still applaud when
numbers were only a few seconds long.)
While this capo-driven main set was all
from a forthcoming album, the encore was described ironically as a
“greatest hit”. For the accompaniment this time he had stillless
to do with his guitar – placing it on the floor, he weighted the
strings down and modified the sound only by stamping his foot nearby.
Yet this was the nearest thing to a clear-cut folk song of the whole
set, and somehow felt warming when so much of his music is wintery.
That Wikipedia page also quotes him as
finding life performance “nerve wracking”. But rather than some
sensitive artist type his stage presence is avuncular and very often
genuinely funny. (This being the guy who titled an album 'The
Great Difficult Music Swindle'.) Which initially surprised
me, but I finally found it fitting. There’s an intensity to the
music but also humour, an awareness of it’s own absurdity without
being meta or ironic. Youngs seems capable of doing almost everything
at once, with the barest of materials. High concept, low technique
equals minimal input, maximal output. The guy's an original.
Those who know me may spot me in the
audience...
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