Metal Machine Trio tour, April 2010

Saturday April 17, The Junction, Cambridge.

Metal Machine Trio - Lou Reed on guitars, Ulrich Krieger on tenor saxophone and Sarth Calhoun on continuum and live processing - opened their first European tour in Cambridge to enthusiastic audience reaction. Although named after Lou Reed's 1975 album Metal Machine Music, this trio does not attempt a faithful recreation of the album as has been done with so many classic albums, including Reed's own Berlin. Instead, they play music inspired by it and in a similar vein; the publicity advertised, "A NIGHT OF DEEP NOISE" and, just in case anyone imagined that Lou Reed might perform "Perfect Day"  or "White Light White Heat", it added, "NO SONGS. NO VOCALS". Nonetheless, a small proportion of the audience had obviouly not read that and did seem to hold out hopes that Reed would sing...

From the moment that the audience entered the gig, such hopes were challenged and soon dissipated. Onstage, alone, four electric guitars lent against speakers, feeding back in a recreation of the methodology of the original Metal Machine Music album.  Initially, the resulting sounds were not the high pitched screech many would associate  with the word "feedback", but a more organic throbbing sound. Intermittently, one or more of the trio would visit the stage to tinker with the levels, thus shifting the characteristics of the feedback. As the time approached for the trio to take the stage, the feedback became louder and more bass heavy, a sound sure to get adrenaline pumping and set pulses racing.

The trio performance was a tour-de-force unbroken set of two hours. The three players played a variety of music that encompassed ambient, industrial, noise, rock, r'n'b and more. For much of the time the focus was on Reed and Krieger, with the saxophonist being the more extrovert performer. At the side of the stage, Calhoun was a constant hive of activity but he never sought the limelight, preferring to let his music speak for itself.

Despite the length of the set and its comprehensive approach, once it was over the audience applauded and called for more. It was difficult to see what the trio could add to what they had already produced. After this gig, the trio moved to Oxford and London and then across Europe. Always NO SONGS. They don't need them!

 If you missed the tour, here is You Tube footage from their appearance in Copenhagen on April 24th 2010:

Fiction about music

I have just finished reading Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber and Faber, 2009), a book of five short stories all connected with music and musicians. As fiction about music, it is effective and engaging because it concentrates on the musicians relationships rather than on their music. However, the fact that they are musicians is central to the entire book. Nonetheless, it only scratches the surface of the subject that I have never found properly tackled in fiction - what makes musicians tick.

The books that get closest to that subject are But Beautiful by Geoff Dyer and The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor. The first is a fictionalised version of historical facts while the second is about a saxophone-playing bear (surprise!), so neither really delivers, despite each being an excellent read. 

So, my search continues. Any suggestions will be gratefully received (but please remember, I'm talking about fiction so no suggestions of biogs etc.)

Eddie Prevost's Workshop (Part 2: Modus operandi)

Friday April 2

So, here I was back at Eddie Prevost's weekly workshop for the second week in succession and the third time overall - enough to start to make me feel like a regular. As it was Good Friday, Eddie himself was away, leaving a gap to be filled. Guitarist Ross Lambert, a longtime workshop veteran and stalwart, ably stood in for Eddie, giving the all-important introductory talk and selecting the groupings to play together at the end. To help you make sense of that, maybe I should tell you a bit more about how the workshop operates...

Each week the workshop meets in the basement of a chapel on Southwark Bridge Road, within walking distance of Tate Modern. Typically, the workshop attracts between ten and twenty players, some of whom attend regularly, some occasionally, some once only. According to Eddie, the exact same group of players has never assembled twice. The players are seated in a ring, evenly spaced a comfortable distance apart. Those with equipment such as electronics or a short-wave radio will have a table in front of them. There is an upright piano in one corner of the room.

The brief introductory talk emphasises that the workshop is a safe space, a place to try out new ideas and to experiment. After it, the lights are dimmed to a comfortable level, and an adjacent pair of players (let's call them A and B) are chosen to start playing a duo. There is no set duration for a duo; it is at the discretion of the players themselves. When player A stops playing (often indicating so with a look or a nod to player C on the other side of B) C begins and the duo of B and C continues to play. And so on anticlockwise around the ring, C & D, D & E etc, ending up with N & A, bringing the duo full circle. By then, every player will have played in two duos, one with each of their immediate neighbours. The rest of the time they will have been sitting and listening. Depending on how many players attend, these opening duos altogether last up to an hour and three quarters.

The most noticeable thing about these opening duos is how truly experimental the players are, being uninhibited and unafraid to try things out. It is also remarkable how restrained they are, with the players in a duo not crowding each other, allowing each other space to play in and responding to each other's playing. Of course, there are occasional duos that are incompatible but they generally persist with peaceful co-existence and run on parallel tracks, often with surprisingly successful results. For myself, one effect of the restraint is that I have not yet cut loose and blown all out, something which seems true of other saxophone players there. Instead, I have opted for a quieter, more textural approach, which produces sounds more akin to electronics. This week, to emphasise this aspect of my playing - and to experiment - I opted to amplify my sax so as to hear the internal sounds of the horn. To do this, I inserted a microphone into the bell of the sax and also surrounded it with cloth in order to dampen down the sound coming out of the bell. When plugged into a small amplifier, the resulting sounds were quite unsaxlike.One of my duos was with electronics, and the two combined into a soundscape where the sax and electronics were at times indistinguishable. There is further scope for experimentation here; I may try and get hold of a cheap volume pedal soon. Electronics player Daichi Yoshikawa was not there tonight, as he was working at Cafe Oto. I am keen to hear how we work as a duo, and am looking forward to the two of us collaborating soon.

Anyway, after the opening duos are complete, whoever is leading then asks various larger groupings (often trios) to play together. The choices of personnel are based on what the leader has heard during the duos. This week, as there were fourteen of us present (and time was short because the duos went on quite a long time) Ross opted for two septets, plus a quartet and a trio. After the duos, it was a strange experience to play in a larger grouping - the larger the grouping, the stranger it feels. In the septet, I had to be very conscious not to hide or to underplay. In the quartet, I felt more exposed and was conscious again not to opt out or hide, which is easily done.

After everyone has packed away and paid their £3 subs (to pay for the hire of the hall), there is a tradition that all the players go to a local pub in order to chat and socialise. This aspect of the workshop is in keeping with the underlying ethos, which is supportive and communal with no emphasis on individual egos. For the next two Fridays, I cannot attend the workshop, having other commitments (gigs by Mats Gustafsson and by Humcrush). I am greatly looking forward to both of those, but already feel a sense of regret at missing the workshop. Yes, I am beginning to feel like a regular...