Category Archives: Ether

Ether column, May 2007

Posted on by
Reply

Loads of great gigs this month, so straight down to business. First up is Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek, who will no doubt transform the magnificent Großer Saal of the Konzerthaus with his vivid, airy playing. Garbarek is a man who sits comfortably between the worlds of jazz, ambient, classical and world musics. After a stint in Keith Jarrett’s band in the 70s, he made his name with a string of albums that came to exemplify the limpid, crystalline sound of the ECM label. Forswearing the improvisational theatrics of Ayler and Coltrane, Garbarek’s style draws on Scandinavian mythology and exudes a tender, sunny playfulness. At the time of writing this concert was almost sold out, so check before travelling.

Japanese psych-rock heads Ghost land in Vienna as part of an extensive European tour. Active since 1988, this free-form collective has a shifting line-up centred around singer and guitarist Masaki Batoh. Their music spans a range of influences including the transcendent pastoralism of Pink Floyd, the pyramidal drones of the Velvet Underground and the nagging rhythms of krautrock bands such as Can and Amon Düül II. New album In Stormy Nights is the first Ghost record to have been recorded using the same line-up as its predecessor, yet this new-found stability does not imply any kind of creative stagnation. On the contrary, with this record Batoh and his comrades have reached new heights of invention and inspiration.

More down-to-earth pleasures are provided by Richmond Fontaine, an American alt-country band with a wistful, literate approach to songcraft. Singer and songwriter Willy Vlautin has been much acclaimed for his lyrics, which present echoes of the great American short story writer Raymond Carver in their downbeat realism and unflinching attention to the warp and weft of everyday lives. Vlautin has recently published a novel, The Motel Life, extending his sympathetic observational writing to the printed page. Musically Richmond Fontaine are a deceptively humble proposition, with Vlautin’s understated vocals and Paul Brainard’s washes of pedal steel guitar illuminating these quietly resonant songs of love, hope and loss.

Finally, this month sees a rare home town concert by Viennese electronica legend Fennesz, appearing in an unlikely duo show with American singer Mike Patton. Along with artists like Peter Rehberg and Farmers Manual, Fennesz was in the late 90s and early 00s one of the key figures of the influential Mego label, a Vienna-based imprint that was dedicated to innovative electronic music. Less defiantly atonal than some of his former labelmates, Fennesz’s fusion of guitar and synthesiser is suffused with a bright and warm elegance. His 2001 album Endless Summer was a loving homage to the Beach Boys’ ecstatic summery textures, flawlessly reimagined for the modern age. What he’s doing collaborating with a journeyman like Patton is anyone’s guess, but the results should be interesting in any event. And that’s your lot – something for everyone this month, I hope.

Ether column, February 2007

Posted on by
Reply

Porgy & Bess continues its phenomenal run of recent concerts into February with two shows by the great American composer and improviser Anthony Braxton. Braxton is a towering figure in contemporary American music, incorporating elements of free jazz, improvisation and composition into his rich and complex musical structures. Principally a saxophonist onstage – his 1968 album For Alto was the first ever album for solo saxophone – he is also skilled on the flute and clarinet. His great innovation has been to take the essential rhythmic and textural elements of jazz and to combine them with experimental compositional techniques such as graphic and non-specific notation, serialism and multimedia.

Braxton’s work is theoretical and often mystical in nature. His scores and record covers are littered with cryptic numbers and diagrams, betraying the influence of Cage and Stockhausen. And yet he takes pains to stand apart from these masters of modern composition, often claiming not to know himself what the numbers and diagrams mean. One senses that Braxton is grappling with a search for a higher truth that will remain forever out of reach. It is the search itself, rather than the truth, that drives him. He will be appearing in Vienna with his Sextet, a group of young Braxton acolytes dedicated to realising their mentor’s dense yet rewarding music.

And now, as a special favour to those who would like a change from all the challenging experimental sounds I’ve been recommending in this column lately, some great pop music. From Portland, Oregon, The Decemberists have released four albums of indie rock with a folky, literate edge and a strong narrative element. Taking their cue directly from British singer-songwriter Al Stewart, the Decemberists produce finely crafted ballads that combine lyrical musings on soldiers, sea captains and chimney sweeps with a chiming, propulsive musical energy. Singer and lyricist Colin Meloy is a charming and charismatic live performer, as happy encouraging the audience in a dance contest or singalong as he is wandering to the edge of the stage and playing to the front rows. After three albums on the confrontational Kill Rock Stars label, the band released their latest, The Crane Wife, on a major label (Capitol); happily, however, this shift has not signalled any watering down of the Decemberists’ craft. On the contrary, the record contains some of Meloy’s strongest writing to date, particularly the 13-minute epic “The Island,” which sees the band move towards a highly attractive fusion of folk and progressive musics. Confident without being overbearing, the Decemberists are just the ticket if you need to banish those winter blues.

Ether column, January 2007

Posted on by
Reply

Many creative artists thrive on collaboration – the refusal, through seeking out a shifting cast of associates, to allow musical habits and attitudes to ossify. Porgy & Bess showcases no fewer than three such aggregations this month. British composer and musician Fred Frith sets the ball rolling, appearing with the Arte Quartet in a performance of his composition Still/Urban. Best known as a startlingly innovative improvising guitarist, Frith first came to prominence as a founder member of the experimental rock group Henry Cow. The Cow were active between 1968 and 1978, in that time producing several albums of complex, politically engaged music. Later, Frith moved to New York and became associated with a loose network of musicians centred around the saxophonist and composer John Zorn. In more recent years he has turned his hand to music for dance, film and theatre, in between holding down a day job as a professor of music in California. Still/Urban is an intriguing prospect, a piece for four saxophones and electric guitar.

Later in the month, Porgy’s has the privilege of playing host to Sunny Murray, a true original of free jazz. Now in his 70th year, Murray was one of the first percussionists to use the drums as a lead instrument rather than merely as a timekeeping device. After playing with Cecil Taylor’s group in 1962, Murray became part of the Albert Ayler trio, adding his barrage of irregular stickwork to seminal recordings like Spiritual Unity and New York Eye & Ear Control. For this Vienna appearance, Murray is joined by a large Austrian group consisting of reeds, trumpet, violin, piano, bass and saxophone – a lineup, propelled by Murray’s incendiary drumming, that should be loud enough to shake any remaining post-Christmas cobwebs away.

Bringing the spirit of the ad hoc musical grouping decisively into the 21st century, Japanese avantists Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M land in Vienna as part of the annual Jeunesse festival – an admirable initiative that focuses on attracting young people to live concerts, although all ages are welcome. The two collaborated initially in Ground Zero, a fearsomely heavy noise-rock aggregation, before playing formative roles in the development of onkyo – a movement that began in Japan in the late 1990s, privileging small and often quiet musical gestures and making liberal use of electronics and silence. Playing here with drummer Martin Brandlmayer (of Vienna post-rock trio Radian) and trumpeter Axel Dörner, Otomo coaxes all manner of sounds from his guitar and from a turntable with no records on it, while Sachiko M uses laptops and other devices to create music from sine waves. Of such strange gestures are radical and necessary unorthodoxies forged.

Ether column, December 2006

Posted on by
Reply

Undoubtedly the highlight of this month’s concerts is a rare visit to Vienna by the British saxophonist Evan Parker, playing at Porgy & Bess as part of the Alexander von Schlippenbach Trio. Parker is a saxophonist like no other. Along with figures like Peter Brötzmann and the late Derek Bailey, he is one of the leading lights of European free improvisation – a movement that began in the mid-60s, taking the language of free jazz (as heard in the work of musicians such as Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman), divesting it of its rhythmic origins and extending it into the realm of pure abstraction. No two concerts of free improv are ever alike – the performers are guided by the dynamics between them on the night, rarely lapsing into the easy formularity of melody, rhythm and harmony. The results can be challenging to the untrained ear, but can also be truly spectacular. Nowhere is this more so than in the playing of Parker, whose soloing on tenor and soprano sax is possessed of a unique, serpentine beauty. Parker is a virtuoso exponent of circular breathing, a fiendishly difficult technique that enables him to play long, continuous solos without ever pausing for breath. He issues torrents of dense, fluttering notes that hang in the air like a challenge. Happy in many different contexts, from stripped-down solo to large-scale electro-acoustic ensemble, Parker’s trio with Alex von Schlippenbach (piano) and Paul Lovens (drums) is one of his most enduring musical associations.

Later this month, Slovenian industrialists Laibach invade the inhospitable surroundings of Planet Music for your average evening of eastern European totalitarianism. As founding members of the Neue Slowenische Kunst art collective, Laibach have been making a nuisance of themselves since the early 80s with their stirring blend of neoclassical and martial music. Like other groups associated with the NSK, Laibach like to privilege the collective over the individual, issuing statements and manifestos and framing their concerts as quasi-political rallies.

Laibach’s use of uniforms and totalitarian aesthetics, allied to the Wagnerian overtones of the music, have led to frequent accusations of political extremism – charges that the band dismiss, pointing to the humorous impulse at work in their militaristic interpretations of cheesy pop songs such as “One Vision” and “The Final Countdown”. Laibach adopt the trappings and symbols of state power, exaggerating them to the point of parody and thereby offering satirical comment on them. While certainly open to misinterpretation, the ambivalence of their methods can be read as an invitation for listeners to examine their own beliefs and prejudices. Their new album, Volk, is a collection of songs inspired by national anthems, further embedding Laibach’s bold interrogation of the iconography of nationalism. And you can dance to it as well. Political music was never this much fun.

Ether column, November 2006

Posted on by
Reply

November is a good month in Vienna for fans of literate male singer-songwriters, with two of the finest in the world playing here within the space of three days. First up is Peter Hammill, best known as the leader of 70s avant-prog rockers Van der Graaf Generator. VdGG reformed last year for a new album and a series of triumphant concerts, but they are now on hold again while Hammill continues his remarkable solo career, during which he has released upwards of 30 albums of spiky, uncompromising art rock.

This thin, greying man of 58 is one of the unheralded legends of music – a man whose singing voice modulates from an achingly sad caress to a blood-curdling shriek, often within the same song. His songs are dense, knotty propositions, reflecting with rare lyrical eloquence on the nature of love, the passing of time, free will and predestination. Accompanying himself on guitar and electric piano, he will be joined by his regular collaborator, violinist Stuart Gordon.

Hammill plays in Vienna on 11 November, the date in 1968 on which one of VdGG’s most celebrated songs, “Darkness (11/11)”, was written. He may or may not play that song on the night, but his dark subject matter and anguished, expressionist delivery will in any event be offset by a genuine onstage warmth and a wholehearted commitment to the physicality of live performance.

From the intimacy of the Szene to the grand space of the Konzerthaus, where Nick Cave gives what is billed as a solo performance on 13 November. ‘Solo’ in this context means without Cave’s long-term backing band, the Bad Seeds, although in fact three of them – violinist Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn Casey and drummer Jim Sclavunos – will also be onstage, adding colour and depth to Cave’s finely wrought meditations on love, redemption and the power of myth.

Cave has left his formative 80s years with the Birthday Party, Australia’s foremost goth-punk ranters, far behind, and is now settled into a life of domestic bliss with his wife and children in England. He is also something of a renaissance man, having written an acclaimed novel (And The Ass Saw The Angel) and film script (The Proposition). But his remarkable gift for self-expression, in language that ranges from the potent to the delirious, is undoubtedly heard to best effect in his songs.

Cave’s most recent album, Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, shows him at the height of his powers. He writes and sings about love with exceptional tenderness and beauty, yet he also delivers rousing anthems that achieve an extraordinary blend of rumbustiousness and articulacy. The splendid acoustic of the Konzerthaus will be an ideal setting for Cave’s elegant croon and gorgeous piano playing, and with ticket prices ranging from €45 to a wallet-sapping €125, the audience will no doubt be hanging on every note.

Ether column, October 2006

Posted on by
Reply

Two very different purveyors of modern American rock come to Vienna this month. First, Pere Ubu, who have been creating a unique, uncategorisable noise for over thirty years. Formed in 1975 and sporadically active ever since, they have undergone numerous line-up changes but have always centred on the larger-than-life figure of frontman David Thomas. The band is named after the main character in Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi, a forerunner of the Theatre of the Absurd – and there is indeed something absurd, yet strangely compelling, about Ubu’s music. It’s a blend of raw, punkish textures, scything electric guitar and jagged, angular discordance, with liberal bursts of feedback hovering around Thomas’s high-pitched, desperate-sounding voice.

The band’s first album, The Modern Dance, was immediately hailed as a classic upon its release in 1978, but its follow-up, Dub Housing, is often cited as their best. Later albums were poppier and sometimes uneven, but never lost the essential element of Thomas’s agitated creativity. Often seen onstage wearing a large red apron and playing an accordion, Thomas comes across in live performance as a mixture of circus clown, street ranter and fairground barker.

Thomas has a bewildering array of projects under his belt at a time. He recently reformed his pre-Ubu proto-punk outfit, Rocket From The Tombs, and has a long-standing solo project, the Two Pale Boys. His “improvisational opera”, Mirror Man, was premiered in London in 1998 and has since been performed around the world. He has acted on London stages and lectured at American universities. But the group context of Pere Ubu has always been the main platform for his wayward, unpredictable talent.

Rock critic Greil Marcus wrote: “Thomas’s voice is that of a man muttering in a crowd. You think he’s talking to himself, until you realise he’s talking to you.” Vienna has the chance to hear what Thomas is talking about when Pere Ubu play the Szene on the opening night of their European tour.

Later this month, Midlake plug into the Flex’s awesome sound system for an evening of leisurely indie pop. As fresh and relaxed as Ubu are weathered and craggy, Midlake débuted in 2004 with Bamnan and Slivercork. That album’s appealing synthesised textures immediately marked the band out as producers of whimsical, lo-fi electronica, recalling the more psychedelic elements of outfits like the Flaming Lips but adding their own distinctive layer of unhurried pastoralism.

Their recently released second album, The Trials of Van Occupanther, is a seductive amalgam of 1970s mellow moods (Fleetwood Mac, Neil Young) and contemporary mope-rock from the likes of Radiohead and Coldplay. As such, it represents something of a backward step from the quirky originality of its predecessor. Still, with their delicate, affecting and hopeful songs, it would certainly be unwise to write Midlake off just yet.

Ether column, March 2007

Posted on by
Reply

This month’s column previews two concerts at the Arena, a fine medium-sized venue in the third district. Running under the banner “Love music, hate fascism”, this former slaughterhouse has carved out a niche for itself as a reliable purveyor of alternative entertainments, and has a large courtyard where open-air gigs are held in summer.

Unlikely to be much in the way of summery vibes, though, at the welcome return to Vienna of John Cale. Now pushing 65, this remarkable musician retains every ounce of the tense creativity that marked his earliest work in the mid-1960s. Growing up in a small town in Wales, Cale moved to New York when the music scene there was on the verge of a period of intense innovation. He took up the viola and joined forces with Tony Conrad and La Monte Young in the Theatre of Eternal Music, an experimental ensemble that focused on the hypnotic musical properties of the drone. From there it was a short step to the Velvet Underground, where Cale’s radical dissonance was the perfect foil for Lou Reed’s more pop-wise sensibility. Cale’s musical and vocal contributions to the first two Velvets records were significant, but in 1968 he was deplorably forced to leave the band due to Reed’s control-freak tendencies. Since then he has pursued a prolific solo career, releasing around 15 studio albums as well as numerous collaborations and works for film and dance. His solo work is characterised by a restless intelligence, with passages of great elegance and refinement jostling for space with snarling aggression and spare, controlled atonality.

On his last visit to Vienna in February 2006, Cale warmed up the rather sterile Birdland atmosphere with a slew of songs from his extensive back catalogue and a sprinkling of Velvets classics for good measure. Here in the more relaxed surroundings of the Arena, he’s sure to deliver a powerful and committed performance.

A week or so later, Austrian alt-rock outfit Naked Lunch hit the Arena on the Vienna leg of an extensive tour of Austria and Germany. Formed in Klagenfurt in 1991, Naked Lunch have a turbulent history. Founder member Georg Trattnig died of an alcohol-related condition in 2000, while his co-founder Oliver Welter lived rough for a time after the band had been dropped by two successive record labels. Meanwhile, the band’s studio burned down before they had finished work on their fourth album. That record, Songs for the Exhausted, was not released until 2004, three years after its completion; but it became their breakthrough album, trading indie bluster for wintry electronica. Holding fast to the ‘less is more’ principle, their new record, This Atom Heart of Ours, is a collection of understated songs which should appeal to fans of Mercury Rev’s plaintive melodicism. Like Cale, Naked Lunch are survivors, their continued presence an illustration of the virtues of bloody-mindedness and persistence.

Ether column, June 2007

Posted on by
Reply

Not much doubt in my mind about the highlight of June’s concerts – an evening with the great German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann. The 66-year-old Brötzmann is one of the key figures in European free improvisation, taking the free jazz of American pioneers like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, stripping it of groove and swing and creating from it a new music of dense, swirling abstraction. Free improvising musicians can be heard on a wide range of instruments such as trumpet, guitar, piano and drums, but Brötzmann’s forte is the reed family, which sees him switching effortlessly between soprano, alto, tenor, baritone and bass saxophones, various clarinets and the Hungarian tarogato. At the tiny Blue Tomato club in March, Brötzmann whipped up a firestorm of fierce and intense blowing alongside one of his long-standing collaborators, the Dutch percussionist Han Bennink. His date at Porgy & Bess, on the other hand, is with his big band, the Chicago Tentet. With two other reedsmen, three brass and two strings players, and not one but two drummers to add to Brötzmann’s already fearsome aural assault, the Tentet is not a group for the faint of heart.

American singer and songwriter Carla Bozulich stops off at the Chelsea on the 18th to air her quirky, eccentric songs. Bozulich has been grafting away since the early 90s in a variety of guises, initially the angular post-punk of Ethyl Meatplow and the mournful country sound of the Geraldine Fibbers. Playing out under her own name since 2003, Bozulich’s first solo record was an experimental reinterpretation of a Willie Nelson album, The Red Headed Stranger. She really hit her stride, though, on 2006’s Evangelista, a challenging and bewitching set of songs which saw her write and record with the freaky denizens of Montreal’s Constellation collective, including members of Godspeed You Black Emperor and A Silver Mt Zion. Working with many of the same musicians on tour, Bozulich is sure to deliver a vivid and acute live performance.

Coming from another side of American songcraft, Magnolia Electric Co. are a vehicle for contemplative Ohio-born musician Jason Molina. Like Will Oldham, with whom he is often compared, Molina has a fondness for hiding behind aliases. His first outfit was Songs: Ohia, who released several albums of country-influenced rock before Molina began to record under the Magnolia Electric Co. moniker. Molina’s voice has deepened and weathered since those early Songs: Ohia records, while his guitar playing has become more assured and his lyrics have proved consistently emotive and heartfelt. In fact, Molina’s closest point of reference would be the classic 70s albums of Neil Young rather than any of the hordes of artists toiling under the alt.country label. Such niceties are likely to dissolve into insignificance, though, when Molina takes the stage.

Ether column, April 2007

Posted on by
Reply

This month’s column is devoted to the Donaufestival, a series of concerts taking place in Krems over the last two weekends in April. The festival has established itself over the past few years as a reliable showcase for avant rock, free jazz and contemporary classical musics, but it has excelled itself in 2007 with a scarcely believable line-up of performers from the dark heart of underground music.

The first weekend is curated by the British “apocalyptic folk” singer and lyricist David Tibet. As the leader and sole constant member of the band Current 93, who are of course playing at the festival, Tibet has been a vital presence in the English post-industrial scene for over 20 years. Birthed in the mire of fallout from the late ‘70s electronic experiments of Throbbing Gristle, C93 pursued a similar path of tape loops and livid noise over several albums before Tibet fell under the spell of English folk spirit Shirley Collins and introduced a beguiling acoustic simplicity to his music. Lyrically, Tibet explores religious and mythological obsessions with texts rich in hallucinogenic imagery. Along the way he has formed networks and alliances with numerous like-minded souls, many of whom are also playing at the festival. The most notable of these is Steven Stapleton, the driving force behind the formidably strange Surrealist musical project Nurse With Wound. NWW make a rare live appearance at the festival, and the weekend also includes unmissable performances from fellow travellers Bonnie Prince Billy, Larsen, Six Organs of Admittance and many more.

The following weekend sees an equally astonishing coup for the festival – a pair of appearances by the legendary Throbbing Gristle themselves. Active between 1976 and 1981, TG were the originators of the style of music that came to be known as industrial. They were the fearsome product of Genesis P-Orridge’s Dada-influenced pranksterism, Cosey Fanni Tutti’s provocative sexuality and the electronic skills of Chris Carter and Peter Christopherson. Their records and performances were brutal and disturbing, mixing slabs of electronic noise and sinister pop atmospheres with an unheimlich morbidity that made them unlikely heroes of the British underground scene. They reformed in 2004 after 23 years, and since then have played only a handful of concerts. Their two performances in Krems will be radically different – the first a set of old and new material in quadrophonic sound, the second a live soundtrack to Derek Jarman’s film In the Shadow of the Sun. Elsewhere, Weekend 2 of the festival bulges with attractions such as Alan Vega, the Boredoms and the reformed Gang of Four.

Krems is just over an hour away from Vienna by car, or there are buses back to Vienna after the last act every night. So there’s no excuse for not heading out along the Donau for an evening (or two, or three, or four) of unparalleled sonic rush.