I was mostly busy on Sunday but couldn't miss the first performance which was my final: two basses and guitar, Clayton Thomas, Helen Svoboda and Jean-Sebastian Mariage. I've been mightily impressed and often intrigued by the playing of all these three over this festival. They were in the smaller room, having starting early so they were playing when audience entered. Lots of sustained floating drones, I thought around A given harmonics and open strings, contrasting harmonics harmonies, some interesting atonal melody note plays from Clayton and Jean-Sebastian, bowing from all including guitar, and some bass pizz and an end on a relative quietude and high bass harmonics. Quite a lovely engrossing performance, unusual with those dissonant pizz lines which are somewhat a revelation after the consistent harmonies of bass harmonics. So an end for SoundOut 2024. This one had more relevance and meaning for me, perhaps because I got to perform, somewhat because the act of performance and preparation taught something of the approach and style. I also better understood the nature of experimental vs free jazz. And there were some really impressive musicians. I will single out some favourites but this is not exhaustive and just from those I heard: Clayton Thomas, Helen Svoboda, Novak Milojlovic, Guylaine Cosseron, Maria Moles, Jean-Sebastian Mariage, Laurence Pike but, as I said, a personal list. Congrats to all and especially to Richard Johnson who brought together the 15th instance of this fascinating, challenging and unusual gathering. Given our political bent from Clayton, I'll add a few relevant pics from the Lyneham Shops.
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