stoolsClub Maria : Tuesday, Jan 29:
The first time I’ve been to Maria, I’ve heard a lot of things about it, from it being a “bratzen” club to it being a very cool place. My view is cool, and very “Berlin”. Down some dirty path and right next to the Spree it’s an old waterworks or something and still retains that industrial vibe but has had a lot of money spent on it, for example there were about 15 projectors on the rig in just one half of the main room. Then there was all these little cardboard tables or stools across the floor, looked at first like some kind of art but then I realised they were just stools as for this kind of experimental / drone music it’s not really good to stand around, it’s much more pleasurable to sit.
When I checked in on Tron Lennon (UK) the ole’ myspace I say that they’d played a venue in Norwich that I played with my old band. It was OK, for indie bands, I couldn’t really imagine how a experimental noise mongering video integrators like Tron Lennon would have fit in there. Anyway, here they fit in well I thought. Tron Lennon consist of a turntabler who cuts and chops very minimal sections from vinyl (only rarely allowing the record to spin enough to perceive what music was on there), and a guitarist, who would create textures and also use various implements (a steel drum brush, a piece of metal) to interfere or manipulate the contacts on the guitar and between the strings. They also used a whole range of effects and units along with video integration to create clever and sometimes comical artistic statements. Beginning with general computer game lo-fi sounds mixed with detuned and modulated electric guitar atonality and sometimes incorporating the kind of bass drones that make you hungry, they boded quite well. Sometimes I thought the performance was a little flat, it kind of ran out of steam a little bit before it was picked back up by one or the other.
tron lennon/clubmaria/photo: stewart hillThe second half was a lot more fluid however, they switched the videos on, and of course in Maria, had it projecting onto 3 walls in the big room, it must have been very exciting for the young lads from England. So, now they started to play to a video that I guess was pre made and played off the MacBook (if I’m wrong please tell me). Ah, yeah, the video may have been pre-made, but there were live feeds onto it as textures from the guitarist’s iSight camera in his MacBook pro (Hey! Why don´t you name Pepsi Cola too, eh? - ed) and a miniDV camera set up over the decks. It was quite effective. The turntabler would do cuts and chops that generally matched or juxtaposed the video, the highlight I think was a clip of some guy singing on a beach that kept chopping back and forth, building up all the time and then went a little bit crazy when he did start “singing”. So this went on, and was quite interesting all the time, finishing with short clips of Louis Armstrong as the turntabler manipulated the trumpet tones into dying swan calls.
thomas ankersmit/clubmaria/photo:enric corominaI’d not heard of Thomas Ankersmit (NL) before but after hearing him I thought I should look him up. He’s originally from The Netherlands, Leiden, just outside Amsterdam, and now he’s mainly based in Berlin, although still does quite a lot in his home country. Starting off his career in music as an improvisatory saxophonist he soon picked up additional means of expressing his ideas through the medium of electronics. This was not just in a sonic way however, as he also creates installation pieces too. With the installation work, his focus seems to be on space and spatial deceptions. His recent works include creating a reverse sonic situation, where all sounds that are made in the room, be that by the visitor or viewer, are reversed in time and space, i.e. If you were to leave the room it would sound like you are entering the room. Another work is that as to create an illusion of large hall or church in a much smaller sized, darkened room. Although his music contains references to space and time within the context of the performance area, it is slightly different in the way that it is more interested in the nuances of sound and textural representations of this. His music, as said, is very textural and precise. Slight changes to tone, pitch and frequency are perceived but the feeling and effect are much greater. He also created drone ambiences that varied in feeling so very rich and wholesome (and loud!) to thin and crisp. Technically, he uses an analogue synth coupled with a MacBook running Max/MSP (a program I had a little experience with at university, and my god was it complicated). He also seemed to have some kind of physical control too, possibly through the use of mic pickups or light sensors? And of course let’s not forget his use of the alto saxophone. His unique technique coupled with the collecting of sounds not normally associated with traditional sax playing were quite astounding. He somehow picked up sounds inside the framework of he sax and then manipulating these created some dazzling effects. The performance of Thomas Ankersmit in Club Maria was a little slow to start with I thought, but this was him building up, and the changes and capture of slight nuances of sound are of course sometimes easy to miss in a busy venue. He has very active on stage, I believe his work is to the greater extent improvisatory too, which again to his credit was impressive.-- stewart hill.
clubmaria/ctm/photo: stewart hill
CTM/CLUBMARIA/JAN 29/2008.
