Very dissapointing beginning as we hoped to get Ali a ticket on the door but it was completely sold out. So he got to wander round Glasgow on his own while I went in and listened to sound art and felt bad.
I heard/saw
Giant Tank + Akira making sounds, experimental, musical, visual, playful, controlled. see more:
Free Form Local
Radu Malfatti and Klaus Filip. Here's what Instal has to say about them:
Who: Radu is one of the most un-stuck-up yet quietly radical composers you'd care to meet. Klaus is a pioneering laptop improviser, musician and software programmer.
What: Radu plays a trombone, Klaus creates pure sine waves: they sound on their own, or sometimes together and often with considerable space and silence.
Why: Not a lot happens, just sound events to be listened to and spaces where sounds might occur. You bring as much to it as the musicians. The music is full of possibilities: of texture and colour, irregularities and questions.
The performance was delicate, precise, minimal. The space was the opposite, the sound barely made an impact on the roaring acoustic. A steady deep rumble of trains passing directly above us made it seem a rather obvious mistake to make; minimal sound art below the busiest train station in Scotland. We strained, eyes closed, to concentrate on what we knew must somehow be brilliant. The cheap, uncomfortable plastic chairs creaked embarrassingly loudly with the slightest movement. So whilst worrying about Ali wandering the streets on his own, aurally wading threw the sewage to get to the pure sound and trying my best to sit as still as possible while my back slowly played up again, sending shooting pains up my spine I found myself performing a test of endurance. Maybe it was all a trick.
The next piece was better... loud. Very loud. And fun.
Nikos Veliotis destroyed his cello, in a very manly way with an ax and heavy-duty DIY equipment. Here's what Barry has to say:
Every note that it's possible to play on the cello, each played and recorded as a one hour drone then played back all at the same time, while the cello that was played for the recording process (which took 2 months) is turned to powder and bottled.
If it's every note possible to play on a cello, all played at once, then in a way it's every possible piece of music (less than 1 hour) for cello. A kind of complete works for cello. You might as well destroy it after that.
The power cut out half way through the piece. It took a while to re-wire. The man next to me asked me if my back was alright, I was touched by his concern. It was generally quite entertaining. Nice and loud, things happening. Audience participation. Then Barry came on and told them an hour was up, the performance would need to finish elsewhere. I missed out on the wee jar of cello powder they were intending to distribute at the end. Barry gave Nikos a hug to make up for the forced displacement of the performance. I think it worked. I'm starting to like kytn better.
Then I phoned Ali. He was reading a book and feeling cold, we arranged to meet for dinner.
Then... highlight, there was Steve McCaffery
Who: A leading Yorkshire/ Canadian language/ action/ sound poet since the early 70's.
What: He'll be performing his groundbreaking typewriter concrete poem Carnival. It's a beautiful, dizzying mandala of text, symbols, fonts and rubber stamps. And it's a kind of book as reading machine.
We all got a rather lovely poster that turned out to be the script of the poem. I loved it. Starting to fall for concrete poetry.
Then we ate a burger and went home.
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