Friday. Adelaide Festival. 26 Feb 2016
Sequencing sound within sequenced sound, vision and sensation best describes the extraordinary technical and musical synthesis of work offered up at Unsound on Friday night, a night of playing with possibilities theatrical, technical, tactile and physical.
Anyone with a love for work by Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, The Coctueau Twins let alone industrial techno pioneer Blixa Bargeld with Einstürzende Neubauten would have instantly grasped this essential basis not only to the evening’s program, but particularly the dark, classically inclined, majestic, thunderously impassioned glory SUMS: Kanding Ray and Barry Burns, drenched the audience in.
Merlin Ettore joined Barry Burns (UK) and Kanding Ray (France) on drums, and contra bassist Robert Lucaciu.
The soundscapes created by these artists included blending electronic instruments, amplified cello, violin, separate foot pedals, sequenced drum and percussion.
Kanding Ray, standing stage centre, headphones affixed firmly with back purposefully arched over a mixing board, added another layer of sequencing to each musician’s contribution.
The hour of sonorous, deep, thundering swirls of Ettore’s sweat drenched drumming, Lucaciu’s heart stripping cello, Burns’ luscious keyboard and guitar notes ebbed and flowed with power roaring through one’s whole body from the floor, the complete output being totally controlled by Kanding Ray, as much as the work was obviously a deeply immersive collaboration by the musicians.
It could have been music for Vikings, songs of long lost gods, but most of all, it was a long, profoundly affecting anthem to that constantly unfolding musical evolution in which ways of the past meet ways of the future in expressing something beyond the conventional.
Babyfather’s Dean Hunt (UK) switched the groove to theatrical and playful, filling the Thebby thick with stage smoke and a bright wide wash of white light. Here was an act ready to have serious fun mixing up cultural styles and playing games with the physical impact projecting sound and volume can have not just on an audience physically, but intellectually as well; a full on effort to reach as close to a three dimensional sense of sound a vision as possible.
Musically, the set cycled in a loop from bouncing Asian influenced beats and calls, ripped up dub variations, all the way around to the start again, making you think time and again about what you heard. Those dub variations give way to a sonic rumble in the mix that is quite a surprise.
For some, it seemed passé, for others more open minded to the experience, there was definitely a sense of the sound moving beyond its base musical note role; offering that ‘something more’ experience we always seek.
On the visual side of things, work from Jlin (US) and Kode9 (UK) really showed off what it means to mix contemporary sound, vision and movement.
Jlin’s blend of Footwork, flowing video graphics and use of live spice scents was deeply appreciated by the audience. Her physical presence, her moves, the flow of projected visual imagery - it was the most danced to work of the night; so dark, calming, rich and velvet in tonal sensation. Each phase break musically was so clean, but for the visuals, it almost didn’t register.
Kode9’s dystopian live audiovisual presentation amazed and shocked. The visuals based on their album Nøthing took the audience on a live tour of an evacuated, fully automated luxury hotel, ‘Nøtel’. This void built on nothing is crisp, chilling. While musically, it’s a deep, full throttle dance friendly experience many embraced.
The intellectual clash of sound and vision could be taken in a dark and serious manner or the dark subject matter referred to in passing, then just dance.
David O’Brien
When: 26 & 27 February
Where: Thebarton Theatre
Bookings: Closed
