St Cecilia’s Hall, Edinburgh
St Cecilia was the patron saint of church music whose executioner took
three attempts to chop off her head. Often, this two day event seemed to
similarly lack an edge. With all performances unamplified, Three Blows aimed to
explore the acoustics of the oldest purpose built concert hall in Scotland,
oval shaped interior, domed ceiling and all, but this was only really achieved
by the most experienced artists on show, Keith Rowe and Red Krayola mainstay
Mayo Thompson, who headlined a night apiece.
Elsewhere, most of what followed
was appealing enough, but given that the bulk of the acts come from a radical
visual arts scene based around Glasgow’s Modern Institute, it was surprising
how readily most clung to conventional performance set-ups. Saturday’s For The
Voice session opened with Tattie Toes, a junkshop Brechtian quartet framed
around Basque singer Nerea Bello, whose undulating wail was upstaged slightly
by the incorporation of a spinning top into proceedings.
Correcto, who
followed, were far more ordinary. On record, their buzzsaw pop vignettes would
give Pete Shelley a run for his money but denuded of electric guitar and drums,
singer-songwriter Danny Saunders and guitarist Richard Wright became punk folk
troubadours showing off their sensitive side. They could learn much from
Richard Youngs, who was the only artist other than Thompson and Rowe to really
engage with the space. Without instrumentation, he pounded his way around the
auditorium, incanting his insistent vocal rounds with hypnotic relish.
Other
than an uncredited voiceover for composer John Harris at Stirling’s Le Weekend
festival a couple of years back, this was Mayo Thompson’s first UK appearance
since 1985, and his first solo set since the 1960s. Sporting a jacket and tie
for the occasion, Thompson preferred to acknowledge rather than subvert the
hall’s ornate formality, both by distributing a programme of works he intended
to play and by the curt bow he took prior to sitting at the in-house
pianoforte. He then proceeded to ‘perform’ John Cage’s 4'33" as his
opener. As sirens wailed outside on Edinburgh’s busy Saturday night Cowgate,
Thompson remained impassive, his face a picture of mock seriousness that made
for the weekend’s greatest moment of silent theatre.
He followed this with a
run through of 15 selections from his back catalogue accompanying himself on
guitar. Going as far back as “War Sucks” from 1967’s The Parable Of Arable Land
and material from his 1970 solo album, Corky’s Debt To His Father, unamplified
and without the trappings of a group situation, Thompson’s blues roots are
exposed more obviously than on record. His voice, however, remains a swooping
instrument of delight. A quizzical take on the 1980s Rough Trade era Art &
Language collaboration Old Man’s Dream both dediscofied and de-feminised the
song, Thompson sounding surprised by his own premise, described by the event
programme as 'a homeless bum meets a Freudian analyst'. Ergastulu, meanwhile,
could have been Dr Seuss lecturing on some dialectical materialist version of
Sesame Street. Sunday night’s Imaginary Landscape sessions focused on
exploratory instrumental work.
Sarah Kenchington opened with a demonstration of
a musical sculpture that looked like something dreamt up by a cartoon nutty
professor. Beginning by dropping balls down a tube, this set in motion a series
of effects involving rows of glasses, a gas powered tuba, bits of old
typewriter, gramophones and the inevitable big bass drum. The One Ensemble’s
Daniel Padden assisted this giant game of musical Mousetrap on banjo. Tony
Swain followed this with a set of pretty guitar instrumentals before Rude
Pravo, a duo of film maker Luke Fowler and multi-instrumentalist Stevie Jones,
performed a series of musical sketches on piano, melodica, double bass and
guitar.
Set back on the hall’s small stage, much of Imaginary Landscape
appeared spatially flattened, so it’s a relief when Keith Rowe set up his kit
in the centre of the room, with headphones dotted about the ledges behind the
seating. This made for a multi-dimensional, in-the-oval spectacle, as Rowe
plucked his guitar strings with paper and miniature fans. With little
reverberations skittering through the headphones, it was an oddly soothing
experience. As Rowe tuned a radio in and out of audibility, he briefly stumbled
on some church organ evensong. St Cecilia, it seems, was with us after all.
The Wire, Issue 295, September 2008
ends
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