LANKUM/ METAL BOX REBUILT IN DUB (GIG-GOING ADVENTURES)

LANKUM
Barbican, London

Thurs 4th May

If your idea of Irish folk is professionally genial types trilling “fiddle-de-i-de-o” in plastic Paddy pubs, Lankum are your necessary antidote.

They’re part of the same general Dublin scene as John Francis Flynn, last seen on the roof of the De La Warr. But a better compare-and-contrast would be, conveniently enough, the last folk gig attended before this - the Scottish duo Burd Ellen. Both are part of what I’m dubbing Drone Folk until a better name comes along. (Which hopefully won’t be long.)

Except Burd Ellen are bewitching, like if you listen to them too long you’ll never make it back out of that enchanted wood. While Lankum are definitely about this mortal world, less likely to be found in the faerie realm, and more the graveyard. Less Edmund Spenser, more Thomas Hardy. Its long been a truism that folk songs have a higher body count than gangster rap. But Lankum push that along more than a little, with mortality as inevitable as the closing rhyme. Like death in a folk tale, relentlessly stalking his victim, tracks are long, slow and - above all - patient.

’The Pride Of Petravore’ starts with violin and bowed acoustic guitar. It sounds like the creaking of the world turning, more the sort of thing the Kronos Quartet would bring to the Barbican, by a composter from some East European country you hadn’t known existed. They then throw a jaunty tin whistle tune over the top. Which only makes the thing more eerie. (And later add a vocal section, not to be found on the record, folks.)

So they can feel like they’re on a mission to take folk standards and twist them. ’The Wild Rover’ opens the set, and what’s normally a raucous drinking song in their hands become bleak as moorland. Even when they go in for reels, as they do for the finale, there’s something slightly unhinged, almost possessed about them. Their sound has been compared to Sunn 0))), Swans and My Bloody Valentine, all Lucid Frenzy faves but scarcely standard folk influences.

Except they more commonly work the other way up to that. It’s a bit like the way the Velvet Underground brought together folk and rock - not as a creative contrast but as though the two had belonged together all along, and somehow no-one had noticed before now. In their way, Lankum are quite a traditional folk outfit. Their albums come with sleeve notes relating how they came across these songs, described at one point as “long thought forgotten.” They play traditional instruments, at least most of the time. Radie Peat even sings with a hand cupped to her ear. They just bring out the unhurried nature of those songs and the natural drone tendencies of those instruments.

And this may be most evident in the Radie Peat songs, such as ’Go Dig My Grave’ or ’Hunting the Wren’, which glowers with a slow-building intensity under vocals which exude inevitability. Other instruments get added along the way, but not adding countermelodies so much as thickening the stew. And so, however much I loved the Burd Ellen gig, I guess in the final count I just love Lankum more.

A view which seems surprisingly widespread. I’d cynically expect them to be one of those bands who win armfuls of awards and occasionally sell a record or two. In fact the popular appetite for eight-minute dirges about death turns out to be quite high. The Barbican’s packed, and I’ve seen bands whose finale didn’t get as much enthusiastic applause as the opening number receives here. Is this because they’re so good at it? Or do songs about the inevitability of mortality capture the spirit of the moment? Probably both.

...and finally, correcting a heckler, Peat explained her name’s pronounced “Ray-dee.” Which means if she ever married Roddy Radiation she’d be Radie Radiation. I think we should try to set them up.

’Go Dig My Grave’, from Paris, a couple of days before…

METAL BOX: REBUILT IN DUB
(Feat. Jah Wobble + the Invaders of the Heart)
Chalk, Brighton
Sun 7th May

“Let’s just start, shall we?” Jah Wobble gets going with characteristic genial geezerishness. But we here at Lucid Frenzy Tower are more in the way of obsessive nerds, so we’re going to lead up to things…

Public Image Ltd’s, ’Metal Box’ is seen as a definitive Post-Punk album, but more than that it’s surely one of the classic albums of all time. A reputation underlined by personality clashes ensuring that line-up never recorded again. It stood alone, or so it seemed.

Then about a decade ago, John Lydon reformed PiL. Some accounts say he offered Wobble ever-more silly amounts of money to rejoin. But Wobble instead took up with the other ex-member, Keith Levene, as Metal Box In Dub. And though alas I never got to see them, reworked versions of those days were already showing up in Wobble’s solo let. (Presumably why two tracks from the first album, ’Public Image’ and ’Fodderstompf’, show up here.) 

When Levene sadly died last year, that looked to be that. Except Wobble subsequently released the ’Metal Box: Rebuilt In Dub’ album. And, as you may have already guessed, toured.

Though reasons for the separate reunions were decidedly personal (Lydon had, at different times, sacked both Wobble and Levene), music differences still ensued. New PiL… let’s call them that… were essentially a new band working to the PiL mindset, and treated those tracks as covers, to be reworked in their own style. While with Wobble they’re more like standards which need souping up and rejuvenating.

He recites one of the album’s lyrics, “I could be wrong, it could be hate”. And it’s odd to think back to the time where the arch-egoist Lydon was writing so much about self-doubt. But more the point here is what this says about the music. ’Metal Box’ was a bold statement, audaciously calling time on the old, but there was also something sketch-like, almost tentative about it. The mostly improvised tracks found their way by walking it.

Yet at the same time the thumping bass of Reggae sound systems had been a big influence. Chiefly channelled through Wobble’s bass, often the through-line holding those tracks together. And so these powered-up reworkings both take the music forward and bring it back to its roots. And to hear these tracks delivered with such resounding force is something of a revelation! Old chassis, new engine.

There’s little of the spaciness so associated with Dub. “In Dub” means, I suspect, in the Dub spirit of taking what’s done as raw materials for what’s being done right now. And let’s remember what got Wobble sacked from PiL, at least ostensibly, was reworking tracks for his solo releases. ’Metal Box Goes Dancefloor’ might better capture the sound. The album cover’s of a speaker, after all. With those thumping riffs perhaps even ’Metal Box Goes Rock’, which would have been heresy back in those anti-rockist days!

So ’Albatross’ opened the album, the New PiL gig I went to, and it does again here. In fact as the Wobble and Levene gigs had a different, more free-form feel, that gives us four separate versions! And those four versions could scarcely sound more different. So many different ways to get rid of an albatross.

Wobble also says “who wants some Dub? And some fun?” And, perhaps strangely, this is a little like seeing a band who’ve played these tracks for years, and now need to throw in changes to keep themselves sane. Snatches of other numbers, not necessarily other PiL tracks, are thrown in without warning or explanation. And the band lark about on stage even more than they usually do. (Leading to some lark-like dancing in the audience.) The combination is bit like being in the path of a jet engine while the Captain cracks gags over the tannoy, exhilarating but also discombobulating.

The only weak points… As mentioned after seeing Wobble before, he may be the walking, talking definition of a character. But he does lack Lydon’s characterful voice. Moreover, vocals on ’Metal Box’ aren’t the typical upfront audience-addressing affair, they work more as another instrument in the mix. And Levene’s guitar often seemed pitched to match Lydon’s tones. All of which makes them hard to emulate.

The gigs with Levene had a separate singer. Here his solution is often just to recite the lyrics, which is a little bit “don’t try, can’t fail”. It may work best when they’re just dispensed with, as they are with ’Albatross’ and ’Swan Lake’. And if there’s many assembled here who don’t already know the words I’d be surprised. (Honourable exception - ’The Suit’, where the words are pretty much recited anyway.)

Also, the keyboards can be a strangely normalising element. They only time they were used on the album was when they took the place of guitar. Here there’s points where they seem superfluous, or even actively getting in the way. They don’t really come into their own until the encore, where ’Metal Box’ is done with and they head more into the regular Wobble world.

In brief, going back to a classic album doesn’t need to be nostalgist or retrograde. It can even be a way of looking forward…

There seems a shortage of live footage, so here’s the studio version of ’Albatross’…

BURD ELLEN/ CURRENT 93 (GIG-GOING ADVENTURES)

BURD ELLEN
The Brunswick, Hove
Fri 10th March

I came across Burd Ellen the same way I did Fern Maddie, from the Guardian’s ten best folk album list of last year. But the release than won that accolade, ’A Tarot Of the Green Wood’, ploughs quite a different furrow. It’s all traditional numbers, but not as we know them…

They announce they’ll be doing "one of those long, continuous sets like you read about in that ’Wire' magazine”. But it’s separate tracks run together, like a mixtape without gaps. Which is, I suspect, to defamiliarise the familiar folk gig, with all the to-audience explaining that this next song is from South Shropshire, not North Shropshire as was once thought.

What’s more, individual tracks can run so this just plays up that continuous sense they have already. To sound like that ’Wire’ magazine a moment, duration is made into a compositional tool, as much as it is in Minimalist music. It’s a set which takes time to steep but them becomes flavoursome.

The duo play behind a table laden with folk instruments and knob-twiddling gizmos. Even the glass of water gets put to a musical purpose. But if that has you ready to say ‘folktronicia’, that’s a term which suggests creative collisions. Whereas Burd Ellen don’t seem to make any such distinctions in the first place. For most of the gig, you wouldn’t know who was playing what without looking… in fact, it wasn’t always easy while looking. ‘Drone folk’ probably fits them better, taking the natural drone qualities of folk instruments and amplifying them.

In fact, rather than cleverly adding stuff, they tend to work at their best while most stripped down. If that table was laden, the less they pick up from it the better they work. The encore (which they seemed genuinely surprised to get) was down to voice, vocal loops and taps on the violin. Yep taps, not even bowed or plucked. Though I confess the one acapella number perhaps pushed a point too far, and was the one point my attention wandered.

If we have to have a sound-bite description, imagine a Lankum who are less dour and more enticingly eerie. The album, they can be keen to say, was released on Halloween. ’The Lovers’, with it’s references to a “green wood”, could describe a little girl lost in that deep dark wood, or be a siren call drawing you in.

And it warrants stuff I’ve been saying for some while now. We can’t truly reconnect with the past, but neither can we just forget it. So it will continue to haunt us, and so we should talk about how it haunts us. This is music which works like a lightning rod for phantoms.

Not sure there’s any footage of this tour, but this is both Burd and Ellen (note to self, check this is their real names before posting), performing ’The Hermit’ from Gateshead. A low-lit basement made a better setting for their sounds than a brightly lit glass-fronted gallery, but go with it…

Then, the very next day…

CURRENT 93
Union Chapel, London
Sat 11th March

If Burd Ellen are a recent discovery, Current 93 are a long-time fave at Lucid Frenzy Towers, producing one of my all-time favourite albums. If Burd Ellen are drone folk, Current 93 go in for apocalypse folk. They’ve since confessed they only coined the term as a joke, but like so many of these things the tag stuck.

A near-universal assumption has dominated recent years, that downloading has killed the integrity of the album. Current 93, however, continue to be zeitgeist-proof, and David Tibet (frontman and sole constant member) was probably busy learning more ancient Akkadian when that was announced. (Not a gag! The new album title came from some Akkadian he was perusing.)

You can pick out and play individual tracks from their releases, should you choose. But the albums have a thematic unity which turns them into part of a greater whole. And the past two times I’ve seen them they’ve played their last album through in track order, usually (as here) with the track titles projected on a screen.

Except this time, there’s a twist. Up to now each album has stood alone, a unique project with its own dedicated line-up. This time it’s very much a sequel to its predecessor, ’The Light is Leaving Us All'. (Which I saw live back in 2018.) The title, 'If A City Is Set Upon A Hill', suggests a shifting uptown of imagery from the bucolic English village imagery of last time. And themes, images and musical styles recur.

Notably, the post-album section of the gig, the part devoted to the more standard best-of, is dominated by a series of tracks from ’Light’. There was precisely one number from neither album the whole night, ’Sleep Has His House’. I guess, if you see more gold in that seam, you keep mining. And, as I suspected after last time, it all works better back in the atmosphere of the Union Chapel than the regular rock venue they decamped to last time.

Lyrically, Tibet combines the epic and eschatological with the more everyday. (“Read it in the tealeaves, read it in the stars.”) And the music does something similar, somehow combining grandeur and intimacy. Which might stem in part from the characteristically idiosyncratic line-up. Piano probably dominated, but combined with guitar, violin, wind instruments (including bagpipes) and two guys on laptops. One of which occasionally doubled on drums and, solely for ’Sleep Has His House', organ. (But this time no hurdy-gurdy. Perhaps the hurdy-gurdy players have joined in with the strike wave.)

’If A City Is Set Upon A Hill’ refers of course to urban planning coming before a fall. Which leads us to Tibet’s near-fixation with death and dissolution. It would be easy to caricature him as some blood-and-thunder street preacher screaming at us we’re all going to die, who has inexplicably drafted in a backing band. Their Marmitey reputation might well come from here, some look at them and that’s what they see. But, while they are certainly a most intense experience, to me that isn’t really right.

Granted, I’d be harder pressed to tell you what he is doing, but then I don’t think he’s making music with some specific purpose in mind. Not a fan of Damian Hurst, but when he titled a work ’The Physical Impossibility of Death In the Mind of Someone Living’, he was raising an interesting point. (The title was certainly the best part of the artwork.) And Tibet is in part straining against the certainty of that line, devoting decades of music-making to pushing back at a solid-seeming wall.

Further, death was not always seem as an outside interruption to life, but something woven into the fabric of things. And Tibet’s also trying to take us back to those folk culture days where he was a figure you might meet while out walking. A somewhat single-minded character, perhaps, but not necessarily a malevolent one. Ultimately, the intention isn’t at all nihilistic, though it may be somewhat fatalist. And the sombre beauty of their music conveys that.

They sound not at all like the Residents, the last band I saw in this venue. But there’s perhaps a similarity of attitude, of sticking to your thing whether there be head or tail winds. It’s the mark of a band where you leave a gig feeling you’ll see nothing like that until their next thing, and just what I felt here.

Ye Gods! Actual gig footage! The title track (sorta) and 'There Is No Zodiac’…

FORT PROCESS/ HUGO TICCIATI'S 'LOOPING TIME' (GIG-GOING ADVENTURES)

FORT PROCESS
Newhaven Fort, Sat 22nd Sept



So happily, perhaps the only music and sound art festival to be held in a Napoleonic fort got a sequel. (Actually a second sequel, alas I gormlessly missed the first occurrence.) Again it promised to “cover the cornerstones of improv, experiments, dance and noise”. With multiple events going on simultaneously, I can only concentrate on a few highlights here. Someone else’s path might not have crossed mine at all.



Most accounts I read from the last event focused on how brilliantly inappropriate it was for such an event to take over a venue based around war defences. Perhaps “make weirdo music not war” could be its slogan. But as I watched a sound installation emit spectral bleeping from the fort’s ramparts(‘Arpeggi’ by Mike Blow, handily pictured) I think I find it more splendidly appropriate.

Perhaps I just spent too much of my seventies youth watching ’Doctor Who’ and the like. But those were the days when budgets for location shooting stretched no further than Surrey, while the Radiophonic Workshop was at the show’s disposal. So the alien was often conceived of as a sonic aesthetic, strange sounds that required decoding. While the military provided the role of controlling parents, locking the weird away from us, causing us to seek it out. (Perhaps significantly, another of Blow’s installations, ’Arpeggi’, “uses hacked ex-military hardware to create music.”)



Many installations worked interactively, as what Blow called “automatic music”, collaborating with either the audience or the venue. In Adam Bastana’s ’A Room Listening To Itself’ (also handily pictured) microphones were arranged radially, to pick up from speakers. To add some audience involvement I lightly tapped one speaker, to hear a drum roll slowly spread round the room.

At other times it was the other way, the venue seemed to interpret the work for you. The sub lows of Disinformation’s ’National Grid’ were smartly located in the deep Caponier tunnels. So, while the indicia spoke of links between the grid network and the human body, I thought more of the echoes and resonances in caves which are supposed to have stimulated the first human music.

Maria Marzaioli’s ’PWM’ used four audio loops culled from improvisations. With each loop of a different length, new combinations were constantly being created. But, particularly with the use of recognisable instruments, it was almost impossible not to listen to as a ‘real’ quartet. This time the work may have influenced the setting. For I found the sound bleed (particularly between the indoor works), not distracting but enhancing of the overall effect - as if the whole festival became one meta sound art work.

The programme described Ore as the “originator of the truly singular genre Tuba Doom”. Ah, those genre tags always start off as a gag! But give it six months and at a gig you’ll run into some bozo insisting he was into Tuba Doom before anyone else. In fact, he will probably turn out to be me.

Wandering, soaking stuff up, I stumbled upon their set mid-way. A tuba and trombone player were working just slightly out of time with one another, creating an enticingly ‘bent’ effect. Already pretty minimal, that actually proved the dynamic centre of the piece as they shifted into unison for the finale. It seemed forever half-emerging out of drone, as if something shifting into view. Minimalist in the Morton Feldman sense, where the sombre meets with the serene. If music like this doesn’t progress much, it’s because it marinades. Like a fermenting spirit its taste becomes stronger and stronger.

Franco-Finnish trio Ritual Extra were similarly minimal, in fact so slow to start you wondered if they’d resolved to play only for the super-patient. (Compared to these guys, the Necks plunge straight into the deep end.) Luckily, the wait was worth it. The drummer struck his cymbals softly but so rapidly as to produce a shimmering tone. While an acoustic guitar took up a more percussive role, strumming and thwacking, as clear-voiced folk chanting sailed across the both of them.

The absolute absence of any performance element was striking, each person’s movements economically concerned only with playing. The singer sat stock still, gazing into the middle distance, shifting only his mouth.

Alas this time I missed the ending, heading off as I was to see Rhys Chatham. Who marks a different strand of Minimalism again. Having previously worked with La Monte Young, Tony Conrad and Glenn Branca, tonight he was playing alongside only himself. In ’Pythagorean Dreams’, he’d switch between guitar, flute and some kind of mini-trumpet, looping down layers of himself as he went. The effect was rather like that game where you keep placing one hand atop another, ceaselessly giving off the effect of building up to some crescendo. Minimalist and musically rich at one and the same time.

I romantically imagined each loop had some in-built half-life, so nothing decayed away but each new element added to the expanding richness of the underlying sonic loam. He was probably just fading them down himself as he went, but that’s what I liked to think.



I’d watched some vidclips of AJA (above) before the day, which at the time I dismissed as “just a performance”. And true, her noise electronica is serviceable but bog-standard beat-bashing. (Certainly nothing to compare with Ewa Justka’s merciless intensity from the last event.) But, when you see it live, you can only conclude - what a performance! This time rather than work with the setting her act burst beyond its confines. Despite playing in a small and crowded room, lacking even the most basic stage, she came on as if she had Iggy Pop in her blood.

Noise music is notoriously for being ‘manpainy’. Think of the characteristic hunched pose under hoodie and over microphone. By way of cheery contrast, AJA sports - and fully inhabits - the most outrageously flamboyant costumes, from which she engages fully with the audience. After Tuba Doom perhaps we’ve hit on another new genre - Glam Noise.

In may day, women would often tell each other the expression “nothing better than having a good cry”. Yet of course there’s something better, and her whole act seems intent on proving the inherent value in having a good scream. So, despite all the volume, or more likely because of it, it’s a wholly uplifting experience to witness. The programme described her act as “cathartic”, not a word they were using in vain. And in this day and age, it’s often appealing to discover something where you do have to be there, which isn’t YouTubeable.

Overall Fort Process is one of those labours of love and (the right kind of) lunacy, put on by afficionados for afficionados, just to see the thing happen. It’s proof corporate crap hasn’t colonised the whole of our lives just yet.

Photo of AJA from the event’s website, other snaps mine. More where they came from here.

Some proper photos from Agata Urbaniak here

Last time I managed to post a video of the previous event. So let’s keep that tradition up…



‘LOOPING TIME’ BY HUGO TICCIATI + O/MODERNT CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Kings Place, London, Fri 21st Sept



This concert, part of the Time Unwrapped season, focused on string-based Minimalist music.

‘Shaker Loops’ (1978) , while an early work of John Adams’, is regarded as something of a classic, and rightly so. It contains many Minimalist elements, including a basis in a pulsing beat and an ability to keep things simple. In the second movement, a double bass plucks at a solitary string at regular intervals.

Yet, perhaps in retrospect, it’s easy to hear how he was already moving into Post-Minimalism. An earlier version in Adams’ own words “crashed and burned”, partly because it restricted itself to a string quartet. Adams responded by ramping up the number of players, first to a septet and (as performed here) a full string orchestra - “thereby adding a sonic mass and the potential for more acoustical power.”

But rather than Post-Minimalist it should be thought of as Just Romantic Enough. The reference to the Shakers, a religious group from the American Pioneer days, already gives the music more of specificity than normally found in Minimalism. What amounts to a violin solo appears midway. It very much builds to a climax, even though it continues from there and ends somewhere much closer to the beginning.

And what could be more Romantic than imitation of nature? Adams has said himself the first movement in particular was inspired by the rippling of water, the surface refracting the sunlight caught by those amassed shimmering strings.

But ultimately, as is typical of him, Adams makes the unlikely combination virtuous. Much like nature, the piece belies our constructed notions of what’s simple and what’s complex and involved.

Angel’s Share by the Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tuur, was a UK premiere. As anyone who’s seen the Ken Loach film knows, the title refers to the amount of whiskey which evaporates during distilling.

The piece is full of ideas, and has some great sections. It opens etherially, with the violins and violas creating the most disembodied sounds. Quite late on, it suddenly breaks out into a folk dance rhythm. Yet overall it didn’t hold together. I found it kept slowly losing my interest, then doing something to suddenly grab it back, only to lose it again a short while later.

While the other three composers were still with us, Perotin’s ’Viderunt Omnes’ stems from the Twelfth Century. The ensemble entered from all four corners of the auditorium already playing, and segued surprisingly neatly into Philip Glass’s Third Symphony.

Symphonies may be antithetical to the strictures of high Minimalism, and indeed Glass didn’t embark on any until the Nineties when he was already leaving that behind. (This was composed in 1995.) It does make a good companion piece to ’Shaker Loops’, there’s even a violin lead in the third movement. (The programme uses Classical terms, such as “chaconne”, which I don’t claim to understand.)

But it remains a blend rather than a break, Glass finding a sweet spot where Minimalist mantras combine with rich and resonant melodies. And the Minimalist spirit may be retained most in it’s unhurried pace, creating something stately without any pomp.

THE BRAIN DEAD ENSEMBLE/ GZA THE GENIUS (GIG-GOING ADVENTURES)

THE BRAIN DEAD ENSEMBLE
The Green Door Store, Brighton, Thurs 6th Sept

Comprised of two cellos and a double bass, the basis of the Brain Dead Ensemble is drone-like strumming. Never a bad thing in the book of Lucid Frenzy. But, while never really breaking from that basis, they could throw the strangest things into the mix. At the time I had assumed the chap on laptop was live-processing the sounds, but it seems the three players were doing this themselves. As they explain...

“Two feedback cellos a feedback bass and a Threnoscope are plugged together to form a multi-instrument, multi-channel system. The feedback cellos and bass are DIY electro-acoustic-digital resonator instruments. Each instrument has pickups under each of its strings and transducers built into the acoustic instrument body, inducing electromagnetically-controlled feedback which can be digitally processed.”

(I hope someone else followed that. Me, they could have just said “because of magic”.) It leads to a visual as well as a sonic beguiling, you naturally expect standard-looking instruments to come up with standard sounds, and when they don’t that adds to the overall eerie effect. It sounded simultaneously a force of nature which would never end, and an ever-evolving and absolutely unpredictable series of shifts and changes. 

You soon didn’t feel like you were in the room listening to the music but were inside the music, with the room not reappearing till the end. At one point the strings seemed accompanied by organ swells which were almost churchy.

The Threnoscope, from what I gather, was providing a visual infographic of the music in real time. As coloured segments shifted and floated around inside concentric circles, I wasn’t really sure how it mapped the music, but that might not matter. Not being any kind of timeline, but more capturing moment-to-moment transitions, it caught the immediate spirit of the music. As well as the Ensemble’s… well, ensemble nature. As they put it, “No one is in control, although everyone is playing.”

And that Brian Dead part of the name? Though they don’t dress up as George Romero extras, it’s perfectly fitting. People seem strangely convinced dance music is the last possible word in anti-cerebralism, in abandon. Yet it’s based on keeping in time, which in practice means maths. Whereas this is the sort of music which most allows you to, in the time-honoured phrase, turn off your mind, relax and flat downstream.

This from an earlier gig of theirs…



GZA THE GENIUS
Concorde 2, Brighton, Wed 5th Sept

With his brother RZA, GZA was for all intents and purposes the backbone of the legendary Wu-Tang Clan. And ‘Liquid Swords’, effectively a collaboration but released as his solo album, is often thought of the finest Wu-Tang releases, and even one of the finest albums of hip-hop.

It’s appeal may be in the combination of obsessiveness with crazy, an almost blistering intensity runs with a willingness to throw together different sonic elements which is recklessly cavalier.(Just as it lyrically shifts from street life scenes from Staten Island to metaphysical ruminations about God, literally without missing a beat.)

The only other Wu-Tang member I’ve seen was Ghostface Killah, whose performance was very. To this day I am not sure exactly how it was very, but I do know it was very. Possibly very very. GZA, conversely, was not very.

The counter to Ghostface Killah’s circus of guest stars, this was a stripped-down affair which focused on him. Yet he seemed an uninvolved figure, with even the talking to the audience business delegated to an MC. It as almost as if he’d become his own karaoke tribute.

It was very much a classic tracks set. (I’ve heard little from recent years, and still knew most of it.) Whether GZA no longer feels attached to those old numbers, or whether he’s simply not a live act is more than I can tell you.

Yet he seemed to go down a storm with everyone else. I can’t help but wonder sometimes if popular music has become heraldic. Seeing the main man from the Wu-Tang Clan has become like those holidaymakers who trek to Angkor Wat, take a quick selfie of themselves in front of it then head to the nearest bar. It’s bucket list living, not about enjoying the experience but being able to say you were there. Alternately, it may just be me who’s a grumpy old git. Either seems possible...

An engaged-seeming audience from Bristol…

OZOMATLI/ QUJAKU/ PHILL NIBLOCK + TIM SHAW (GIG-GOING ADVENTURES)

OZOMATLI
Concorde 2, Brighton, Thurs 23rd Aug

So I finally catch up with Ozomatli live, even if it took their twentieth anniversary tour for Mr. Tardy here to do it. Describing the band’s actually easy for once, as they’ve done it themselves and it’s even placed upfront on their Wikipedia page. Locating their sound in their native Los Angeles, they say:

’You drive down Sunset Boulevard and turn off your stereo and roll down your windows and all the music that comes out of each and every different car, whether it's salsa, cumbia, merengue, or Hip Hop, funk or whatever, it's that crazy blend that's going on between that cacophony of sound is Ozomatli, y’know?”

As band members ceaselessly swap instruments the shifts and turns in musical style make for a gig that always feels like it’s being propelled forward, while always coming across as organic and arising from the players rather than being self-consciously eclectic.

They have a reputation as a political outfit, initially intending to form (I kid not) a workers’ union. This doesn’t much come over live, bar the occasional quick intro to a song. It does seem a little strange to find that a band best known for their live shows should omit what seems an integral element. But then there is something appealing about music that’s political and good-timey. Given the state of things, there’s plenty to be angry about and of course we have a right to that anger. But we’ve got the right to celebrate resistance as well.

Though it’s quite a different style of music, the gig echoes something I came across when seeing Goat, unrelenting energy levels; “The gig's pretty much at… fever pitch the whole way through. They're quite unrelentingly up.” In fact so irrepressible is the band’s spirit, that when a phantom hum invades the PA they decide what key it’s in, and instantly start jamming around it. Complete with a vocal which plaintively wonders “where could that hum be coming from?” It actually proves a highlight of their set, so maybe they should request hums more often.

For the closer, as I believe is a tradition of their shows, they pick up their gear and relocate to various points in the auditorium. As they moved they’d trail audience members behind then, snaking in a great conga.

A slightly random clip, but a good one of the band on home turf…



QUJAKU
Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, Brighton, Mon 27th Aug

Qujaku are self-described as “Japanese rock band [playing] psychedelic gothic dark shoe gaze [with] post rock vibes”, and are fronted (slightly inexplicably) by a lookalike for late Seventies Bowie.

They seem to wait before starting up, as if channelling something. They then go into a slow, soundscapey intro with a bowed… uh, bowed something and rung bells. Though the thumping riffs then drop, this intro kind of permeates the rest of the gig and gives proceedings a ritual feel.

Riffs are somewhat like houseguests. They’re going to stick around for a while, so you want to be sure not to pick the wrong one. Qujaku display a talent for finding mantra riffs, the sort of riff you want to hear over and over again. Their riff repository is also satisfyingly varied, from the slow and pounding to the agitated.

But they’re also adept at curveballing riffs, first getting them white-hot and then bending them into different shapes. At such points the second guitarist then turns back to the bowing or starts to pound a drum. It’s the upside of heavy riffing married to the upside of post-rock, giving a shot to your reptile and a stimulus to your Cro-Magnon brain.

The Bowie lookalike concludes the noise-fest by blowing a kiss to the assembled throng. Slightly inexplicably. In a good way.

The only real drawback of the set - and I know I always say this - is that there wasn’t enough of it. These aren’t short, snappy songs, the numbers are like potions you need to leave stewing in the cauldron awhile. But, with two support acts, they played for less than an hour. Bands have a natural set length determined by their music, which can’t be reduced to a meaningless mean. Sunn O))) played for two hours, which didn’t seem too long. Qujaku don’t necessarily need that sort of length, but they operate on timescales which take more than an hour.

This vid starts just as the intro section ends…



PHILL NIBLOCK + TIM SHAW
Cafe Oto, London, Fri 31st Aug

So next I was off to see a gig dominated by electronic hums and pulses. If Ozomatli had intruded with their Latino-tuned trumpets, the circle would have been completed. But they must have been busy elsewhere…

To try and explain Tim Shaw by a distinction, he’s quiet different to Cosmo Sheldrake, who assigned samples the respective roles of instruments. In fact Sahw's set did not, I don’t think, include any musical samples. But it did, I think, include organic sounds, albeit heavily treated. The effect become more like coloured shapes on various pieces of transparency paper, being shifted, shuffled and overlaid in different combinations. It produces new shapes and colours, until you’ve forgotten what you started off with.

Shaw’ set wasn’t divided into movements, as in classical music, but passed through distinct sections. While Phill Niblock performed five quite separate pieces, even if he ran them all together. Though there are those who claim this music to be samey, each piece was quite distinct in character. (Some more than others, as we’ll get onto.)

Despite each piece inevitably being shorter, they were much slower to evolve - at times feeling like their evolution was happening in Darwinian time. Duration became part of the experience.

His music’s comprised of murky drones and rumbles he refers to collectively as “tones”. Each one seems straightforward in itself, though blurry at the edges. It’s in the interchange between then at the magic happens, as subtle shifts come to have magnified effects. It all seems poised at the borderline between the liminal and subliminal, where you can’t quite perceive what he’s doing.

Where people go wrong, I think, is assume this is some sonic backdrop, an aural mulch out of which flowers will appear if you wait. But it’s in that ‘backdrop’ where it all happens. The metaphor of stepping into a darkened room, and the initial monotone revealing more and more shades and distinctions the longer you stay, I’ve used that many times by this point. But it’s the best metaphor I can think of, so it’s getting recycled again!

As often with drone-based music, what sounds rough and atonal can tip over into the serene. In fact in his second piece this was given centre stage, and the effect was quite tranquil. The music seemed to shimmer rather than move. Some of those tones may even have started life as notes - yes, actual notes!

But it was the fourth piece which was the densest, and perhaps the most rewarding. Broad rumbles provided perhaps not a backdrop but a surround for sharper sounds. It became like a sandpaper raga.

These four pieces already lasting over an hour, I figured we’d had our lot. Yet Niiblock started a fifth. It commenced with rumbles so low, so faint they could have been coming from the next room. Fifteen minutes later, with the room now mostly empty, I started to wonder whether this was going anywhere after all, and cut my losses. Are those that persevered still there now? We may never know.

Nibloch, who started as a film-maker, normally plays to a film show. Apart from the somewhat eccentric closer, this was the night’s only weak point. Reportage film of what looked like South Sea Islanders was too distinct, too of something to work with the more mysterious, suggestive music. (And yes, with Johanna Bramli I liked the visual but not the music - truly, there’s no fully pleasing me!) Before the show, a series of stills which looked to be from the same source were flashed up. With their merest hints of narrative connection, they may have worked better than a continuous film.

Precisely what makes this music appealing is precisely what makes it challenging to review. If you heard these pieces at different times, you’d not just react differently you’d quite likely actually hear them in a different way. The effect becomes individual and introspective.

Again, a fairly random clip. But again, worth watching…

AT THE DRIVE-IN/ VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA/ GOD IS MY CO-PILOT (GIG-GOING ADVENTURES)

AT THE DRIVE-IN
02 Academy, Brixton, London, Fri 9th March

It’s another axiom of Lucid Frenzy that a great band can combine apparent contradictions. At the Drive-In for example, were a full-on hardcore punk band who managed to pack in the most left-field manoeuvrers. They were like a switchblade knife that was simultaneously a corkscrew.

And I did sometimes wonder if what made them burn so bright also made them burn half as long, with their releasing just three albums then quitting at their peak. As if contrapedal forces finally reasserted themselves, they split into the proggy, jazzy Mars Volta and the “cleaner, more accessible” Sparta. And the two were never as good apart.

So will the reunited band manage to reassemble, like that movie scene where the split parts of the amulet recombine to reignite the magic? Or, would they just be, to quote an old lyric, “dancing on the corpse’s ashes” of their grand reputation? They’re clear still at the top of the crowd’s heart, spurring many singalongs. But initially, it veers towards the second option.

Much of what permitted ATDI to perform their magic trick was the twin guitars - the switchblade edge of Jim Ward combining with the corkscrewing of Omar Rodriguez. (Who’s cited Frank Zappa, Robert Fripp and John McLaughlin as his influences.) At the Drive-In are still driving, still full of force. But those twin guitars merely make a wall of noise to underline the vocals. it’s switchblade at the expense of corkscrew. Despite the fact that it’s Ward who’s absent from the reunion. (Seemingly dropping out at the last minute, and replaced by Keely Davis, also ex-Sparta.)

I had given up all hope and started to figure I should just settle for what I was getting, when relatively suddenly they managed to click back in. What had been pure frontal assault gains depth and breadth, and songs take on strange and unexpected elements. Even the ones you know well.

They strike up noise between tracks, meaning the next number erupts from it as if a sculpture arose from a single stroke. And, something I previously witnessed from seeing their re-reformation incarnation Antemasque, in the midst of well-known tracks such as ’Enfilade’ they introduce long, slower and much more hypnotic sections – influenced more by soul and reggae than hardcore punk. They’d stretch for long enough to leave you almost forgetting the original number, before breaking back into it. The original ADI didn’t tend to pull such switches , and were more given to superimpose each element over one another. Which perhaps that gives them an extra novel effect.

The encore, perhaps predictable but still a welcome choice...

VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA
Cafe Oto, Dalston, London, Sat 11th March

The legendary trance/ drone/ impro outfit Vibracathedral are celebrating their Twentieth anniversary. Somehow I have only succeed in seeing them once before, in a short set at the Colour Out of Space festival. So, even though I was only up in London the previous day, tonight I’m back.

Some music you need to search a little before you find a way to listen to it. As if your head’s a radio, you need to tilt it to the right angle for you to tune in. But VBO are almost the opposite. As the five members bang, strum and pluck away, barely ever looking at one another and seemingly just off on their own thing, the surprising thing is how perfectly it all fits together. It’s not head-scratching music, it’s heart-lifting.

This may be partially down to the magic unifying power of the held drone. Provided in the opening section rather wonderfully by someone simply tra-la-laing. At times you feel like they’re packing a rhythm section a more conventional band would burn their A+R contact list for, even when their ‘drummer’ is merely hitting cymbals placed on the floor.

Perhaps there can be no bigger praise than saying how much it reminded me of Terry Riley. Not just the raga influence. Or the metronomic pieces, playing what often sounds like snatches from riffs or melodies, or the ‘holy groove’ sonic shimmer. Or even the sense of the eternal present, where the music somehow shifts into something else entirely without you noticing until they’ve done it.

More because it has Riley’s spirit, his combination of wig-out exuberance with transcendentalism. Plus, many years before punk, he brought a DIY approach to music which these guys are still channelling. There’s black boxes which get twiddled from time to time. But instruments include the aforesaid cymbals, a rather battered violin whose bow looks almost fully frayed, and a toy piano. It conveys the sense that this joyous sound stems chiefly from a state of mind, as if once in the zone they could cheerily play for hours if given the chance.

The only downside… And it should be acknowledged it must be hardest of all to mix an impro set, when you can’t be sure what you’ll need to capture. But the sound quality was often patchy, sometimes harsh and abrasive in a way which might even match a noise outfit but not these sound carriers. However, these problems were mostly confined to the earlier part of the set.

Not from Cafe Oto but in full flight…

GOD IS MY CO-PILOT
Cafe Oto, Dalston, London, Sat 17th March

God is My Copilot are a DIY punk band from Nineties New York, mostly associated with queercore, sometimes described as “Raincoats meet Black Flag”, and whose mission statement is ”co-opting rock, the language of sexism, to address gender identity.” They’re yet another legendary band who have somehow previously passed me by.

If hippie bands would smoke and punks snort something before their set, GodCo would seem to have jabbed their mitts in some mains electricity. Their sound’s agitated and angsty with trebly, scratchy guitar more skating over the surface of songs than leading them. Tracks don’t push ahead so much as proceed in spasmodic jerks, often pulling abrupt tempo shifts on you.

Their songs aren’t the righteous rallying cries most associate with punk, they’re simultaneously more immediate and more obtuse, shot through with sardonic humour. Like they less want to reach out and fix the world, and more plan to draw you into their messy web of personal relations. “I want a dress with no blood on it”, went the words to one number.

It’s an odd mixture of exhilarating and frustrating, ramshackle to the point of uneven. In fact, for a band with songs and a set-list, it had many of the ups and downs of an impro outfit. In fact, Vibracathedral Orchestra were more consistent despite being an impro band! The singer (who in police parlance I now know to be called Normandy Sherwood) frequently wandered over to a box of tricks of some kind, but I was no clearer by the end what it was supposed to be doing. 

That somewhat odd photo the venue used for the gig, with the top of the guitarist’s head just poking in (reproduced above), does fit the occasion. They seemed to come off the rails a couple of times, the drummer (who plays a more active role than in a regular punk band) picking them up again.

But then this is the type of music where that can just be part of the point. They seemed to somewhat divide the audience. Not what you expect from a cult punk band reformed and returning to London, serving tracks up with practised ease, but more in the spirit of the day. Back then, to please everyone was seen as the same thing as pleasing no-one.

They close with a Devo-like deconstruction of ’Totally Wired’. It turns out you can simplify a Fall guitar line, who knew? Whether that was a special tribute to the recently departed Mark E Smith or a regular feature of their set, I’ve no idea.

Couldn’t find any current footage so here’s some back-in-the day stuff. Guitarist Craig Flanagin looks to be the only member in common ‘tween then and now…

SUNN 0)))/ SUN RA ARKESTRA/ YAMATO DRUMMERS (GIG-GOING ADVENTURES)

SUNN 0)))

Barbican, London, Tues 21st March

Waiting near me outside the auditorium, two vikings in black hoodies babbled away to one another in German. Every so often one would say “Throbbing Gristle”, they'd then drop back into German. Then, a minute or so later, one would say “Throbbing Gristle” again. While a sign on the door above them warned of impending “high level sound levels and dense haze”.

I figured I was in the right place.

This marked my second chance to see legendary drone metal band Sunn 0))), and while they inevitably don't have quite the same impact when not filling a small seafront club with their sonic force, so powerful as to be physical, they remain an unmissable live experience.

Vocalist Attila Csuhar opened the gig with some liturgical chanting, which he'd then mix in with more guttural tones - part-way to throat singing. This section did, if truth be told, go on a bit. In fact a fairly sizeable segment of the audience didn't show up until it was ending, presumably forewarned and forearmed.

But as that was the gig's only weak point, let's focus on another aspect. Despite the band's signature uniform of monk habits and customary banks of dry ice, I don't think the intent here is really sacrilegious – like the sonic equivalent of an inverted crucifix. In fact it's nearer to... well religious, those mixed-chant vocals more intended to compare than contrast. 

Despite the band having arisen from the black metal scene, despite their almost fearsome reputation as the heaviest of them all, their sound isn't really oppressive. Like a lot of religious music, it's actually elevating. Rather than relying on any kind of shock effect, it's involving and even contemplative. To the point where even us non-religious types find it takes us out of ourselves. It induces a kind of aum state without any of the dippy New Age shit.

For one thing, they don't let that heavy tag hold them down and are quite happy to break with expectation. In a lengthy mid-section the wall-of-noise guitars walk right offstage and a quite plaintive trombone starts up. And if sludge metal has already been made a genre, I suppose there's no reason why we can't also have sludge jazz.

Also, and more importantly, there's a solidity – a kind of one-ness - to their sound. It's pretty much pitched at the point where black metal becomes drone. It's difficult and at times impossible to pick out individual instruments. Even the keyboards, which are sometimes prominent, play neither above or along to the guitars – they more play along to the resonances between them.

While heavy rock tends to be blues music with added volume Sun 0))) seem unrooted in rock tradition. In fact in the programme they complain of how once-normal listening practices have been undermined in the past forty years, like a near-half century is just a bump in the road. Most noticeable by it's absence, with neither bass nor drums there's none of the release of rock music, none of the sense that music's a means to let it all out.

In fact, despite their strong overlaps with noise music, they demonstrate how rockist the noise scene can be. They don't just dress like monks, they're as disciplined as them. Though the singer stands to the front, neither he nor the others gives off any impression of individual personality. Even when they sup a beer on stage, a single bottle is passed between the lot of them like a sacrament.

Founder member Stephen O’Malley has described their sound as “more raga than … rock. And despite the fact that the walls were literally shaking from volume, it was actually quite a blissed out, psychedelic session.” (Though speaking of a particular album.) While in the programme Csihar compares it to “the music of the plants, and that's why it's so slow and enormous”. Which seems reminiscent of Andrew Marvell's old poem “My vegetable love should grow/ Vaster than empires and more slow”.

Let's jump from Marvell to Elvis Costello, who once sang “The truth can't hurt you, it's just like the dark/ It scares you witless, then in time you see things clear and stark”. He could have been thinking of Sunn 0))). There's a kind of double trajectory afoot. What might originally hit the listener as a sonic onslaught slowly transforms itself into something serene, pummelling fists morphing into massaging hands. 

Moreover, from what I know of the earlier albums, that also fits the history of the band - they were more abrasive and discordant at the beginning. Which also fits the history of Earth, enough of an influence for Sunn 0))) to name themselves in a kind of paralleling tribute. Or the way the doom metal of Sleep transformed into the trance of Om. To get to the light, it seems you need to go through the dark tunnel.

And that half-transfer, half-dichotomy is something you often see in art evoking the sublime. What first appears to you as an overwhelming, pulverising force soon comes to feel like rejoining where you really belong. Perhaps, were Turner alive today, he'd have ditched his oils and joined a drone metal band.

SUN RA ARKESTRA

Con Club, Lewes, Wed 29th March

”They say history repeats itself. But that's his story. My story doesn't repeat itself. Why should it? My story is endless”

Last time I was at this venue, to see Jah Wobble, I was committing myself to print in saying I am no fan of jazz. So what do I do but head back for what's unambiguously a jazz gig?

But then of course this is no regular gig. It's not a matter of public record how Herman Poole Blount's parents reacted when he told them he'd teleported to Saturn to commune with the spirits there, and been told to devote himself to music as a means to solve the problems of the Earth. They most probably thought it was an elaborate excuse to drop out of college, which was the first thing he was insisting on doing. But he went through with it, changing his name to Sun Ra in the process, and throughout his life stuck to that story and to his guns. (His discography is this big.) He was more or less to jazz what Lee Perry was to reggae, where there's no point trying to separate what was genius from what was lunacy.

And if Sun Ra himself ceased having even a tangential connection to this Earth back in '93, the Arkestra continues under the direction of Marshall Allan. (Who is himself 92, having played with the Arkestra for 57 years.) After two successive sell-outs, they ended up playing a three-night residency, of which I caught the middle event. Living up to their “my story is endless” promise they played for over two and a half hours, a completely different set from the first night, and cheerily announced at the end the third night would be something different again.

Those freak free impro days now seem done and dusted, with band members even sporting music stands. The set most matched Wikipedia's' Philadelphia period, a kind of cosmic jazz to match the cosmic soul of the times. (The era the classic 'Space is the Place' album came from.)

And in fact the downside of the gig wasn't it falling into indigestible squonk but becoming tasteful enough to have safely ported onto an episode of Jools Holland. There were, I confess, points where it lost my interest.

But the highlights were... well, befitting Sun Ra's cosmic aspirations I'd have to say higher than sky high. Despite their daunting reputation, the Arkestra have a strong melodic sense and the ability to form into a powerful rhythm section. For a jazz band, they sure are funky! The brass in particular seemed able to play along with the line, then each instrument find a way to veer off into it's own thing while still holding that line aloft. (And to think I once found Led Zeppelin tight but loose!)

The best tracks, for me at least, started off with a vocal – somewhere between a repeated spoken phrase and a chant. These were often cosmic aphorisms which would probably seem platitudinously New Agey out of context, but in context were like a foot sliding into a slipper. (And besides, the one quoted up top does have it's appeal.) The ensemble would then work around them, in a manner not entirely unlike Steve Reich's penchant for finding music phrases in the cadences of the spoken word.

Perhaps the main thing is convey is that it's not chin-stroking music to chew on, it's joyous, exuberant and energising. If it doesn't quite teleport you to Saturn you can almost feel your feet lifting from the ground. Space really is the place.

This was from the first night...

And after seeing Sunn 0))) and Sun Ra, of course I then went to see Sun Kil Moon again. No, actually it was...

YAMATO: THE DRUMMERS OF JAPAN

Brighton Dome, Thurs 30th March

After seeing the Kodo drummers some three years ago, I am it seems becoming something of a regular for Japanese drum ensembles at the Dome. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were many similarities between the two, above all the same combination of absolute discipline and unleashed frenzy. And it demonstrates what a timbral range can exist just from different varieties of drum.

But Kodo's art had been very much a martial one. You could imagine them arising as one at six AM on their South Pacific island, and starting their morning practice by twenty past. They were intent on what they were doing, single-minded to the point of being cult-like.

Yamato are much more showbizzy, sporting bright costumes over uniform black vests. There's stage antics, visual gags, acrobatic playing, ample audience participation and even individual personalities emerging from the players. At times it did become so circusy I half expected a guy with a moustache to come on, and hold a chair up to a mangy old lion.

But we're probably best taking that as description rather than criticism. Being structured unashamedly like a show gives things an ever-relentless dynamic. They barely stopped even for applause. Perhaps they had less musicality than Kodo, but they so successfully keep you watching you don't particularly notice at the time.

My favourite moment was when the drummers were joined by the Japanese banjo. (Which probably has some special name, which probably isn't “the Japanese banjo”.) It was an unusual pairing, which they were really able to make work.

This TV appearance is from some while back, but gives a good flavour for what they do...

PHILIP GLASS' TRIBUTE TO DAVID BOWIE/ BORIS (GIG-GOING ADVENTURES)

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...