David Pajo;
Robin Guthrie;
Pole;
Labradford
Queen Elizabeth Hall
South Bank Centre, London
24th June 2000
This year’s Festival of Drifting sees each participant playing all in one night as a national tour, as opposed to the previous two years when performances were spread out over the course of 4-6 days at various venues. Labradford‘s idea is to bring together an artist-led festival featuring performers from the softer side of Rock/Ambient/Electronica, and piece them all together between a stich of writers and a thread of visual artistry, developing a tapestry of music, art and literature that all revolve and influence each other in this world of dark and calm atmospheric expressionism. Competing with Glastonbury this weekend, Drifting has attracted an impressive quantity of observers, even if many of them come out a little disappointed.
The first problem presented to festival goers was a schedule issue. The Queen Elizabeth Hall seems to need to close earlier than planned for so instead of the advertised start time of 7:45, all begins at 7:15 causing a lot of interested people to miss out completely on the readings by Iain Sinclair. In the ultra fast stage changes between sets, there are to be more readings, but the main portion of Mr.Sinclair’s stage time is missed by most disappointed fans. Also providing in-betweens is Bruce Gilbert with his minimalist DJing. Unfortunately due to the all too quick jumps between performances, Mr. Gilbert’s work is so minimalist as to be easily missed.
An absolute highlight to Drifting this year is David Pajo, (Aerial M and Papa M; sometime of Slint and Tortoise). Pajo, with his pre-records and bass, and his enigmatic booming voice offers up the most entrancing, if too short, set of lonliness. Perfect for the description of Drifting, Pajo plays, and sings, and makes me crave the old Slint sound, makes me wonder where the rest are indeed. As he wavers through Daniel Johnson‘s”True Love Will Find You In The End”, tears well on my eyes and I fear that if he did play Slint, I might fall into tortured crying. It is a beautiful 20 minutes of music, a lovely 10 more minutes of feedback, and then it is over. Too little, too little indeed.
Next out is Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins) to be frustrated and visibly irritated by technical difficulties. I feel it is ever so odd for this lusciously flanged and echoed guitar to go without Elizabeth Fraser‘s magic voice, but do get quite carried away with Mr.G’s hypnotic strumming. There seem to be a few glitches and stops and starts, but for all that the music is lush and captivating. Still wondering about Liz, I nearly ran out of my seat to the stage at the appearance of a femme sillhouette sporting a sumptuous vocal accompaniment for one tiny moment of displacing song. Turned out not to be Ms. Fraser, and it was to Mr.Guthrie’s horror that I later expressed my wish that it could have been. Instead, we heard Siobhan de Mare, his current project collaborator, and hopefully to be heard more from in the future. The clarity and seduction of Ms. de Mare’s singing fit perfectly in with the dark guitar and was the most pleasant suprise of this evening’s event. Again a too short set, besieged by problems, but enjoyable none the less.
Up next is Stefan Betke – Pole for short. A little more upbeat and less atmospheric, though challenging for the content. Much more technical and electronic, Pole’s music came off as almost danceable comparitively. Stood in front of the standard set of laptop computer and his little Waldorf box of tricks which give his project its name, Mr. Betke produces the sort of minimal Techno dubs which bridge the gap between the kind of electronic beat music for dancing and the variety for listening. Not so bassy as expected, his set of short, linear and receives the most applause yet. The word outside afterwards was that Pole was seemingly everyone’s favourite.
Finally Labradford played, their melancholy drifting ambient lonliness a kind of sum up of all which had passed before on a night with changeable weather to suit the mood. With six bowls of water containing three floating candles each as their stage lighting, Labradford turned their brand of sad, drifty music loose for the longest of anyone. The three members all seemed most uncomfortable onstage, putting out an absolute atmosphere of humility and edginess. The projection of seeming stage fright was overwhelming, though perhaps this is more of a chronic condition than temporary fear. For some, this seemed to take away from the performance; however I personally found it all most charming. Not sounding as vintage as Labradford can sound, with a thinner keyboard tone than hitherto, they still succeeded in pulling me off into trance land, their musc ample soundtracks for wakeful dreaming.
All and all, this Festival of Drifting did not drift but fairly ran through too quickly some music that is probably better savoured over hours rather than halves. I wonder though if many artists are not going to be put off the South Bank Centre as their strict curfews cause so much issue. As for the Drifting series, I hope for all involved that the next four nights of this tour around the UK go smoother than London’s hurried version. It is strange to see such professionals thrown by lurking problems. It must be said though, that despite scheduling and technical difficulties, all performers gave of themselves to a degree that makes one appreciate being able to see them at all.
-Lilly Novak-
