Supersonic Festival and Bobby Previte
I spent a very enjoyable weekend at the Supersonic Festival run by Capsule at the Custard Factory. Birmingham Jazz were involved with the presentation of Bobby Previte and Benton C Bainbridge’s Dialed In (more on that later). Supersonic is a great festival that clearly creates a great feeling of loyalty amongst both listeners and musicians, and tributes to the two main organisers, Lisa Meyer and Jenny Moore of Capsule, are often heard and are clearly heart-felt. There is a great atmosphere round the festival site with each venue within a couple of minutes of each other as well as good food stalls, and tea and cake places.
On the Friday I caught the Sunn O))) set. It was an amazing performance with just the two guitarists surrounded by a massive array of amps and speakers filling the whole of the back part of the stage. Rumour has it that this equipment costs £2000 to hire! The music is essentially one thing: a massive thundering drone with a bass sound that makes the body vibrate with variations on the guitars mostly created through a kind of rippling feedback from the speakers. It constantly changes in minute ways thereby keeping one’s interest. But the performance has a ritualistic, almost religious aspect to it with the two performers dressed in black robes and signalling changes with dramatic hand signals and movements of the guitar.
On the Saturday there was something of the same effect with the Master Musicians of Bukkake, i.e. the use of gowns, the one big sound with constant small changes, dramatic hand signals and the ritualistic feel of the performance. Late at night Zu, an Italian group, adopted a similar approach by taking certain aspects of free jazz, but organising them into repeated patterns with a constant groove that the audience responded very well to.
Dialed In is a new project for Bobby Previte working with VJ artist Benton C Bainbridge. It is built around Bobby’s use of electronic drums which trigger various electronic sound scapes as well as creating very exciting drum patterns. Benton’s visuals respond to the music with very strong images and the music in turn responds to the visuals with the result that the performance constantly changes in quite major ways and is quite a challenging and stimulating event to respond to. Interesting for me to compare this with the Sunn O))) performance, which hardly changed at all during its 45 mins; for me I love music that surprises me by suddenly going off in another direction. Dialed In definitely had that whereas Sunn O))) and Master Musicians of Bukkake impressed me with the sheer grandeur of the performance without ever surprising me.
Interestingly, I heard that one of Sunn O))), Greg Anderson I believe, spent some time at The Polar Bear Record Shop in Kings Heath and bought a good number of jazz CDs. Both Greg and Stephen O’Malley seem to know Bobby quite well and their latest album Monoliths and Dimensions they are joined by a number of other musicians including jazz trombonist Julian Priester. I haven’t caught up with the CD yet, but would love to hear a collaboration between them and open minded jazz players.
One other set that I really enjoyed was Khyam Allami, a Syrian oud player who played solo and focussed on contemporary repertoire from the Arab world, mostly Egypt. A delightful set.
Tony
Posted in Gig Reviews, Music | 
2 Comments »
