Even
fringes have fringes, it would seem. For this “micro festival” of
improvised music set out it's stall as picking up where Colour Out of Space
left off. That event gives acts a democratising set dose of twenty to
thirty minutes, eschewing any notion of support slots and headlining.
Which, while part of the spirit of the thing, can become something of
a meaningless mean. Some acts, particularly of the novelty or comedy
ilk, seem spent after ten minutes. While others can feel like they
were just getting going after thirty.
But
here we're specifically promised “long duration live performances”.
Which makes a kind of sense. Impro is the 'slow food' of the music
world, it takes time to simmer and stew and develop it's flavours, it
doesn't just ping out ready for action. (When one of the performers
shouts “one, two, three, four” at the start of his set, we all
get the joke.) Making the performances longer makes the highs
higher...
...and
highs there were. Remember when your school teachers would tell you
to think of sex as “a kind of beautiful conversation between two
people”? And you'd snigger because you knew it was actually about
Barbara Windsor's bra flying off in 'Carry On Camping.'
Well, they were wrong. Because it's actually
improvised music which is a kind of beautiful conversation between
two people.
Actually,
the crazy hipsters also experimented with solo stuff and even
threesomes. But blush not gentle reader, for it tended to be the duos
who impressed the best, and who we shall focus on here. For example
the opening act, Gimlet-Eyed Mariners came with a mesmerising array
of bows and strings, which they employed with alacrity. But I was
most keen to see Mystery Dick, aka Ed Pinsent and Harley Richardson.
I knew these gentlemen from their fine work in alternative comics
and music fanzines, stretching right back to the Eighties. (Ed
continues to run the mighty 'Sound Projector',
“better listening through imagination since 1996”.) But not only
had I never seen them live before, I'd not even heard their music. (I
confessed this to Ed on the night, who commented “we're more under
than underground.” I later read from their website the last time they performed in public was a decade
ago!)
They
started off with swirling organ and twangy feedback guitar, like a
lost soundtrack to 'Carnival of Souls', before
heading off into something more minimalist and droney. It felt like
the longer they played the less they played, in
terms of chords and notes, and the harder it was to tell one's
contribution from the other. In other words, the better
they played, as duration worked its magic. But by that point they'd
left my meagre powers of description behind, which is probably best
for all concerned.
...yet
tribal loyalties were to be rent asunder because my favourite act
were the Static Memories, who I could easily believe had been playing
together since they were embryos. Their set was forever stuttering,
building up and breaking apart again, but in a way that somehow
sounded part of the plan. (Even though, clearly, there was no plan!)
Even in it's quietest, most fractured-sounding moments it held the
room, pulling at our attention like a super-magnet in a room of steel
screws. It seemed the very opposite of virtuoso show-off music, where
all egos were subsumed and creativity made a force for the common
good. (I was probably getting carried away by that point.)
Yet
what makes the highs higher inevitably makes the lows lower. The
middle night in particular seemed like the 'Empire Strikes
Back' of the trilogy. Of course you have to accept
improvised music isn't going to serve up the hits every time. But I
became reminded of the famous George Clinton line, “freedom is free
of the need to be free.” There's times when this music sounds so
unfree of the need to be free, furiously squarking
and hitting hubcaps ever-harder when it doesn't seem to be working
like it should. The noise can come to feel busy,
like a stand-in for motion.
If
I seem to have a love/hate relationship with the impro scene... well
I probably have a love/hate relationship with everything I don't have
a hate/hate relationship with. And I see scenes as by their nature
defined by the contradictions, not as unified groups. Furthermore,
there's something in the nature of impro music which, by removing the
confines of song structures and scale systems, pulls away the safety
net and throws things to the extremes.
But,
perhaps notably, the only scene I have as much a love/hate
relationship with is the hardcore punk scene. On the face of it the
two styles couldn't be more different. The better hardcore bands
tended to rehearse like mad things, streamlining their sound, and
didn't improvise much on stage. But both scenes promise music as a
means to break free.
Yet
of course, ultimately I try to focus on the half-full side of the
glass and am glad such scenes survive in corporate modern Brighton.
Even if the main challenge seems to be finding a room small enough to
fit us all in...
Not
from any of the nights, but of similar ilk...
Not
coming soon! I was really quite keen to get down something
about the last Colour Out of Space. Particularly the series of
performances I dubbed Deranged Projectionists, who mixed up and
intervened with filmshows live in front of us, as if the projector
was an instrument. Dirk de Bruyn remains the only cinema
projectionist I have seen to fall into a shamanic trance and chant
loudly while repeatedly putting his hand in front of the lens.
(Though I for one would like the Odeon to adopt similar tactics.) But
alas I have really left it too late even for me. Please content
yourself with previous years (2009,
2008
and 2007
respectively) and the above...
(Hopefully)
coming soon! The second part of the Brighton Festival
write-ups...
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