(05.29.07) TAKING to the stage for a wonderfully elongated evening of experimental and ambient music included openers The Phonographers Union, Son of Rose, Loscil and headliner Vladislav Delay. Before the event, there was also an Ableton Live Workshop offered by Lusine.
The polished acoustics for the show featured the vivid clarity of the powerful KV2 sound system. Tonight the Phonographers Union included Dale Lloyd (And/Oar), Chris DeLaurenti (Met Life, Electroshock) and a large cast of nine other players (some newbies to the collective) they kicked things off. For what looked like a contemporary last supper scene, replacing water and wine with yards of wires and glowing Apple logos, these folks played as a well-oiled machine. Partly improvised, they combined field recordings by mixing and processing them live. The sound was clean and contained the drones of everyday street sounds, Krishna chants, edits from nature. The less coordinated, and more abstract the composition became, the more interesting it was to get lost in the mix. At what was perhaps the crescendo, a big blurry bass buzz combined with a fuzzy high pitched wave that went on uncomfortably long, then it was right back into the complex weaving of shared sounds. For such a variety of musicians working together, harmonious it was. And they even looked like they were enjoying themselves.
Seattle’s Son of Rose (Kamran Sadeghi) performed sitting between an grand piano and a few laptops. During his slightly overlong set there was a vast bloom of tonality. When he powered on it was strictly digital pitch, sine wave, asymmetrically academic. But as the program continued he broke things down into a warmer, broader and sexier flex of harmonies. The purity of his sonic framework was unfortunately corrupted prematurely by an audience member who couldn’t keep still. Some guy discordantly hooted and hollered before he ended his set… way before. It was at one of those pin-drop moments that just made things awkward. But Sadeghi (Dragon’s Eye Recordings) carried on and only got bolder, in what seemed like a musical retort, by delivering a tour de force of electronic sounds, both familiar and foreign.
Kranky recording artist Loscil (Scott Morgan) followed, accompanied by a vibraphonist. His signature warbling layers of ambience drift with both sprite elements and dark nodes that just sounded fantastic in this duet. Though the trained listener could hear the fidget between elements, as the sticks were mic’d too high. There were a few moments where their cues seemed skant, but when it was on, there was a calculated fusion like the tendrils of an iceberg set adrift into a fluid dreamstate. And the accompanying video of dripping colorful liquids couldn’t have fit more snugly, adding flair to the flame. These two gentlemen played music that was warm enough to enact a trance with enough of a sophisticated boom-boom to smack of a startling aloof stare in the face of the moment.
Finland’s electro-experimental poster-boy Vladislav Delay proved he is still at the top of his game with a presentation that could only be summarized as a big tease. After taking to the stage he went from 0-60 by offering a completely fractured set of broken beats and a myriad of pop-meets-not riffs. Delay built-up and tore down several running themes with percussion aplenty, and quirky hooks that were radical. Bleeps, tinny sounds, gyrations, repetition, bass bellow. Just when you think he will “go there” he takes another counter turn. What he does live is most unexpected, and much less calculated than his recordings like the brand-new Whistleblower (Huume Recordings). What pulls his sound together and apart are the depths of his darkest chords, and his unpredictable aims… which may seem to some schizo, but play on a sense of trap and release. Instead of becoming repetitious and placating, Delay analyzes the way his sound meets his body in real time. It was fun to watch him groove during some of the most warped parts of his spry performance. His use of muffled, industrial blurts alongside whirring siren-like spiraling sets him apart from the typical player, never assuming of his audience or becoming dependent on the groove alone. Delay, instead, toys with your expectations, and then some.
For more information about Decibel Festival, visit their website here.
