svarte greiner at king's arms review
Friday night saw the most recent event from Room Tones headlined by Svarte Greiner with Gary Fisher and Operations + Appetites in support. It took place upstairs at the Kings Arms in Salford. The space there, which is pretty small, was satisfyingly full. Advertised as 7:30pm the doors actually opened around 8 and Gary didn't start until about 9. Given the delay I won't be able to provide as much detail as I'd like because I've simply forgotten. This is due to my ongoing connection problems at home that I moan about at the end of this post.
Writing from extensive experience of previous performances I suggested you should expect crepuscular gestures from Gary's performance. I was completely wrong. The array of delay and loop pedals, microphone, small cymbal, cassette recorders etc. was familiar, but the magnificent noise he generated was pretty unusual. It started relatively quietly but built up a series of tones, sometimes coming close to feeding back. Characteristically there was a brief stray noise cutting across the gently fading sounds close to the end.
An instance of how I've forgotten is that I know at the end of his performance Gary returned to a sound used at the beginning but have no recollection of what that was. I also seem to remember the loops generating a strong rhythmic pulse. I do remember the cymbal being used to this effect. Anyone who's every played about with a cymbal will tell you that even with a fairly light touch there's a narrow band of sound emanating from rim that's much louder and more drone-like than the noises normally associated with the cymbal. Gary used this by striking the cymbal then lowering it in front of the mic building humming waves from looping this sound.
Operations + Appetites kept winning and then losing my attention. With a delay pedals and reverb in particular they played and bowed guitars to generate slowly developing tones. To begin with they came across rather like a slow-motion Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but then shifted away to become a little lighter and less anchored. I lost interest briefly. I started to pay attention again when they added vocal wails and drones run through pedals. More of that sort of thing might have been interesting to explore. Overall I liked the performance with a couple of lacunae, although some friends got a bit sick of the echo - and to be fair the ubiquity of delay pedals in all the sets.
Finally Svarte Greiner peformed to the accompaniment of his own projection - a nice, uneventful monochrome film of trees and foliage being gently blown, the image in two symmetrical halfs generating phantom faces. His drones were much more compelling than Operations + Appetites, and he generated some very un-guitar like sounds. He started by striking the guitar body to produce bell-like, though obviously less sharp, sounds. Again some of the detail of what follows has been forgotten. I remember that many of the sounds produced were more light gestures than crude statements, and there was a subtlety of detail that the other performers hadn't really been able to produce.
Around halfway through he used sounds from a couple of records using a turntable he had, although they were very discreet. I think the records were sound effects discs, but it was hard to tell exactly what sounds they were producing, or even whether they were being played at the intended speeds. There did seem to be sound rather like a vocal wail, although I couldn't say if that's what it actually was.
Incidentally I was told on the night that tomorrow's Salford Concert at Islington Mill with Ryu Hankil, THF Drenching and Ben Gwilliam is the last in the series. I think because the university have withdrawn funding. Presumably this relates to the massive funding cuts faced by universities. So if you've never been to one now's your last chance. Unless you want to go to the Knives, Forks and Spoons poetry reading in The Crescent up the road. Whatever. It's your life. I'm off to the Mill personally. As if you cared.
A brief moan, again, that I have absolutely no connection at home with the Mac now. Even when it claims to be connected it can't bring up any pages. That just leaves a non-3G phone, which is fiddly, limited and slow, or the Wii which doesn't display pdf's and some other file types (flash for one), doesn't seem to have the ability to cut and paste, doesn't seem to display URL's anywhere when I hover over links (not great for security and why my twitter account got hacked a few weeks back), and isn't great for typing even when my keyboard's plugged in.
Basically although the Wii does allow me to briefly answer emails it's shit for everything else. Which is scanning, uploading images and sounds, editing documents, sending documents, reading documents, opening attachments and so on. Basically everything I actually want at home. Consequently I'm reliant on being able to grab enough time at work to write posts, and then use breaks, lunch, and time after work to post them. I suspect the router (Buffalo) may be part of the problem.
Writing from extensive experience of previous performances I suggested you should expect crepuscular gestures from Gary's performance. I was completely wrong. The array of delay and loop pedals, microphone, small cymbal, cassette recorders etc. was familiar, but the magnificent noise he generated was pretty unusual. It started relatively quietly but built up a series of tones, sometimes coming close to feeding back. Characteristically there was a brief stray noise cutting across the gently fading sounds close to the end.
An instance of how I've forgotten is that I know at the end of his performance Gary returned to a sound used at the beginning but have no recollection of what that was. I also seem to remember the loops generating a strong rhythmic pulse. I do remember the cymbal being used to this effect. Anyone who's every played about with a cymbal will tell you that even with a fairly light touch there's a narrow band of sound emanating from rim that's much louder and more drone-like than the noises normally associated with the cymbal. Gary used this by striking the cymbal then lowering it in front of the mic building humming waves from looping this sound.
Operations + Appetites kept winning and then losing my attention. With a delay pedals and reverb in particular they played and bowed guitars to generate slowly developing tones. To begin with they came across rather like a slow-motion Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but then shifted away to become a little lighter and less anchored. I lost interest briefly. I started to pay attention again when they added vocal wails and drones run through pedals. More of that sort of thing might have been interesting to explore. Overall I liked the performance with a couple of lacunae, although some friends got a bit sick of the echo - and to be fair the ubiquity of delay pedals in all the sets.
Finally Svarte Greiner peformed to the accompaniment of his own projection - a nice, uneventful monochrome film of trees and foliage being gently blown, the image in two symmetrical halfs generating phantom faces. His drones were much more compelling than Operations + Appetites, and he generated some very un-guitar like sounds. He started by striking the guitar body to produce bell-like, though obviously less sharp, sounds. Again some of the detail of what follows has been forgotten. I remember that many of the sounds produced were more light gestures than crude statements, and there was a subtlety of detail that the other performers hadn't really been able to produce.
Around halfway through he used sounds from a couple of records using a turntable he had, although they were very discreet. I think the records were sound effects discs, but it was hard to tell exactly what sounds they were producing, or even whether they were being played at the intended speeds. There did seem to be sound rather like a vocal wail, although I couldn't say if that's what it actually was.
Incidentally I was told on the night that tomorrow's Salford Concert at Islington Mill with Ryu Hankil, THF Drenching and Ben Gwilliam is the last in the series. I think because the university have withdrawn funding. Presumably this relates to the massive funding cuts faced by universities. So if you've never been to one now's your last chance. Unless you want to go to the Knives, Forks and Spoons poetry reading in The Crescent up the road. Whatever. It's your life. I'm off to the Mill personally. As if you cared.
A brief moan, again, that I have absolutely no connection at home with the Mac now. Even when it claims to be connected it can't bring up any pages. That just leaves a non-3G phone, which is fiddly, limited and slow, or the Wii which doesn't display pdf's and some other file types (flash for one), doesn't seem to have the ability to cut and paste, doesn't seem to display URL's anywhere when I hover over links (not great for security and why my twitter account got hacked a few weeks back), and isn't great for typing even when my keyboard's plugged in.
Basically although the Wii does allow me to briefly answer emails it's shit for everything else. Which is scanning, uploading images and sounds, editing documents, sending documents, reading documents, opening attachments and so on. Basically everything I actually want at home. Consequently I'm reliant on being able to grab enough time at work to write posts, and then use breaks, lunch, and time after work to post them. I suspect the router (Buffalo) may be part of the problem.
Comments
Hope that's a smidgeon of help.
The fact I can't open or send documents, see URLs before I follow links, cut and paste, see more than about a dozen words I'm typing at a time, scan or upload is the real problem. Oh, and PDF. I come across the need to use PDFs a lot.