SO2017-4

Next day at SoundOut, part way through the late session. First up was a quintet with Luiz and a series of locals, Chloe, Sonya, Gail and Miro on bass, toy piano and other toys, vocals, electronics and trumpet. Again, this was a meeting of musicians, an experimental jam, and it started with some hesitation, leaving space to hear each other. Until Miro spelt some melody and this was cathartic. Miro later said he's a melodist. It seems to me that trumpeters are: it seems to be a function of the instrument. But here were clear notes, spacious, with some relationship one to another. Luiz picked up on this, bowing, plucking, then alternative techniques of tapping, slapping timber and strings, reaction from Sonya, with vocalisations that filled and swelled around them, again Miro's bell-like notes. Lovely. Chloe and Gail were more subdued and ambient, encompassing this with various noises of various toys on the one hand, tapping or sliding or clacking, or using electronics to meld and twist and revisit, or to add processed voice and glass clinks and pats and thumps. Luiz Gabriel Gubeissi (bass), Miro Bukovsky (trumpet), Sonya Holywell (vocal), Chloe Hobbs (toy piano, toys) and Gail Priest (electronics) performed.

Then a stunner. French pianist Frederick Blondy returned for an overwhelmingly powerful final set. this was meant to end with other performers gradually coming on stage for a collective improv, but rather it ended alone, everyone overwhelmed by the power and purpose and sweeping adequacy of it all. Again, he started under the lid, with bow hair on strings and something that looked like a stick with a can on top, a few electronic bows (?) and I expect some other tools for preparation, then moving to the keyboard for growing intensity of handfulls of notes, tone clusters, increasingly flailing and jumping at the piano, this time with rhythm, to an intensity of violence and excess. Then a stop. He seemed a little surprised at that, as we were. Some minutes then applause. My camera gave out so no pics.

After a short rest, the collective improv to finish it all for this year. Most playing their standard style, but amusingly and informatively, right in front of me, was Christian Svendsen dissembling his travel bass as in performance, formal, slow, precise, ordered. I'd wondered how it came apart and now I'd seen it. Amusing. Then a fall to quiet, a packup, a party. The end of SoundOut incarnation no.8. Hopefully to return in 2018. And congrats to Richard Johnson for his drive and effort to make this festival happen every year.