Counterflows @ Glasgow

Sonica 001: Ecstatic Arc

What is it?
Ecstatic Art is a performance starring stuff found by Robbie Thomson, filled with recording devices. Previous Thomson "junk operas" have evoked mechanical gods, no longer worshipped by still reciting their mysteries, sinister and pathetic.

Who is the artist?
Robbie Thomson is a shy resident of Glasgow, who has been part of the Mighty 85a Collective, and he loves to bring dead machinery back to life. Idimov, his previous piece for Cryptic, clanked and gurgled towards a quiet apocalypse: his ability to reassemble detritus into huge, threatening music boxes embodies his interest in redefining music and its relationship to visual art. Certainly, Sonica's tagline ("sonic art for the visually minded") could be Thomson's own catch-phrase.

Why attend?
Thomson's genius is never to give too much away: there is always a narrative within his performances, but they are usually subtle enough to allow the audience to follow their own interpretations. The slightly fruity language used above to describe earlier works expresses Vile's readings, but not necessarily anyone else's understanding. They tend to be abstract in the good sense: rather than being about nothing in particular, Thomson's mash-ups of sound and vision are suggestive and, surprisingly given their emphasis on the mechanical, emotional.

What's the Unique Selling Point?
Thomson in Tramway: the new industrialist-conceptualist meets the classic Glasgow home of the avant-garde. Thomson has done plenty of work in the Glue Factory, which has a similar atmosphere to Tramway, and Ecstatic Arc looks like it will have the grandeur and intensity to match the legendary venue's own majesty.

When?
8- 11 November @ Tramway. It's an installation during the day, then becomes a performance at night...

Eno gets Brewed

Shock Upset at City Halls as Local Boys Take Down Magisterial Soundscape artist


Music at the Brew House 4: Icebreaker 3

Brian Eno, long established as the defining artists for both ambient and electronic music, has lost out to Edinburgh's contemporary classical underdogs Stephen Deazley and Martin Parker. This long-awaited clash, pairing Edinburgh's Music at the Brewhouse against Icebreaker's recreation of Eno's Apollo, ended in upset as Deazley's collaboration with media designer  Andy McGregor emphasised an idiosyncratic story of one man's bravery over The Science Museum's 2009 commission featuring Eno's music and NASA's footage of the moon landing.

On paper, it was no contest. Eno's 1983 album Apollo, Atmospheres and Soundtracks had been scored for Icebreaker, known for their driving soundtrack to Ashley Page's seminal ballet, Cheating, Lying, Stealing. The addition of BJ Cole upfront on pedal steel, and the unseen images from Apollo's mission to the moon, seemed to ensure that Brewhouse, more frequently seen at Tramway creating multi-media musical happenings and relying only on a film of the barely known test pilot Joseph Kittinger, would provide little more than a distraction.

Brewhouse chose to bat first, offering a taut introduction. Guided by Kittinger's journey into the outer reaches of the stratosphere, and his descent, Man High made optimum use of the chamber line up: Peter Furness' clarinets summoning up the woozy splendour of the ascent, while the three violins held steady, lending a romantic swoon to the adventure. Driven by Joby Burgess' diverse percussion and David Knotts' pulsating keyboards, Brewhouse illustrated McGregor's mixing of the 1960 footage of the pilot's 32  kilometer leap.

In the second half, Icebreaker began with a solid summary of the space race's intentions. Footage of Kennedy giving it patriotic pride and the tension at Cape Canaveral soon resolved into iconic imagery of the Apollo spacecraft reaching to the moon. Because of the emphasis on new footage - no countdown to blast-off or amusing zero gravity snacking - the familiarity of the journey does not detract from the spectacular surrealism of the moon landing. By the time the astronauts finally reach the moon, Icebreaker have established both the bravery of the mission and the splendour of our species' trans-planetary ambition.

For all Brewhouse's dynamic drama, the relaxed majesty of Eno and Icebreaker looked set to triumph. Then, sometime between the landing and the larking about on the moon, Icebreaker lost the game. Cole's pedal steel adds an awkward sentimentality to the sequences after the US flag has been planted. The new footage is given the intensity of holiday film, a schmaltzy, thoughtless celebration of a couple of guys arsing about in outer space. Eno is not just an avant-garde electronic experimentalist: he is the producer of U2, and this is audible in the later half of For All Mankind. Ironically, the astronauts are brought back to earth by his sterile theft of Hawaiian and country motifs.

Of course, the real winner tonight was contemporary classical music: Deazley and Parker established themselves as accessible, forceful composers, and even Icebreaker's disappointing result linked ambient electronica to lush orchestration. A show of two halves, perhaps... but both halves demonstrated how music can reanimate obscure heroes of history and events that familiarity has rendered empty.

Wrong and Long: Not a Relationship Update

Four Hours of Drone was never going to offer too many surprises: drone has a habit of doing exactly what it suggests it will. There are, broadly, two types of drone. One is the type that sounds like a politician left alone in a  recording studio: insistent, repetitious, monophonic, dreary. Then there is good drone.  Apart from explaining how it gets made - tonight is mostly electronic, with an acoustic guitar finale and multiple cassette players generating a more interactive section - there isn't much to say about it, musically. It finds a level, and pulses.

I might be off-beam, but I think that Long and Wrong are not trying to compete with the last Saturday at The GSA: FHoD offers a listening atmosphere, not a selection of dance hits. I drift in and out of the music, and whenever I go outside, I am assaulted by how hectic the CCA bar seems. Even mellow conversation sounds like a BNP discussion about allowing Asian membership. I take a stroll down Sauchiehall Street. It appears to be populated by very busy trolls and elves. I hurry - as far as my biorhythmic ecstasy allows me - back to the CCA. Just like that time when I heard Capella Nova sing Hildegard  in church, or I sacked out at Instal 10, my body chemistry was pumping out something very interesting.

So, if the drone gets abrasive, my thoughts become melancholic and frustrated. When the drone is smooth, I relax. The drone musician isn't trying to hook an audience. They guide.

Inevitably, I find myself drowning in my subconscious. It's like some forms of Live Art. It doesn't communicate clearly but invokes a highly subjective response. An hour's drone a day on Radio One would go a long way towards encouraging a more contemplative society. It might also frighten most of the population, leaving them struggling for a way in, an explanation. Yes, it's a bit like music - on acid.

When I focus on the sound, the slightest details or shifty becomes important. When I let my thoughts float on the music, I trail off into self-examination. It's a handy corrective to the compressed mayhem of modern media  overload.

Long and Wrong are having fun, developing a very different sort of performance space. One day, when my dreams of a post-modern cabaret are fulfilled, I'll have a drone act instead of a disco. In the meantime, I am looking out for their next event: if the blog is any guide, they are moving deeper into experimental territory, a DIY version of Arika.