SoundOut 2024 / 1

Richard Johnson's SoundOut festival is back for its 15th incarnation.  It's presumably well known in these pages as an experimental and free jazz festival featuring Canberrans, Australians and a spattering of internationals.  And for that matter, sadly, just a spattering of audience.  This is not the most popular musical style: eclectic and authentic, yes, but popularity limited.  I won't get too all, but I do expect to get to one workshop and two or three concert sessions.  First up was Session 1 Friday evening.  I came in as Biomorph were performing.  This is the veritable core group of Richard Johnson and Rhys Butler playing tenor and alto saxes.  I heard flickering, moody, floating, whale calls, tonguing and horn staccatos and a closeness that comes with time playing together.  Then French internationals Animal Duo comprising Diemo Schwartz (electronics) and Guylaine Cosseron (vocals).  Sounds of cymbals, explosives, unexpected dynamics and more from synth and vocals that sounded of wind, grunts, animal noises and gutted with taped vocal chords.  Variously swelling, settling, floating, menacing.  Third up was a favourite for me, especially given I play bass.  Panghalina comprises an odd combination of bass plus two drummers, each playing another instrument, vocals or synth.   It comprised Helen Svoboda (bass, vocals), Bonnie Stewart (drums, vocals) and Maria Moles (drums, synth).  This sounded more ordered to my ears, but still mightily improvised.  They told me later of SoundOut being an opportunity return to improv roots given they are otherwise touring an album and playing those tunes which were originally productions of improv and remain improvisatory but with some structure.  I noted how "this has structure, thus some expectations amongst improv with huge intensity and high wordless vocals".  They later talked of parameters, being standard modes of expression (short note, long notes, staccato, etc) also a pictorial sense, as in long notes as landscape and short notes for Jackson Pollock.  Tech also took a role: Maria's synth but also TC Helicon over Helen's voice and a Boss RC505II to sample and loop Bonnie's voice, but more importantly, their voices found natural, improvised notes and merged through gentleness and harmonies.  Some structure over improv: how I like it.

Biomorph comprised Richard Johnson (tenor) and Rhys Butler (alto).  Animal Duo comprised Diemo Schwartz (electronics) and Guylaine Cosseron (vocals).  Panghalina comprised Helen Svoboda (bass, vocals), Bonnie Stewart (drums, vocals) and Maria Moles (drums, synth).

catholics

catholic as in tastes. Jess half apologised that Pheno was not jazz but we knew that (I was there; Geoff wasn't) but then she went on to say the first track was jazzish. It started with a steady drum beat in 4, then moved to a syncopated guitar line accompanied with Jess on a unison vocal (George Benson?), then a synth wash in the background, some harmonies, some African-like crossing rhythms, a heavy synth bass line and layered lines from Jess' looper. Looking very good. Rock steady, unforced, easy to hear and a lovely intro: welcoming, insinuating. That one was called Little toys. Next up was There are voices, a long tune, some dirty 4/4 drums and distorted rock guitar, some relieving refrains, developing percussion from a stick claps then overlaid vocals, floating spaces, into 3/4 bars with drum fills to bar ends. There are just three players, but they sound big, what with unrelenting drums and synth shimmers and electronic bass and varied guitar effects and loops and the three layers of vocals. All women, which is nice to see. It's too infrequent in jazz; more frequent outside. I expect Jess writes all the music - as I understand, Jess is Pheno. I think I feel a woman's awareness of life, here's a discrete one: "I am old, I'm from the beginning, you were once a gill-beater like me ... come down deep where the secrets are living, I want you to return to the sea". Next up was Slingshot, heavy, guitary, less structured like the last. Little thing was a personal song from Jess alone on stage with guitar and mic, dedicated to daughter and coming son. Dragon year was a good old-fashioned rock tune in 4 with dirty guitar and singing against kick drum and punkish twisted phrases and a touch of beach. Jess is well trained and well experienced and the professionalism shows a mile, and she's got a deliciously understated but capable offsiders, Alyx and Bonnie. Wonderfully inventive pop, she calls it Afro-Sci. This was the tour for a new EP, presumably the tracks of the new EP, to be performed the following day at Cobargo Folk Festival and elsewhere. I'm sure it would have gone down a treat - it certainly did at Smiths. Folk? Jazz? Afro-Sci? We are all catholics these days and this was a huge treat. I loved it.

Jess Green (guitar, vocals) is Pheno. Pheno performed at Smiths with Alyx Dennison (keys, vocals) and Bonnie Stewart (drums, vocals).

SO2017-3

Younger locals up next. This was not the hive of virtuosity of the last sets but intriguing and true. Sonya, Rhys and Bonnie on vocals, guitar and drums. I heard dense forest, slightly threatening, rolling thunder of toms and mallets. Guitar played traditionally in place then dropped to the lap for bow and fingerpicking. Unearthly slides and drone voice. A clear and rich voice, more vocal than noise, slow, spreading. Taps on sticks against hardware or string ends, beads on drum skins, tapping, twisting voice. Voices of forests, African finger harp, metal bowl, deadened taps on guitar strings to whoops and cries. A credit card put to good use to damp guitar strings. Then a reprise. More mobile, at times drums verging on a rhythm, fingerpicked guitar that's sometimes chordal if distinctly atonal, structured vocals with hints of repetition almost echoing guitar. The staccato voice, scraped cymbals and, oddly and unexpectedly, some words (bit I missed them!). The band was Sonya Holywell (vocal), Rhys Mottley (guitar) and Bonnie Stewart (drums) out of Sydney.

Then some Euro virtuosos: Irene Kepl and Christian Meaas Svendsen, violin and bass, Austria and Norway. From the top, this was massively energetic. It started explosively, violently with bass and accompanying vocalisations. Christian was all over the bass, feet, hands, knees surrounding and supporting the instrument, even playing with a dance-like step. Bent over, primitive as in some King Kong film. Then a feel somewhere around 6/8, that equally proficient and euphoric violin, bowed harmonics, superb atonal bowed playing, slow attacks and fast releases like some Beatles recording trick. This was a meeting of distinctly virtuoisic equals. Irene Kepl (violin) and Christian Meaas Svendsen (bass) are from Austria (Vienna) and Norway (Oslo).

Then a final collective improvisation to finish the night, Irene and Christian gradually joined by other players, building, swelling, moving, changing, interestingly those two voices of Guylaine and Sonya, till people started dropping out, standing aside and it ended for applause for the day one set two.