GLASS' 'LOW' + 'HEROES' SYMPHONIES (A
TRIBUTE TO DAVID BOWIE)
De La Warr Pavilon, Bexhill,
Wed 14th Dec
As an avowed fan of both Philip Glass and David Bowie, this looked likely to appeal to me.
Admittedly symphonic reworkings of
popular songs don't always have the greatest track record. However, as
mentioned after Steve Reich reworked Radiohead numbers three years ago, minimalism from the start saw the divide
between 'serious' and 'popular' music as an encumbrance, a barrier
that needed breaking down. True, in it's heyday this was more by
implication. It was only with post-minimalism, when it became less
bound by it's own structures, where it was able to formally deliver
on it's promise.
And even here Glass effectively meets
Bowie half-way. 'Low' and 'Heroes'
were two of his least poppy albums. As the venue's website puts it:
“During that period David and Brian [Eno] were attempting to extend
the normal definition of pop and rock and roll. In a series of
innovative recordings in which influences of world music,
experimental ‘avant-garde’ are felt, they were re-defining
the language of music in ways that can be heard even today.”
(Asked on the release of 'Low' whether it might
have less chart potential than earlier releases, he replied cheerily
“no shit, Sherlock”.)
Plus, all but three of the nine tracks
Glass uses are Krautrock-inspired instrumentals, with two choices
rather audaciously not even on the original albums. ('Some
Are' and 'Abdulmajid' respectively.)
It's quite a different prospect to Stravinski filching folk tunes.
Though the De La Warr's stage isn't
small, it still has trouble encompassing the forty-two piece
orchestra. I could only see the front end of the piano, so had to
assume there was a player attached to it somewhere. Most instruments
come in duos, trios or even quartets. (Except for the violins who are
arranged in two quartets.) And each mini-ensemble plays the same line
in unision, resulting in a rich and vibrant sound.
For the most part the brass take on the
bass role, underpinning the strings. At points the two get uncoupled,
and the brass players murmer to one another in the background, like
the below-water section of an elegant liner. The result of all of
which is pretty much win-win-win. It's as tuneful as pop music, as
hypnotic as minimalism and as dynamic as classical music.
It perhaps should be noted that this
era marked Bowie at his most sombre. Whereas, once transformed into
Glass's mini-symphonies, it becomes rhapsodic. (And, for two albums
from the acclaimed Berlin trilogy,
quite American-sounding, at points almost bordering on Aaron
Copland.) Some I suppose might not take to that.
However, for fairly obvious reasons,
now seems a good time to celebrate Bowie's music. Plus the downbeat
nature of those albums is often overstated, and was already being
worked out by the second one. The song 'Heroes' is
in itself triumphalist in it's will to overcome adversity. And as
conductor Charles Hazelwood says “it makes perfect sense” to play
them back-to-back as “one great symphonic journey. From the Low
symphony's dark beginnings to the white-hot finale of Heroes.” This
hadn't been Glass' original intention, having written his
'Low' four years before 'Heroes',
in 1992. But then Bowie hadn't been planning out a trilogy either. It
works perfectly, however accidentally.
Performed and partly televised at this
summer's Glastonbury festival, the symphonies became a bit of a
media event. Which is again fitting. Bowie had a talent for bringing
fringe things to the mainstream. And while some purists deride him
for that, he mostly managed to keep the essence of the original in
place. So a tribute which doesn't consist of some 'X
Factor' historically warbling their way through
'Heroes' seems fitting indeed.
Some snippets from Glastonbury...
BORIS
The Haunt, Brighton, Tues 20th Dec
Now coming up to their quarter-decade,
Boris have taken on a bewildering range of sounds from sludge metal
to J-pop, and collaborated with everyone from fellow Japanese
noisemonger Merzbow to (yes, really) Ian Astbury.
This time round they're revisiting
'Pink', an album a mere eleven years old. From
what little I know of the band's extensive and confusing history,
this was seen at the time as something of a breakthrough. While extensive research reveals it wasn't their first release to be divided into
individual tracks, rather than expansive side-spanning dronefests,
earlier albums had tended to be called things like 'Amplifier
Worship' and 'Feedbacker'.
From reputation I'd thought it's sound
to be a combination of hardcore punk, metal and noise rock – all
short, sharp shocks. And indeed there are tracks with piledriver
drums and soaring guitars. But there's many other pieces which belong
to their more commonly employed heavy riffing/ doom drone sound,
reminding us they took their name from a Melvins song.
In fact these tracks are so
different I first imagined they must be bringing in extra material
from different eras. But it seems almost everything did come from
'Pink'. Yet the feeling of watching two different
bands is enhanced by on-stage behaviour. For the punkier songs they
start to move around and engage with the audience, even encouraging a
clapalong. (Well, if Low can have one...) While for the longer numbers they
lapse into the standard shoegazer stance, even wrapped in dry ice.
But then they play the whole thing as
one long set. Rather than pause between tracks they'd link them with
instrumental interludes. (Sometimes quite abstract, sometimes even
ambient.) Which made the set one ever-morphing organism. Rather than
act as a human jukebox serving up a known album, the gig became
something almost impossible to predict.
In fact, for all my normal complaints
about gigs dedicated to albums, I may have even preferred this to the previous time I saw them, some four years ago. Then there
was something of the sense they'd settled into a sound they'd grown
comfortable with. Here they were more volatile, like they were
willing themselves do everything at once and refusing all parameters.
At one point, to a wall of feedback
guitar, drummer Atuso stepped forward, crowdsurfed the length of the
venue, got carried all the way back and placed back on stage to an
uproarious cheer. Only for us to discover, that wasn't even the
finale!
This tour, it seems, had a trailer. (Do
tours have trailers now?)
...while this is from Glasgow, but the
same tour...
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