Footnote to Incomplete Essay: My transformation from music fan to dance fan

The transition of my enthusiasm from music to theatre came, perhaps, in part, as a consequence of two remarkable gigs that I saw in the 1990s: Swans, touring on the back of their Love of Life album and The Young Gods around the time of TV Sky. Both bands conjured a mixture of furious violence and triumphant ecstasy, invoking a shamanistic mysticism (Swans' Michael Gira manipulates a theological vocabulary while The Young Gods embrace a lyrical paganism) that transformed the rock gig from a tired ritual into a celebration of life and community.

Against this, the business-as-usual of most rock'n'roll appeared tired and predictable: bands playing their hits to a group of fans who would sing along, or younger groups searching for an audience in half-empty basements, lacked the raw energy and the musical confidence Gira and Frans Treichler embodied. Memories of Michael Clark's collaboration with The Fall, and the appearance of a company I believe to have been DV8 dancing to Swans on London's South Bank, hinted that there were more interesting ways to experience the thrill of art transmitting beauty and meaning. I still attended gigs - although it was not until I discovered the Glasgow bands on the fringes of the city's visual art scenes that I recaptured the excitement - but even major events like Radiohead's big tent tour felt like shams.

I can date the exact moment when "contemporary dance" replaced rock music as my favourite art: Les Ballets C de la B, Tramway, performing VSPRS. Admittedly, the live band - an amalgam of gypsy and jazz musicians belting out a psychedelic adaptation of Verdi's Vespers - lent the choreography a recognisable rock'n'roll energy, but the terrifying movements of the dancers, the intensity of Alain Platel's intentions and the cast, drawn from the worlds of classical ballet, acrobatics and more difficult to define areas (my subsequent art crush Iona Kewney, who would later develop her own work that followed a similar rough beauty, was a visual artist who had found herself dancing in an attempt to capture her wild muse) did more than illustrate this heretical re-imagination of the seminal religious composition.

I followed the dancers into a trance. In under two hours, Platel fused music and movement - and a stunning, ragged, set - into a contemplation of both the dangers and pleasures of religious ecstasy. Reviewing the critical commentary of the time, it's clear that Les Ballets C de la B were controversial. There is a contempt for their style - they have been mocked as circus performers. But for me, the performance was a revelation: both of dance's ability to represent altered states (and provoke them), and the potential for theatre to be more dramatic, more vital and more vigorous than the supposedly primal energies unleashed by rock'n'roll.

The Two Best Gigs What I Have Seen

Although I have spent most of the last decade becoming more enthusiastic about the possibilities of dance and theatre (Les Ballet C de la B could have been included in this list for their version of Monteverdi's Vespers even without Platel's choreography), I still believe that music can be the most immediate art. Wagner's Ring Cycle might provide the proverbial "good moments but awful quarter-hours" and electronic music is struggling to find the right format for live performance: rock gigs follow a predictable pattern but even the loose informality of Holy Mountain sets offer moments of chest crushing intensity.

Unfortunately, then, these choices are over a decade old: whether that reflects my senility or reflects a genuine diminution in the power of rock to shock and roll is left open to debate. Undeniably, my commitment to music has diminished. In my teens, these bands shaped my life and my belief in art as a transformative experience. Twenty years of deconstructing my aesthetic tastes has made it more difficult to ignore the context of a concert and the need for visceral impact has been replaced by an enthusiasm for more cerebral engagement. 

I'm not saying I am right. I am  just saying that I think I am.

White Light From the Mouth of Infinity

Coming off the back of a pair of astounding albums (White Light and Love of Life), with Gira integrating the heavy ferocity of Swans' early albums and the psychedelic folk of The Burning World, Swans in the 1990s began to chase the shamanic ecstasy that has characteristic their recent come-back. Gira added a romantic lyricism to his previously sparse, brutal lyrics and replaced the slow, grinding slabs of sound which had defined albums like Cop with more complex composition, updating the psychedelic journeys of the late 1960s. 

Thanks to Gira's intense focus, however, Swans never disappeared into pointless jams: the UK tour saw the band find the common ground between harsh impact and melodramatic orchestration. A triple guitar assault was tempered by moments of fragile beauty and the ambiguity of the lyrics - love managing to come out as both saviour and killer, and spirituality a glittering trap and hope - was matched by galloping codas and disciplined improvisations.

The Future of Technology

Before the lap-top made it all too easy - meaning too few musicians bother their arses to test its potential - The Young Gods imagined a music reconstructed from the sounds of the past. Before they started singing in English, the Swiss band mined classical scores and metal riffs to impose the aesthetic of bricolage onto rock'n'roll. In the 1990s, when sampling was largely limited to hip hop or the occasional blatant quote, Frans Treichler melted two hundred years of music down into taut, aggressive rock: like Swans, the odd lyrical interlude only served to heighten the drama.