Embarker, Dead Gum, Kostis Kilymis, Autotistika @ Power Lunches

Regaining ground

20/11/14

From full-blown zoomorphic nightmares to trippy found sounds and good old guitar impro, the first sonic meeting of Embarker (US) and Dead Gum (GR) in London kicked off their joint European tour with a (few) bang(s).

Kostis Kilymis

The Power Lunches basement opened its doors after 8 to welcome a line-up put together by Organized Music from Thessaloniki, including Kostis Kilymis (who runs the Organized Music from Thessaloniki music label) and Autotistika (aka Michael Rodham-Heaps). It was Autotistika and his variety of sonic paraphernalia who took over first, setting the tone with a spooky godlike mask and lingering loops, veering from playful childlike innocence to fully-grown rhythmical attacks. If there was any feeling of constraint in the tiny space to start with, the hypomanic drones gave this parallel mirrored universe a matching soundtrack - rendered more haunting by the mumblings of prerecorded voices.
Kostis Kilymis picked up on the repetitive electronic noise motif on his mixer, reflecting an impending urban doom with quasi-military conviction. His sober, head-on minimal approach stuck to its guns throughout, and though the set didn't seem to last long, it made its point.

Autotistika

It was Dead Gum, his back to the audience throughout the hole set, that made the only attempt to create something close to proper songs with his guitar, lyrics and hauntingly mesmeric visions of a riff...The word "proper" here translating to anything from troubled, antisocial feedback to humorously psychedelic recordings (the imaginary guests of the line up). Taking the freshly released GAINER on the road for the first time, he faithfully abused his trademark noise impro, this time moulding it into rather more accessible shapes and forms - and tracks like Regain and Dare quickly caught on.

Dead Gum

Embarker (aka Michael Roy Barker) traveled from Philadelphia to join Dead Gum (aka Panagiotis Spoulos) on a tour that, after London, takes them to Utrecht, Paris, Bilbao and Athens, to name a few. Nonchalantly taking his place behind a table full of mingled spaghetti wires, he was rather inhabited by the spirit of a mad scientist attacking his mixer instead of a giant pipe organ, channeling unsettling noise on his way to absolute sovereignty. The chaotic collage (which, in Embarker's other projects, is accompanied by also chaotic or dreamy visuals) was cut through in between with inspired moments of awkward make-believe: "I'll have to come back tomorrow", he declared. He later walked down to the audience to leave us his lamp - possibly with a view to see us partake in his moments of illumination.
It was four short sets, one clear message: On this tour, you never quite know what to expect, but it'll definitely drill into your senses.

Embarker

Text and photography by Danai Molocha.

Bohren und der Club of Gore @ Saint John-at-Hackney

Religious listening

8-11-14


Saint John-at-Hackney is hardly the most atmospheric of holy music spots (especially in competition with the likes of the Union Chapel). But Stephen O'Malley (Sun O)))) was in place (quite late) with his guitar, ready to inject the ambiance with hypokinetic electric waves. His lingering dooming drones aptly accompanied the frustrated church-goers who, after a long wait in the delightful London drizzling, rushed in on a hunt for a couple of beers and a good viewpoint. While O'Malley expanded on our sense of menacing melancholia, those on the upper floor discovered that they were slightly cheated on the acoustics - luckily profiting, instead, on the moody rain projections dancing to the sound on the opposite wall... The tad monotonous soundscapes and projections lost their magic after a while and once everybody had rested in their places, a few of us agreeing that the set was ideal only as accompaniment music for the unsettling crowd.

Bohren und der Club of Gore later took the guitarist's spot on a colourful minimalist stage dotted with saturated lights (as opposed to O'Malley playing in the complete dark) for an evening of slow, soulful immersion, under the sounds of their characteristic saxophone, keys, bass and drums. Their highly contained moves, flawless timing and precision on their instruments instantly set the rhythm, splitting the audience between the laid back dreamers diving in with closed eyes, and the deserters quietly slipping out for a fag.

Stephen O'Malley

In such a slow-burning, low key sonic context, there is a fine line between inspired broodiness and sheer boredom. Unlike past attempts, their latest album Piano Nights falls under the same theory but follows a very different practice, the band rather shifting towards the latter. Painfully uneventful a lot of the time, their set was lacking the quietly building, mysterious sexual tension of 1995's Midnight Radio, sending nuances of false maturity. Clearest of all sounds was the band's well-executed control - and sobriety in slow motion can hardly ever be that exciting, or reach that far inside.

Based on the resounding enthusiastic cheers, part of the crowd apparently read a lot between the lines. But, to a lot of us, Bohren failed to give much heat to the menacing theatre of the subconscious, which could have truly made the night shoot into the sphere of a freaky slo-mo Lynchian drama.
As it was, let's just say it was more lazy dinner party, less shady jazz club.

The English Chamber Orchestra Escorts The Goddess @ BFI London Film Festival - Queen Elizabeth Hall

 
The light from the Electric Shadows


A massive screen was set at Queen Elizabeth Hall to welcome The Goddess, a standout achievement of the silent era starring an iconic figure of the Chinese cinematic legacy, Ruan Lingyu. Part of the Electric Shadows, a year of film collaborations between Britain and China, The Goddess, meticulously restored by the China Film Archive, included the UK premiere of a new score by prominent Chinese film and classical composer Zou Ye.

Against an imposing room, the musicians of the English Chamber Orchestra with their strings and horns and general sonic paraphernalia sat ready to support Lingyu in her dreaded misfortunes in the streets of Shanghai.

Her deep-felt sorrow, enhanced by a rough personal tale in its own right, didn't have the outlet of loud words, but it shot through a wide spectrum of nuances in the actress's expressive eyes. Ye segued compositionally through his silences and crescendos, giving body to a humanistic tale not of a prostitute, ultimately, but of a mother like any other.

A story and a score not pursuing the groundbreaking in their concept, they flee melodrama with subtle interpretations and grounded realism. A prostitute who fights for the right to education as a weapon, despite the miseries indiscriminately thrown at her, she touches the emotions with her unyielding sense of perception, to the film's true credit. A soprano's final mourning wail followed the heartbreak, but Lingyu's conviction, newly as a jailbird, was ever present. "Goddess" is an ironic term for a prostitute, but the heroine brought down all stereotypical behaviour thrown at her profession with levelheadedness and dynamism.

Behold the true Goddess, and in the Queen Elizabeth Hall she found a new voice.
 

Nick Cave and his 20,000 Days on Earth

The good, the bad and the ugly seeds of King Ink's creative process

There has been much debate about Cave's authenticity - or is it pretension? - in this surreal and transcending documentary - and documentary, in its truest and most transparent form, it is surely not.

It doesn't have to be.

It all really begins from the question does an artist belong to "his" people - should he, if at all? (No). People are possessive by nature, they have to grab hold of any piece they can get. Cave seems to share big chunks of his routine (if you can call it that), without actually indulging his audience's possessive tendencies. He does it the artist's way, as an introvert: He makes it obvious that he has planned this, and he delivers another, rather casual artwork with it. The intrusive moments of him waking up next to his wife (who remains hidden behind protective waves of black hair), or coming face to face with himself in the bathroom mirror, are all choreographed. Hell, his long conversations with his psychoanalyst could only be that. But there is great accessibility in revealing the instrumental choreography of his everyday life, and, if anything, he makes you part of his bonkers artistic methods. In the end, you get in touch with what really matters in this life. [Plus, Blixa Bargeld finally spelt out why the hell he left the band. The last thing we had read about it was that he sent an email saying he's leaving, Cave commenting that "he's always been a technocrat", and we had left it at that...].

Forsythe & Pollard © http://www.20000daysonearth.com

Compliments to Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard for delivering one of the most original and creative rockumentary-type works we have ever seen, an immersive experience that, like some of the best Bad Seeds gigs, it triggers the audience to run home and scrape together some lyrics and drag over their music freak friends and bang on the piano and the drums and set the violin on fire (hopefully not torture the wife with their quirks and moods, like Cave repeatedly admits..). 20,000 Days on Earth brings together the bad, the good, and some even ugly seeds of Cave's creative puzzle - reflective, introspective, electric, explosive.

Jubilee Street wraps it all up in the most galvanizing of sonic backdrops, where a thunderous succession of Nick Cave images from the past 20,000 days flash like lightening. Your blood is pumping, your skin is sweating and your eyes are almost in tears. Only this time, you know (quite a bit more of) what lies beneath. And that is no small thing.

Peter Hook & The Light @ O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire

Play it again, Hooky!

27-09-14

© http://www.goldenplec.com/peter-hook-and-the-light-to-play-the-academy/

Kicking off with a Joy Division warm-up in the early evening hours of last Saturday evening, Hooky soon took the Empire by storm. Masterfully building up on the broodiness, from Atmosphere to She's Lost Control, via Isolation and Shadowplay, the playing was fierce and cathartic - this tempestuous trip down memory lane seemingly wrapped up way too quickly.

© www.peterhook.co.uk/

Enter part 2 and the New Order era, resolutely more positive and upbeat, but with sonic links running deep: Hook's confidence and dynamism as a bass player and band leader were a constant throughout, and the sunniest of New Order riffs winked at a well-rooted Manchester melancholy. He soon had the notoriously blasé London audience cavorting with drunken joy, the way you rarely see it do (maybe with the likes of, let's say, The Manic Street Preachers) with the succession of The Perfect Kiss, Subculture, Confusion, Paradise, Bizarre Love Triangle, a moody Elegia and a gorgeous True Faith, sweet like candy.

Old fans of the band(s) walked around with Hooky t-shirts and youngsters too young to have experienced Ian Curtis's spastic on stage dancing declared their obsession with Joy Division. It was a win-win situation, and we lost control. Again.