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Non-Stick Erratic Carvery

Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh
Sunday February 13th
4 stars
Lazy Sunday afternoons in the Botanics will never be the same again
after this all-day extravaganza of nine acts culled from Edinburgh’s
fecund experimental hiss-and-mist scene set in the ornate upstairs
gallery of Inverleith House. Headlined by out-of-town guests
Jazzfinger, a series of mix-and-match collaborations between assorted
members of Scrim, Muscletusk, Hockyfrilla and Fordell Research Unit
came complete with natural light and the eerie outside silence outside
once darkness fell.

Cartoon sound-art double-act Usurper added a meta-narrative to their
usual japes by recreating the noise of their willfully absent
kindergarten junkyard kit using vocal noises rather than manufactured
ones. Deadhestcess was a loose alignment of Helhesten’s theatrical
sound poetics and Muscletusk/Dead Labour Process’s vocal deconstruction
of counter-cultural anti-psychiatric guru R.D. Laing’s volume of
word-game dialogues, ‘Knots.’ As dusk turned to black night, Duncan
Harrison’s presented a triptych of contrasting sonic bursts. Jazzfinger
played in darkness, conjuring up a sublime elemental brew of rolling
electronic thunder that became oddly meditative. Next time round, if
the wind is right, we might even be able to hear the grass grow.

The List, February 2011

ends
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