Barbican, London, Thurs 11th July
I don’t believe the concept of plot spoilers applies to reviews, so let’s just say something upfront - this didn’t start well, but got a whole lot better. So you won’t have to listen to me grouch the whole way through, okay?
I’m not quite sure how the rule came to be that modern concerts must have a visual element. Maybe someone figured that without one, everyone would just check their phones the whole time. I don’t object to it in itself, good things have been done that way.
This NIGHT ups the ante by co-crediting the artist and describing the thing as “a multimedia performance”. And perhaps not by coincidence the visual elements just seemed intrusive and gimmicky. To the point it was less like something being added and more like something being taken away.
In the early part, they mostly consisted of live-filming then digitally mapping the players. (See the publicity shot, up top.) Which was so unlike the quite traditional acoustic music I figured that had to be the point. And indeed the publicity comments “We live in a data-driven world, but is it really possible to quantify human emotion? This concert puts that question under surveillance.”
It’s true that music, however lyrical or sublime it sounds, always reduces to maths. A ‘number’ is another name for a musical piece, after all. But this was too much like saying “pay more attention to the little man behind the curtain”. Which isn’t how that quote goes.
It seemed to me the music picked up about a third of the way in, but that could have been me getting better at tuning out the visuals. Two pieces perhaps represented the Quartet’s main strands. They went through the first movement of Steve Reich’s classic ’Different Trains’. (Which of course they premiered, way back when.) While I’ve seen it done live before, it’s always a pleasure to hear and for once the film was befitting.
Having made a reworked ’Purple Haze’ their calling card, they also served up another reworked rock number - the Who’s Baba O’Reilly’. (Though of course that was itself influenced by Terry Riley, lines of influence are rarely linear.) But more unusually they covered two actual songs - ’Summertime’ and ’Strange Fruit’ - while keeping the song structure mostly intact.
If I tell you one piece had the refrain “One Earth, one people, one love” you are probably already imagining how it sounded. Quite possibly while being sick into a bucket. Whereas it was actually a highlight. The refrain was intoned flatly by a computer-modulated voice, while the music was slow and sombre. The film, also thankfully befitting, emphasised the circularity of the Earth. So the refrain became less a feelgood New Age mantra, and more a plainly spoken fact around which we’ll one day have to rearrange our lives. (It later proved to be by Terry Riley and titled, inevitably enough, ‘One Earth, One People, One Love’.)
I left with the feeling this had been an entry-level programme, composed of movements or shorter pieces, and with less of the ‘difficult’ compositions some baulk at. Which is absolutely a good thing to do, from time to time. If there had never been boarding points, I wouldn’t be aboard now. But the last thing you should then do is set it to a distracting filmshow.
That Riley number (not live)…
NYX ELECTRONIC DRONE CHOIR
Kings Place, London, Sun 7th July
Fellow punters leaning over and asking if I know much about this act, that’s not uncommon. The person at the bag desk asking the same question, that’s something new. And I had to admit to knowing nothing beyond what was in the programme: “NYX is a collaborative drone choir and otherworldly electric chorus, re-embodying live electronics and extended vocal techniques.” (And, come to think of it, I still don’t know what the acronym stands for.) The night turns out to be a sell-out, so it seems I wasn’t the only one to be intrigued.
The five women in the choir come onstage gradually, one by one, without any fanfare. The stage is all black save a few strip lights, with the singers equally in black. The titular electronics play a part, as do looped samples. But the voices do most of the work. When not singing they tend to fall stock still, as if meditating. It’s the most ritualistic concert I’ve seen since Stockhausen’s ‘Stimmung’.
It’s a reminder that the chanting voice remains one of the eeriest instruments there is, perhaps because it should by any rights sound familiar. Very near the start, one voice holds a tone, lets it fall and repeats. A second voice then breaks in just as it falls. And the effect isn’t to add a new element, so much as amend the first, like watching a line that suddenly goes into a third dimension. From there the voices are forever scattering and regrouping, your ear effectively one step behind.
There’s something spectrally ungraspable about it all, like an audial version of a mirage. Partly because the whole is always more than the sum of its parts, so always seeming to stem from elsewhere.
And they seem to work that. At one point they build to a full-throated screamathon, but just as they reach boiling point they breaks into something else. The way a movie will suddenly cut from a horror scene.
But this was a gig full of unexpected twists. And while the above description holds overall, there were also for example harmonies launched into worthy of any girl band. And they climaxed with a rousing mantra chant, which stayed revolving round your brain long after the night had finished, and you were on your train home.
Not only not the right gig, but a collaboration with singer Hatis Noit so sounds quite different, but gives you some idea. This is closer, but longer.
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