Beyond the Loop, a festival running at King's Place this week, complements the fascinating survey of 'academic' electronic music that took place in last week's Sonic Explorations (see link to review at bottom of the page), with an eclectic programme of its own that is drawn more from the field of popular electroacoustic and electronic music.
The festival's curator, John Metcalfe, speaks in the programme about 'bringing elements from various genres together,' and of 'mixing musicians from classical and electronic backgrounds to explore sonic and musical possibilities.' Cross-fertilization is thus what was being trailered for the festival, and sure enough the assembled line-up (which includes Durutti Column and Plaid) exhibits a distinctly varied flavour.
On the night I attended, Metcalfe and his band (which incorporates two members of The Bays, themselves due to play on Saturday as part of the festival’s finale), and then Jon Hopkins with Davide Rossi and Leo Abrahams guesting on violin and guitar respectively, broached the sorts of areas adverted to in the rubric with performances that skimmed generic boundaries almost as a matter of course. The sorts of sonic worlds being explored in the two performances were largely much more streamlined, more conventional, than those offered within Sonic Explorations (boundary crossing takes many forms in today's musical scene; a much more bonded exploration of twinning electronic avant-gardes would have been possible), a fact which in itself is not a matter of criticism (I feel the need to point out), but that merely places the music within a particular stylistic space.
The John Metcalfe Band is comprised of five performers: Metcalfe himself on viola and piano, Louisa Fuller on violin and piano, Ali Friend on double bass, Andy Gangodeen on drums, and Simon Richmond on laptop and keyboards. Their performance (which consisted of an opening thirty minute suite, and then three roughly five minute pieces) moved through various panels of composed material in an appealing ebb and flow of momentum and energy. The material itself— usually built upon tight-funk patterns on drums, sustained figures on strings for melodic material or repetitive piano figures in the transitions between sections, and dominating electronic mottos or textures from Richmond— could have done with being more brittle and fragmented in its scoring and syntax. Only occasionally did cracks appear in the tight scaffolding of the beat. The band relied also a little too much on homogeneity of gesture, whilst never quite achieving the focus and cohesion such a strategy hints at.
Despite these complaints, there was much to admire. Some fine musicianship, particularly from the confident string players (as you would expect from two members of the Duke Quartet), compensated the small deficiencies elsewhere. The music, though sometimes rigid as I have said, bears favourable comparison nonetheless with (inevitably) the film work of Clint Mansell, (admittedly a less uncanny) Portishead-with-strings, and even, courtesy of the strings, the quartets of Bartok. An interesting performance, then, if never an awe-inspiring one.
Jon Hopkins followed in the second concert of the evening with an effervescent performance that yet struggled somewhat to overcome the strange barrier (courtesy of the seats and etiquette of the hall) that existed between him and his audience. His fluorescent electronica, though, was well served by the visuals projected above his head. Day-glo swirls and shiny metallic motifs matched the bright colours and chiming beats of the psychedelic contours of the music well (particularly in the Jeff Koons, Animal Collective-evoking Light Through the Veins), whilst more scrambled visual codes wrapped themselves around the 'Warped' beats that Hopkins joyously blasted out on his sampler in scattergun motion at various points.
Rossi and Abrahams provided textural enhancements when they were on stage, as opposed to any sense of partnership in the muse, though their contributions fitted into the ether-sensibility of the music well. Hopkins himself supplied the bulk of the spectacle, even including (slightly-winsome) piano codas to some of the tracks. The gleaming surfaces and spiky rhythms of his music capture both the electronic elegance of Kraftwerk and the techno-ecstatic peaks and beats of groups like The Chemical Brothers and Modeselektor. The concert ebbed a little towards the end, but Hopkins had already done more than enough to win the audience’s enthusiastic favour by that point.
Photo: John Metcalfe by Chris Mathews
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