this is the voice of re:mote induction.Wednesday, November 26, 2003
instal 2003 - i'll start with my periodic disclaimer, i hate doing live reviews. there is something so transitory about the live environment, and with that my thoughts and feelings about that. you can't hit play again and re-examine what happened. so it is all so momentary and done. i hate writing about that.
which also gets me thinking about a piece of hate mail we got a while a go in relation to live reviews. we all got emailed about our live reviews, told off for hating everything - with conclusions like we didn't get out often enough, and if we hated everything why didn't we bother going out? which of course makes lots of sense. but the answer? why do i keep going to gigs? a lot of the time it is curiosity. but i'm always looking for something to interest and excite. to inspire to some degree. which always seems to be harder than it should be.
how is any of that relevant to instal? this is the third year that the instal event has been run at the arches in glasgow, and it is also the must disappointing and unsatisfying year yet. in the past highlights have been clear. in 2001 the highlights were fennesz and koji asano. in 2002 the highlights were ryoki ikeda and alva noto. this year? hmm.
with bands like merzbow and whitehouse playing this year there was a lot of excitement being associated with instal 03. it sold out this year, not so sure that it has in the past, and there was certainly a big crowd there.
unlike previous years the performances only alternated between two arches, one of which was seated. for the room with the standing, the stage was at a decent height and we had a pretty good view. for the seating area the stage was too low and you couldn't really see half of what was going on - especially given that the acts on this stage tended to be sitting down.
for the third year local improv-avant-classical purveyors the paragorn ensemble were on the bill. the last two years they really haven't done anything very interesting. so we went straight to the bar when we got in this year. which meant we could still hear the sound carrying through from two arches away, but didn't have to crowd in or watch them. although it did sound as though it was perhaps their best performance yet, we could hear enough from where we were.
whitehouse are mentioned in hushed voices in certain circles as being incredibly influential on the power electronics/industrial noise scene. despite having scottish connections they don't seem to have played in scotland before this year. there was a gig at omptimo earlier in the year, but due to the queues to get in there was no way we were getting in. so now we had our chance to see what the fuss was about, to deal with our curiosity. whitehouse are a joke. even those that did enjoy their set did so because they found their posturing funny. these two grey and balding men get up on stage, with their shirts open to reveal bony chests, and sun glasses to make them look cool. they start their noise machines going and its very repetitive. they swagger about, making changes here and there. then take turns shouting absurdities and swearing into a microphone. they exude a charisma somewhere between barry manilow and sylvester mccoy - with sylvester's hysterical warbling. they flex their muscles, strip to the waist, get the audience to shout rock and roll. and are generally so bad that at times you can't help but burst out laughing at their antics. but on the whole they were pretty pathetic.
ryoji ikeda, highlight from last year, and from the recent kill your timid notion, which was put on by the same curator, returned to instal with a new piece. a set which made use of a wall of marshall amps, switching sound between those and Mylar speakers. musically it was a departure, starting off more as crunching industrialised dance music. which bemused us as a starting piece. the set evolved so that it became more cut up, interspersed with some of the pulses and bass stabs that ikeda is more known for. these were striking given the nature of the speakers and you could feel the results. at points there were vocal samples mixed in, some seeming to hark back to bursts in last years set, and reminding of tracks like his contribution to the END ID compilation of experimental musics. on the whole ikeda's set wasn't bad, and i pretty much enjoyed it, however having seen him twice before this was the least inspiring/interesting performance i had seen him give.
cosmos were on next, back in the sitting area, two japanese girls, one crouched down so you could barely see her the other standing behind a mic. cosmos is sachiko m and ami yoshida, who according to the event flyer we should have expected "distilling elements of techno, nose and electronic music into a unique hybrid" and "abstract vocalizations that both jar and rival the extremity of sound sachiko throws out". the bar was closed, and moved into an arch further away, people were told that this performance was going to be quiet so to keep background noise down. a plan that didn't entirely work as sachiko delivered a monotonous sine wave, with occasional attempts at adding something to the mix, which failed. while ami stood and coughed and hacked at the mic, giving the impression she had something stuck in her throat or was about to be sick - producing wan, half hearted noise that didn't rival or jar anything. i had high hopes for this set, i had heard sachiko m through her work with toshimaru nakamura, who played glasgow before; both sachiko and ami have been described as being involved with the onkyo scene, which the little of i've heard has been interesting. but this set was uninspired and not very interesting.
merzbow has been doing a series of dates in the uk over the last week or two. if not the first, then very rare dates in the uk. merzbow is the king of japanese noise music, known around the world for the noise that he churns out on endless CDs. he is well known and raved about by many, though personally the handful of releases i've heard have failed to impress, i've heard noise which has been more interesting to me. with that there is a certain reputation/curiosity that goes with merzbow, reports of how light shatteringly loud a gig a couple of nights before was, only adds to the expectations. merzbow was sat behind a table on the higher stage, on which it looked like he had two laptops and a mixer. as expected he certainly produced noise, though everyone seemed to be complaining that he was not very loud and was actually pretty tame. sound wise i actually found him better than i expected, the glitchy squeal of tape loops present in some of the pieces i've heard wasn't part of this. rather it was in denser, growling, bristling noise territory, which is more my kind of thing. though there were parts where it started to feel like he was going on a bit, he did vary it, which kept the set from becoming entirely stagnant, but perhaps should have shifted sooner. overall better than i expected, but still not exciting.
amm were greeted with a round of applause in the seated hall before they had even done anything. keith rowe, eddie prevost and john tilbury are hailed as great innovators and hugely influential in the improv and experimental scenes. the set they performed here was filled with stray piano notes, scraped strings and general concrete soundscapes, which i've heard loads of times before. someone behind me started to discuss how they preferred the all out assault of merzbow's noise to this "so-so ambient". in the end that kind of summed up this set that we started to feel like we could fall asleep during.
being more interested in the electronic bands it then came as a surprise that the boredoms were the highlight of the night for me. performing a special set as v(infinity)redoms they had a set up of three drum kits in a circle facing the main guy who was doing electronics and offering a certain amount of conduction to the group. shimmering blossoms of cymbal washes started the set, building into thick drumming - which at times ranged from rapid assaults to more coordinated and hard rituals. throughout which the main guy contributed accompanying electronics and enthusiastic shouting. at points through the set the one girl amongst the group would also sing, use a whistle and do some other bits and pieces. the boredoms lent an energy and enthusiasm which seemed to be lacking from the sterility of the event as a whole. at times they maintained sections for too long, but on the whole their set was at least fun.
vibracathedral were the last band on, and not one i was especially familiar with. the people i did know that had seen them before didn't say encouraging things about them. it was also getting late and people were already starting to leave. so we decided that after everything else we might as well leave on something of a high.
which also gets me thinking about a piece of hate mail we got a while a go in relation to live reviews. we all got emailed about our live reviews, told off for hating everything - with conclusions like we didn't get out often enough, and if we hated everything why didn't we bother going out? which of course makes lots of sense. but the answer? why do i keep going to gigs? a lot of the time it is curiosity. but i'm always looking for something to interest and excite. to inspire to some degree. which always seems to be harder than it should be.
how is any of that relevant to instal? this is the third year that the instal event has been run at the arches in glasgow, and it is also the must disappointing and unsatisfying year yet. in the past highlights have been clear. in 2001 the highlights were fennesz and koji asano. in 2002 the highlights were ryoki ikeda and alva noto. this year? hmm.
with bands like merzbow and whitehouse playing this year there was a lot of excitement being associated with instal 03. it sold out this year, not so sure that it has in the past, and there was certainly a big crowd there.
unlike previous years the performances only alternated between two arches, one of which was seated. for the room with the standing, the stage was at a decent height and we had a pretty good view. for the seating area the stage was too low and you couldn't really see half of what was going on - especially given that the acts on this stage tended to be sitting down.
for the third year local improv-avant-classical purveyors the paragorn ensemble were on the bill. the last two years they really haven't done anything very interesting. so we went straight to the bar when we got in this year. which meant we could still hear the sound carrying through from two arches away, but didn't have to crowd in or watch them. although it did sound as though it was perhaps their best performance yet, we could hear enough from where we were.
whitehouse are mentioned in hushed voices in certain circles as being incredibly influential on the power electronics/industrial noise scene. despite having scottish connections they don't seem to have played in scotland before this year. there was a gig at omptimo earlier in the year, but due to the queues to get in there was no way we were getting in. so now we had our chance to see what the fuss was about, to deal with our curiosity. whitehouse are a joke. even those that did enjoy their set did so because they found their posturing funny. these two grey and balding men get up on stage, with their shirts open to reveal bony chests, and sun glasses to make them look cool. they start their noise machines going and its very repetitive. they swagger about, making changes here and there. then take turns shouting absurdities and swearing into a microphone. they exude a charisma somewhere between barry manilow and sylvester mccoy - with sylvester's hysterical warbling. they flex their muscles, strip to the waist, get the audience to shout rock and roll. and are generally so bad that at times you can't help but burst out laughing at their antics. but on the whole they were pretty pathetic.
ryoji ikeda, highlight from last year, and from the recent kill your timid notion, which was put on by the same curator, returned to instal with a new piece. a set which made use of a wall of marshall amps, switching sound between those and Mylar speakers. musically it was a departure, starting off more as crunching industrialised dance music. which bemused us as a starting piece. the set evolved so that it became more cut up, interspersed with some of the pulses and bass stabs that ikeda is more known for. these were striking given the nature of the speakers and you could feel the results. at points there were vocal samples mixed in, some seeming to hark back to bursts in last years set, and reminding of tracks like his contribution to the END ID compilation of experimental musics. on the whole ikeda's set wasn't bad, and i pretty much enjoyed it, however having seen him twice before this was the least inspiring/interesting performance i had seen him give.
cosmos were on next, back in the sitting area, two japanese girls, one crouched down so you could barely see her the other standing behind a mic. cosmos is sachiko m and ami yoshida, who according to the event flyer we should have expected "distilling elements of techno, nose and electronic music into a unique hybrid" and "abstract vocalizations that both jar and rival the extremity of sound sachiko throws out". the bar was closed, and moved into an arch further away, people were told that this performance was going to be quiet so to keep background noise down. a plan that didn't entirely work as sachiko delivered a monotonous sine wave, with occasional attempts at adding something to the mix, which failed. while ami stood and coughed and hacked at the mic, giving the impression she had something stuck in her throat or was about to be sick - producing wan, half hearted noise that didn't rival or jar anything. i had high hopes for this set, i had heard sachiko m through her work with toshimaru nakamura, who played glasgow before; both sachiko and ami have been described as being involved with the onkyo scene, which the little of i've heard has been interesting. but this set was uninspired and not very interesting.
merzbow has been doing a series of dates in the uk over the last week or two. if not the first, then very rare dates in the uk. merzbow is the king of japanese noise music, known around the world for the noise that he churns out on endless CDs. he is well known and raved about by many, though personally the handful of releases i've heard have failed to impress, i've heard noise which has been more interesting to me. with that there is a certain reputation/curiosity that goes with merzbow, reports of how light shatteringly loud a gig a couple of nights before was, only adds to the expectations. merzbow was sat behind a table on the higher stage, on which it looked like he had two laptops and a mixer. as expected he certainly produced noise, though everyone seemed to be complaining that he was not very loud and was actually pretty tame. sound wise i actually found him better than i expected, the glitchy squeal of tape loops present in some of the pieces i've heard wasn't part of this. rather it was in denser, growling, bristling noise territory, which is more my kind of thing. though there were parts where it started to feel like he was going on a bit, he did vary it, which kept the set from becoming entirely stagnant, but perhaps should have shifted sooner. overall better than i expected, but still not exciting.
amm were greeted with a round of applause in the seated hall before they had even done anything. keith rowe, eddie prevost and john tilbury are hailed as great innovators and hugely influential in the improv and experimental scenes. the set they performed here was filled with stray piano notes, scraped strings and general concrete soundscapes, which i've heard loads of times before. someone behind me started to discuss how they preferred the all out assault of merzbow's noise to this "so-so ambient". in the end that kind of summed up this set that we started to feel like we could fall asleep during.
being more interested in the electronic bands it then came as a surprise that the boredoms were the highlight of the night for me. performing a special set as v(infinity)redoms they had a set up of three drum kits in a circle facing the main guy who was doing electronics and offering a certain amount of conduction to the group. shimmering blossoms of cymbal washes started the set, building into thick drumming - which at times ranged from rapid assaults to more coordinated and hard rituals. throughout which the main guy contributed accompanying electronics and enthusiastic shouting. at points through the set the one girl amongst the group would also sing, use a whistle and do some other bits and pieces. the boredoms lent an energy and enthusiasm which seemed to be lacking from the sterility of the event as a whole. at times they maintained sections for too long, but on the whole their set was at least fun.
vibracathedral were the last band on, and not one i was especially familiar with. the people i did know that had seen them before didn't say encouraging things about them. it was also getting late and people were already starting to leave. so we decided that after everything else we might as well leave on something of a high.
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