Out 1

SoundOut is in town for its 10th anniversary at the Drill Hall Gallery and I got to most of the evening session on Day 1. It's an international collaboration, as much a seminar or symposium as a concert event. There are as many musicians as performers. The performers are immensely serious yet lighthearted and the gathering itself is of great value to them. The music is new, experimental, open and unchained by techniques and yet, strangely, mostly played on standard instruments, although often with non-standard effects. I'm not sure why they use standard instruments for such non standard techniques but mostly they do, for their skills and sounds are with various noises and effects that aren't in the standard repertoire of the instrument. So flutes are dismantled and blown various ways and amusingly, I thought, a viola da gamba played a bow rather than the other way around. There are long drones and harmonics aplenty. Certainly some players don't know standard techniques (I was stunned by a pianist at a previous SO saying she didn't know of scales and chords and yet I'd enjoyed her set but I'm assured most do, and for several performers I know of, that's certainly true. We are hosting two players this year (hello Hannah and Brodie) from classical and jazz streams and they are both trained and working professionals. I'm somewhat less adventurous and like it when a few notes settle as melodies to appear amongst the drones (this day, Clayton on bass in the Astronomical Unit set and Jim Denley in another set). Maybe they consider that a copout but each was quite beautiful amongst the slower meditations and occasional sharpness. Brodie and Matthias, too, in the night-ending collective set did something approximating a horn section when they went to facing corners behind the audience and played trombone harmonies, some tonal, some otherwise. I just came in on the last notes of Col, Millie and Monika so got a pic and little else. As a set, I particularly enjoyed Astronomical Unit (great name!), a trio of trom/bass/drums played alternatively, squeaks and squeals on skins, punctuated trom and the bass just later including that lovely melodic section up high, delightfully soft and melding. Birgit played a piece that recounted chemical pollution in the Chicago river with duration linked to concentrations of various pollutants. Clayton did a solo bass thing, partly seated, partly standing, with two bows (German) and a few sticks and a slidy end pin. Jim, Melanie and Pierre-Yves did various things, dismantling a flute, blowing mini harmonicas, playing a bow with a viola da gamba, blowing tuning pipes, lots of harmonics and bowed high notes. The end-night collective was numerous and spread widely. Much listening in big numbers and perhaps fewer departures for it, although the troms did physically depart to reappear down the back. It's a time for meditation and for deep listening and for considerable technical rule-breaking. Certainly it's fresh and intriguing sounds that value closed eyes and open ears.

SoundOut 2019 runs for two days at the Drill Hall Gallery. I heard sessions from Astronomical Unit featuring Christien Marien (drums), Matthias Muller (trombone), Clayton Thomas (bass), Birgit Uhler (trumpet) solo, Clayton Thomas (bass) solo, a trio of Jim Denley (flute), Melanie Herbert (violin) and Pierre-Yves Martel (viola da gamba), and the SoundOut Collective. Staying with me are the very convivial Hannah Reardon-Smith (flute) and Brodie McAlister (trombone).

SoundOut2014/1 (Friday night)

SoundOut returns for 2014, its fifth incarnation, and it's as bewildering and sometimes as beautiful as ever. But you must close your eyes. In some ways this is a feast to view - for the occasional invented instrument or the uses that traditional instruments are put to - but it can be doggedly disrespectful of visuals. That's the scene it is. I remember going on stage at the Blues Club wearing shorts, one steaming Australian afternoon, and after some quips I'll never wear shorts on stage again. (These days I always wear a suit!) Yet there were shorts a plenty here. And a band that pretty much turned its back to audience for most of the performance. I could only chuckle at this act of performance insubordination. No gaga here.

The women had it for visual presence, of course. Especially that dark stage with two screens for video (read 8mm film) performance with voice and violin sitting in front facing each other. This was visual to match truly immersive and interesting sound. I was well taken with Viv's voice. It veered throughout vocal tones, tonguing, breath, vocalisations, precise intervals, slides, throat and Native American and the rest. Vibrant and beautifully formed sounds of immense variation. Well accompanied by Melanie on a violin that was legato or staccato bowed, mostly on one or few notes, lots of harmonics, some formed notes. Louise presented two screens of experimental film, mostly dark, images flipping about three times a second, mostly monotonal but with some reds and blood and just a fleeting blue; one or two images, of trees or outback, but mostly amorphous with damage-like overlays. This was a visual and aural treat.

The Overtone Ensemble was four blokes, sometime with backs to audience, but also strangely aware of their visuals. Their instruments were set in symmetrical V, open to the audience, their gloves were matched (stage left blue; stage right green). As with all this music, you need to close eyes and be open and attentive. This, too, deserved attention. They played with a loose structure, opening with drones created from bells and bowls, like those squeeks and rings you got from a wet finger on crystal glasses at Christmas dinners. Then to mallet hits on tuned, differently-lengthed horizontal aluminium pipes, then to handbells (20 metal bells with sprung clappers, five each for a deliriously beautiful sound) and finally to those vertical aluminium pipes that were played with rubber gloves stroking resined pipes (think ethereal, overtones and high frequencies, interference beats, crickets in the summer bush, presumably controlled by speed and tightness of the slide). Canberra is the site of one of two Australian carillons and this band was strangely similar in tonality at times. There was also some background from guitars with ebows (an elecromagnetic string vibrator), occasional bowed cymbals and the like. This was gentle structural change, delicate purity of tones and an ecstatic beauty in those bells. The presumed leader spoke of an interest in friction, magnetism and resonant systems. No surprise here.

Fourth set was Viv Corringham (voice), Melanie Herbert (violin) and Louise Curham (experimental film projections). Third set was the Overtone Ensemble (invented metal rod instruments) comprising Tim Catlin, Atticus Bastow, Dave Brown and Ceallaigh Norman. This post continues ...