9, 15, 17, 21 October 2003
The South Bank Centre, London
The Mind Your Head festival for 2003 is subtitled “Exploring new meanings in sacred music”, though this seems more of a loose thread connecting the line-up together somewhat tenuously. However, the intriguing double bill which opens the series at The Queen Elizabeth Hall provides some food for thought on the issue, as do the series’ participants in nearly two weeks of events which follow.
Carter Tutti is the re-branded identity of stalwarts Chris And Cosey, and their manifestation on stage opens the series with an esoteric concoction of glitch and drone, of male/female interplay and the surge of a powerful psychedelic imperative – which is perhaps what the new sacred music allusions refer to in their particular case. A quantum step on from their CTI ambiences and Electro-Disco songs as C&C, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti‘s glistens with digital complexity and the sussurating pleasures of feeedback, voice and that eternal harmonious drone.
Cosey’s words are infrequent, dusting atmospheres and veiled threats or promises, sensual and distant, personal yet pulled into near-abstraction along the way. Carter is set off to one side, not sidelined but almost sequestered in a technological compartment by his PowerMacs and mixers, tweaking the settings of what is essentially an Ambient Dub set while Cosey brings what would otherwise be a sterile visual experience to human life on the eerie delay-effected skirl of harmonica, cornet of muttered words. This is not to say that their is a lack of warmth, or heartbeat bass and groove to the musical underpinnings, but that without her poised performance there would be only another (highly competent) laptop set with digitally-processed animations on offer in the auditorium.
The sensuality that Carter Tutti expand upon is not a simple one of signifiers made obvious; there is more subtlety at work in the swirl of DNA-like clusters transformed into eyeballs onscreen, or the curves and tones of human faces and limbs matched to slide-guitar scrawls which unfurl sine-wave tendrils of electric sound to the flicker of digits and plasmatic clouds onscreen. Cosey uses her cornet and guitar, often simultaneously, to punctuate and emphasise the switch between glitchy Electro bubbling into binary-bred beats and sets glissando waves among the precisely-filtered – yet fuzzy – backbrain grooves. The whole is a multi-layered audiovisual experience, one with many underlying codes to unlock, especially on the nature of what of their music is male-derived, what female, and how these conditions are altered and played with by the pair.
The Current 93 performance is just that – a carefully set out sequence of songs, presented with grace (in many senses) and steadfast accoplishment by a group who are by now venerable troupers in the field of music with sacred overtones. It is salutory to reflect that their transmutation from Industrial noise merchants via the singalong Noddy Apocalypse period of Folk-noir into the soul-searching reflections of today has been built on spritual foundations, though not necessarily ones which would be acceptable or even recognizable to many religious persuasions.
As with the Gnostic tradition which has been such an influence over the years as with the conundra and simplicity of Buddhism, Current 93’s music holds its secrets camougflaged in parables and set forth in straightforward ctrokes laid together into complexity; there are songs capable of being sung in the shower like the rousing “Death Of The Corn”, but there are many more which require absorbtion into the story, the flow of not only David Tibet‘s impassioned delivery but the deceptively plain (perhaps in the Amish sense of correct, functional yet harmonious simplicity) arrangements. Pieces like the affectingly sad song of bereavement “Sleep Has His House” hold powerful emotions at their heart, and let them resonate in the timbre of Tibet’s voice or the liquid ease of Graham Jeffrey and Maja Elliot‘s delicate twin pianos, in Joolie Wood‘s tender violin or child(hood)like recorder trills.
Above all, Tibet’s compositions are ones which draw the focus into the centre of his driven explorations of the sublime, and yes, even the ridiculous: though a shouted “na na-na-na” for old favourite “Coal Black Smith” is greeted with a wry shake of the head and a definite “no!” The structure rises and falls on a dynamic observed carefully to allow a rise and fall of passion and pathos, the descents into sorrow brought into sharp contrast on waves of raw, brightly-painted imagery of mortality worth celebrating at the extremes of Tibet’s limited yet powerful vocal range. From the stark conversational exegisis of “The Inmost Light” to the writhingly-possessed electronics which roll out in accompaniment at the end when Michael Cashmore replace electric guitar with growling bass for “The Locust Summer”, the onward march into primeval musical chaostrophy via the shimmering individually-significant depths of the Patripassianist numbers shows that perhaps the noisy side of Current 93 has evolved much as the fiery passions of youth become mellow with age and experience.
The next pairing reviewed (other participants in the series included Elvis Costello & Steve Nieve; Max Romeo And The Charmax Players; Dreadzone, Dennis Alcapone and Paul The Girl) of They Came from The Stars, I Saw Them and Danielson Famile finds the sacred spaces occupied to be verging on the ludicrous and mind-boggling respectively – and, perhaps, jointly.
They Came from The Stars, I Saw Them have not only an extra-long name but an extended line up, with a dozen players taking the stage. All garbed in white, there is initially some confusion as to whether the Danielson Famile have switched times, or perhaps even the Arkestra have revivified themselves, but with their identity firmly established, the collective strike up a flowing psychedlic jam groove, rolling along on Giles Narang‘s persuasive drumming. To the accompaniment of horn section, backing singers and guitar strums, the rising synthesizer tomfoolery of resident eccentric Horton Jupiter lurches with alien glee into the fray, and their two lenghty pieces bring an air of offbeat improvisational weirdness to the QEH.
On another plane of oddity altogether are the Danielson Famile. Built around the impassioned songs of Daniel Smith, the Famile tonight are his sisters Megan and Rachel (voices, bells, glockenspiels and recorders) and brother Andrew at one of the two drumkits, with honorary family members Sufjan Stevens (the second drumkit) and Chris Palladino (keyboards) completing the line-up. Dressed in white medical garb (to reflect their mission to heal the world through their music) emblazoned with red name and hearts on sleeves, the group is an eccentric presence and no mistake. Their sincerity is not in doubt, espousing Christian family values, but at the very least their sense of fun is tinged with a willingness to bring forth obscure compositional strategies while providing a rollicking good time.
From the opening energy-laden gambit of what remains perhaps their signature tune “A No No” with its catchily repeated “I Love My Lord” chant onwards, the Famile’s show is one where their spiritual struggles with fleshly concerns are put on display to the tune of Folk music stretched into hitherto unfathomable dimensions on waves of deep buzzing synthetic and electrical bass. Danielson himself is a furious spark of energy, holding the audience captive with his peculiar falsetto vocals while his sisters admonish with wagging fingers and curious synchronised dance steps. As a family band, some of whom have been recording since before their teenage years, the Famile have an accomplished presence and are incredibly tight musically, Megan and Rachel providing a somewhat fixed-smile perkiness to a gig which proves that old fashioned revivalism isn’t dead, it’s just moved laterally into the fringes of avant-Rock, their songs built with a thoughtful complexity which belies their folksy, happy-clappy even, antecedents.
This is no more evident than when the audience are invited to clap along with the furious rhythm of “Flesh Thang” and to and singalong for the choruses of “Cutest Lil’ Dragon” and “Sold! To The Rich Man”, a piece of inspired joy-bringing, whatever the competence of each crowd member’s rhythmic abilities. Joining in with gusto, it is certainly also amark of the Danielson Famile’s assured stagecraft that they can get the Queen Elizabeth Hall pulsating with communal glee. Here is one of the markers of Mind Your Head’s sacred musical waypoints, found in the connections between strangers that their relentlessly optimistic songs can bring, even at their most scathing of the secular world – and also of Danielson’s personal spiritual failings too, laid bare as their sleeve decorations indicate.
Filled with a (decidedly non-self-)righteous fervour, this family leave the hall wanting more of this brightly-coloured exposition of youthful intellectual and moral questing, sparked by some kind of certainty in their faith, a performance which leaves one puzzled audience member observing afterwards that they are “unashamedly whatever it is that they are…” A unique, yet faintly disturbing show, one which can only find the Danielson Famile converts to their music, if not their religious persuasion.
Perhaps the most astonishing and powerful performance in Mind Your Head comes from Diamanda Galás, an artist of another stature to every other performer on the bill. Her voice is capable of such a range, and her compositions of so involving a level of melodaramatic anguish that anything else seems tame and trivial by comparison. Her dark-shrouded two-part solo appearance in the Festival Hall is one where no spine is left without some severe tingling on the trembling ullalations and raging squalls of a voice which could probably be trained to kill. That Galás has directed her ire against the repressive forces of the world is admirable, and if only her words and almost tangible vocal exertions could strike deep into the souls of genocidal mania, then the feeling she generates is that all human evil would be swept away in the purifying drive of her voice.
Instead, the ultimate result is a wailing lament, a searing indicment of the miseries and utter inhumanity of crimes on a scale which pass everyday media understanding. Delivered with a passion that finds her eyes rolling back in the intensity of her performance, she sings the Blues like no other, a Blues which encompasses the Nazi death camps, the blasted villages of ethnic Greeks in Turkey, the existential Parisian decay of Gérard Nerval and the US South itself. Throughout, Diamanda is a poised and tortured figure, flitting between multiple microphones and piano, touched by a chiaroscuro which heigtens the drama as much as it obcures the concert hall surrounding, pinpointing the technical accomplishment of her singing with crimson washes and stark uplit counterpoint to the minimal drones and thunderous chords of her compositions.
The series’ finale brings three old school psychedelic legends together on the same night’s billing, alongside a relatively newer set of cohorts from Japan. The Incredible String Band were once on a par with Jimi Hendrix, a group who were required listening for the drop out Sixties generation and well beyond, their recorded legacy tripping on through the generations. The line up taking to the boards of the Festival Hall for the last night of Mind Your Head is led by original co-founder Mike Heron, and despite the best efforts of him, the the multi-talented Fluff and their two bearded friends, the show would perhaps have been one better performed in more intimate surroundings than this vast concert hall. The String Band’s show is accomplished and gently lateral in it’s folkishness, enjoyable and pleasurable, but one which seems ultimately drained of life, swallowed up in the bright lights and vast stage.
Damo Suzuki is a singer who is still shackled to his past sojourn as Can’s wildest singer – itself some acheivement – and has overcome this double-edged legacy to a great exent through his global Netwrok of collaborations with a diverse set of musicians. For this show his group consists of the Switch Doctors, numbering caprine-bearded Gong veteran Mike Howlett on bass guitar and Here & Now‘s Steve Cassidy on drums among its members, and perhaps their combined years of festival-friendly grooving is responsible for the dubbed-up rhythm section which underpins the set.
When Damo gets a collective together for a show, they don’t know exactly what it is that they’re going to play on each night; somehow though, Suzuki’s vocals lead the way into a shimmering realm of hypnotic spiralling texture, his genius lying in an ability to inspire improvised lyricism inthe band as much as through his own streamed-consciousness words. Together, these aged and age-old practitioners of the art of focussing musical energies let the mood and music take the players and audience on a tightly-controlled collective freak out, one where he becomes lost in the sounds and texture, screaming into the mic or shuffling and wandering among the musicians, gazing at the ceiling in distracted communion while Steve Higgins‘ choppy guitar riffs and Mark Jenkins‘ wibblingly psychedlic array of keyboards and synths perform hallucinogenic tricks in the mix.
The climax comes at the hands of another multinational meeting of Heads in the extraordinary guise of Acid Mothers Gong, where the year’s earlier guest spot of Daevid Allen with members of the wider Acid Mothers Soul Collective as Guru + Zero at the Kosmische Club expands to bring Gillie Smyth (words and voice) and Didier Malherbe (sax) of Gong and Josh Pollock (guitar) from Allen’s current band the University Of Errors on board to fill the stage up nicely. Flanked by the hirsute stoned-age maniacs Higashi Hiroshi and Cotton Casino (keyboards and electronics) and axe-wielding psychonaut Kawabata Makoto with the AMT rhythm section bring up the rear, somewhat unobtrusively, the gathered ensemble hum and glide into their performance with a suitably spiritual feel, bringing up their voices and drones until their collective trip is unleashed.
What a show it is, bubbling over into an anarchic soundclash which soon has a chunk of audience up from their assigned seas and dancing before the grim folded arms of South Bank Security still not entirely used to pixie-hatted shenanigans at the national temple of the Arts. Allen cavorts and roams around, twirling himself into yogic shapes while wearing avariety of funny-peculiar headgear. Gillie Smyth sways slightly as a poised earth-mother statue; she croons and has a spoken word moment of ire for Messers. Bush and Blair; Kawabata sparks Space Rock chords in spangly trousers and a cloak – yes, a cloak. It is a carnival cavalcade brought to the stage, a supremely silly lysergic performance where the urge to ape Sun Ra is explicit in a Jazzadelic frame of scat and skronk, performed by a bunch of outer space ambassadors, masters of their own particular psychedelic universes, welcoming visitors – though with a warning to take care of their collective cerebella in the Festival Hall.
-Richard Fontenoy-
