Minimalism
Liz Thomson
We’ve come a long way since 1971, when the audience at Madison Square Garden for the Concert for Bangladesh applauded when Ravi Shankar tuned up. Western audiences were first exposed to the sitar in 1965 when George Harrison played one on Rubber Soul, the earliest instance of the instrument being used in rock music. Soon it was all over the place, most often in the form of the Danelectro electric sitar, with its “buzz” bridge design offering an imitation of the sitar’s distinctive sound on an instrument easily playable by guitarists: unlike George Harrison, few took the time to master the Read more ...
stephen.walsh
It’s not often one comes out of a concert of mainly new works with a spring in one’s step. A sigh of relief is rather more usual. But this concert on Thursday by the Welsh new music ensemble Uproar was an exception, partly but by no means exclusively because of the brilliant performance of John Adams’s invigorating, even appropriately uproarious Son of Chamber Symphony with which it ended.Michael Rafferty, Uproar’s founder and conductor, had keyed the programme backwards from the 17-year-old Adams piece, naming the concert after it and commissioning three new works for roughly the same 17- Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It must be kind of unreal living in the Stereolab universe.A band of geeky introverts, beloved of the type of hairclip-and-satchel indie ultras a friend of mine used to call “the Scooby Gang” for their tendency to resemble Shaggy and Velma, over the past three decades they also became cool enough in fashion and celebrity circles to get multiple mentions in Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama, and etched into the very fabric of hip hop via fans like The Neptunes, J Dilla, Timbaland and Tyler, The Creator. Laetitia Sadier, one of the two sole continuous members of Stereolab along with Tim Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Under the guidance of director Ralph Rugoff, the Hayward Gallery seems hell bent on reducing art to the level of fun for all the family. And as though to prove the point, cretinous captions strip the work of all meaning beyond the banal, while press pictures showcase kids gazing at large sculptures.Their latest exhibition, When Forms Come Alive consists of sculptures by 21 artists, all of whom employ organic rather than geometric forms. “Dynamic, exuberant and playful, the works in this show, take visitors on an adventure into a world of fascinating forms,” says Rugoff.The “adventure” begins Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The Clore Ballroom at the Southbank Centre is usually an open-plan space within the foyer, a little ambiguous in its extent and purpose. Last night, for the first time, I saw it enclosed and separated off, ambiently lit and full of smoke, for the Paraorchestra to evoke a 1970s New York loft happening, only with iPhones and the smoke coming from machines and not the audience’s wacky-baccy.The music was inspired by the drones of 1970s minimalism and performed by a mixture of disabled and able-bodied professional instrumentalists, all dressed in white, led by their ringmaster Charles Hazlewood. Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Chameleon among orchestras, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra hung up its habitual classical cloak in favour of an evening of 20th and 21st century minimalism, curated, presented, and conducted by the star percussionist Colin Currie.That this was a different sort of concert was obvious from the outset; before the concert, DJ Dolphin Boy was installed in the Queen's Hall foyer (pictured below), filling the surrounding spaces with rich ambient noise. On a freezing cold Edinburgh night the long bar was a haven of warmth, jostling with heavy coats, pints and cocktails. More of a party than a concert Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
If there’s a better name for a vocal group than Roomful of Teeth I have yet to come across it. But if it conjures up images of brash, in-your-face showbiz the reality couldn’t be more different.This hip Grammy-winning American ensemble bill themselves as a “band” and their pieces as “tunes” – although there are precious few conventional tunes in their repertoire – and present themselves in a low-key, un-histrionic manner, setting out to “mine the expressive potential of the human voice” through largely self-commissioned music.At Milton Court on Saturday their repertoire included music by Read more ...
Joe Muggs
It’s easy to take Sigur Rós’s emotive force for granted. So ubiquitous has their 2005 “Hoppípolla” been on everything from talent shows to apocalyptic environmental collapse documentaries to lyrical scenes of birds in flight that it became the archetypal tear-jerking music of the modern era. Everything about the band was designed with weapons-grade effectiveness for omniemotional impact.Jón Þór “Jónsi” Birgisson’s voice is androgynous, and his made up “Hopelandic” language makes it seem like he’s singing folk songs of all cultures and none – almost as if he’s inhabiting a shared Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Contrary to the title’s implication, there initially seems to be little movement in Arch of Motion. A note is held on an organ. Then another note comes in and is also held. Chords build up gradually. Maybe one or two ascending or descending notes come and go. And that seems to be it.But when Track Five arrives, the mood brightens and the sonic pallete becomes more broad. The drone on “Mending (Light Pressure)” might be an analogue synth. Next, “Conversation” adds a breathy wordless voice – celestial, wraith-like. After this, the crepuscular “Inhale” features what seem to be actual words. In Read more ...
Joe Muggs
The three Canadians Richie Hawtin (Plastikman), Jason Beck (Chilly Gonzales) and Tiga Sontag (aka just Tiga, who exec produced this album) are each so laden with image and persona it is easy to forget they are musicians sometimes. Hawtin has since the early Nineties not only brought techno to mass audiences, but adorned it with all kinds of conceptual and design spectacle in arenas and galleries as much as in nighclubs. Sontag too, has turned dance music into theatre to huge success, albeit in a much more knowing, camp sense ever since the turn of the millennium electroclash era. And the Read more ...
Joe Muggs
There’s a strand of music that a friend of mine once referred to as “Caveman Electronics”, which snakes through the decades, never quite becoming a genre. It’s surfaced in scenes and moments like postpunk and electroclash, you can hear it in bands like Add N to (X) and maverick house/techno producers like Jamal Moss and Funkineven. You can trace it back through Cabaret Voltaire’s breakthrough and Suicide back to “Popcorn”, and even Joe Meek’s productions. It’s not about “lo-fi”, more “differently fi”: a relish in the fine details of distortion, the beautiful geometries of the most rigid Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Drew Daniel is never short of concepts, invention or mischief. As one half of Matmos, with his life partner M.C. Schmidt, he has made some 10 official albums and many more collaborative ones – all pushing the boundaries of electronic bricolage and sound processing in the pursuit of extremely complex ideas about American history, plastic surgery, philosophy, queer identity and all that kind of stuff. Occasionally, as Soft Pink Truth, he has made more overtly dance records, but even these are heavily loaded with twisted intellect, including as they do an album of anarcho-punk covers and one of Read more ...