Today’s header image has a special resonance for me, being part of the original sleeve design I proposed for the cover of wedding ceremony, the recent Cathnor disc. It is a photo I took on the evening of the Brussels recordings that make up most of the album, a shot of the curtains in my hotel room that for some reason seemed to perfectly resemble the music I had heard that evening. Anyway as I listened last night to a new Radu Malfatti composition played live, and then played (for the first time in ages) a couple of his b-boim discs this evening I was very much in a Radu mood and so hence my choice of tonight’s image. I’m going to try and find images to match my listening throughout this week, simply because I enjoy this kind of thinking about visual relationships to music, and as I am currently working on a number of sleeve designs it seemed relevant. That header image up there today obviously clashed with the colour schemes of the rest of the blog, but by the time you read this it may well have changed again anyway…

So about last night’s concert. Before mentioning the music its worth remembering this was a Sunday night gig, and so due to the idiotic wisdom of the people running our railway system here I was constantly clock-watching to be sure I left in time to catch the last train back home. I virtually ran out of the door as the last sound was made in the last set last night, so an apology is due to anyone I failed to say a goodbye to. I hate having to keep one eye on the time like this. When I have travelled away for a festival or similar and have a bed awaiting just down the road I always relax so much more and seem to enjoy the music easier. Ah well. I went for a walk when I got home this evening and fed a handful of grass to a couple of cows. You can’t do that in London I guess.

The concert last night was organised by David Papapostolou as the first in his Adjacent Café series of shows. A reasonably sized audience was on hand to catch the opening set by the duo of Angharad Davies and Lina Lapelyte, an (I think?) Lithuanian born violin and electronics player. Lapelyte ran an output from her violin into a laptop, which she used to process some of her sounds in a Durrantesque manner. We also had the rare pleasure of an amplified Angharad Davies as well, though her only added treatment was a volume pedal. I had little idea of what to expect, having never heard Lapelyte play before. The set began a little tentatively, with Angharad hanging a beautifully soft dry tone up in the air for Lina to sprinkle a few gritty scrapes over but with little progressing further out of it for a few minutes. The music took off towards the end of a softer, rhythmic, almost melodic middle section where the two violinists weaved revolving patterns around each other, later for the music to burst into a noisier, more aggressive passage for the last few minutes that really showed the promise of this duo. Angharad Davies’ utterly incredible touch goes without saying for those that have seen her perform, Lapelyte kept pace for the majority of this performance as well, and given a little time this may well become a partnership of some standing.

There then followed the centrepiece of the evening, the performance of Café Oto 1, a new composition written by Radu Malfatti specially for Dominic Lash to perform last night. The work is scored for double bass and pre-recorded sinewaves and focusses around Malfatti’s common concerns for gradually changing durations and pitch, the silences between them, and the interplay between the smooth perfection of the sinetones and the grainy growl of the bass. Dom Lash is an impressive musician. His range is just about unrivalled these days, as he is capable of playing raucous free jazz one day and incredibly spare, structured composition like this the next. His focus last night was excellent, and the audience were very respectful, letting the piece gradually unfurl over its half hour length. The score calls for carefully timed patches of slowly bowed deep bass spaced apart in a typical Malfatti pattern, with (I think) the length of the note played slowly decreasing and then increasing again and the sinetones forming similar shapes behind, the pitch of these changing throughout the piece following similar patterns. I really enjoyed this piece, but then you knew that already. Just the sheer delicacy of the music is enough to win me over each time. Very simple, vaguely mathematical and yet beautifully elegant, I was reminded of some of my favourite Ben Nicholson paintings as I listened last night. Wonderful stuff.

The evening then ended with a curious and really rather good trio improvisation by Benedict Drew, Matt Milton and Daniel Jones. Ben Drew’s downloadable music has attracted a bit of attention around the globe of late, but most of what has been listened to via the internet is not that representative of the music he has been making of late. Last night, as has often been the case recently the laptop was nowhere to be seen, and he worked with more basic, elemental sounds, amplified sheets of paper, a large block of polystyrene, small bells, and simple mixer feedback. He also had a stack of A4 paper displayed upright beside him on a music stand, each including typed text of some kind, some large enough to be clearly read, others too small to be legible at all. The texts I could read all seemed to pose questions or reflect thoughts about the intersection between music and written language. One of the early papers indeed included a kind of title for the set, Sound vs Language. Later sheets made more profound statements “research does not equal ownership” and the ironically amusing “Keith Rowe really likes Mark Rothko.” As Drew took each sheet from the stack he roughly wrapped it around a nearby microphone stood on its stand, sometimes taping it with a roll of wide (and very loud) clear tape. After scrunching the sheets over the mic he brought up the fader leading to that particular input, and as the paper naturally rested, unfolding slightly from its crinkled state this sound was magnified. Between these regular intermissions Drew added occasional, often quite ferocious sounds into the mix, his attacks on the amplified polystyrene with a violin bow were particularly impressive, sudden rips of almost Mattinesque violence.

As all of this went on, Dan Jones filled the spaces with a series of subtle electroacoustic tones and textures that stopped and started with almost regular abruptness, and Matt Milton studiously set about creating a series of rubbing, scraping sounds from his amplified violin while tying together in knots several bows that he had weaved through the strings of his instrument in a somewhat haphazard manner. If Drew seemed to provide the drama in the performance, the other two provided the perfect setting, creating a frame into which he could place his events. My eyes stayed open for this one right the way through, and I was reminded to some degree of the Unami/Meehan performance I saw in Scotland a few weeks back, as the performance seemed to extend beyond the merely audible, though I suspect that if you were to listen back to a recording of this performance it might actually sound really good, such was the sense of dramatic urgency in the music.

A really good set anyway. (I bet Phil J liked this one?) and a really nice evening all round. Good work David P.

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I also bought a really nice little selection of discs from 323 as well last night, including a couple of gems I certainly hadn’t set out to buy. Mark unearthed a copy of the very early Confront CDr album by the R.Davies/Durrant/Wastell/Burn quartet Assumed Possibilities that I snapped up very quickly. I think (I’m not certain) that this is the only CD issue from the early days of Confront that I did not already own. Looking froward to hearing it. I also picked up a copy of New sights, old sounds, a double disc of solo Derek Bailey that had previously escaped me, and having just played the first CD here now I am blown away as usual. New solo albums by Andrea Neumann and Lee Patterson sit here now too, so expect plenty more reviews this week!

Tomorrow night though, if all goes to plan at work I will be heading back to Oto to see two duos, one involving the aforementioned Phil Durrant in duo with Seijiro Murayama, a set I am very much looking forward to, plus the pairing of Ute Kanngiesser with Terry Day, a real young meets old grouping, the result of which I cannot predict. Ah, so much good music right now.