Dancing in desperation

It's one that's close to home for all of us but especially for David Finnigan, for the subject is climate change and DF's father is a climate scientist. This show was one incarnation of the controversial work called Kill Climate Deniers. It was the drama-cum-dance-party version and it was performed at Smiths for the launch of the new CD of the show. It's an odd and amusing amalgam of music and education and theatre. It's centred on 1988 as the year of the first IPCC meeting, the creation of the Marshall Institute as the first climate denialist organisation and the birth of Chicago House music (which follows the "Disco sucks" movement of 1979 that led to subsequent House, Hip-hop and Dance music) althought the action takes place in our current Parliament House, on the hill here in Canberra. In this incarnation, the theatrical performer and developer was David Finnigan and the DJ was Reuben Ingall. And this was controversial. After several attempts, Kill Climate Deniers won arts funding from the ACT Government for its development. The then ACT Liberal Leader (now working for a significant salary for Andrew Barr - funny, that), Brendan Smyth, complained about this, leading to an Andrew Bolt airing and subsequent verbal attacks and threats to David and others. All standard procedure for the small band of cultural warriors of the Right. David's legal opinion suggests protection from our terrorist legislation on the grounds of theatrical satire but this all remains a worry. So we laughed to confirm the satire. Laughing was easy, even if, in the story, the Climate Deniers win in the end. I won't recount the story, but it involves a terrorist plot on Parliament House featuring a super-heroic female environment minister and her PR offsider and a shock jock and new tech and helicopters and Fleetwood Mac (?). And some minor education in climate change. And plenty of loud music and laughs. Then to finish, a dance party. Dance Party? Sting once said "when the world is going down, you make the best of what's still around". I've pondered that very line as I write on jazz and the arts while climate threatens. I guess David's made a similar decision. So the dance. And the CD which essentially provides the text and original dance music from Reuben. David's presentation was both intimate and strong and well-voiced and Reuben's music was a loud, head-thumping pleasure. Local and unpretentious and great fun, made famous by Bolt and others, appearing in various formats. And referencing the essential issue for the modern world - the one we are busily flubbing.

David Finnigan (playwright, dramatist) performed the text of Kill Climate Deniers at Smiths. Reuben Ingall (electronics, DJ) provided the dance music.

KCC website

Sample/purchase/download the CD

Here we are

The YouAreHere festival has come around again. It's a wonderful event: "a curated festival ... of Canberra's diverse independent and experimental arts and culture". It strangely pops up in various empty spaces around Canberra or takes over whatever venue for the week. It's only a week but it's a busy and eclectic time. I should give it more time, but I tend not to. My loss. But I happened on a few venues after Hippo.

First was Reuben Ingall. I've seen him performing electronica. Apparently he's on 2XX (our Indie community radio station). This was a talk on some musical interests and their approaches. Just outside was a little library, actually standing quite forlorn. I noticed this because a friend of mine started the first of these free community libraries here in Canberra a few months ago and it was featured in the Canberra Times by Ian Warden, no less. Then I walked around the corner hearing classical music from Phoenix Pub. Mmm, stange. The venue has been setup differently from my last visit, with enhanced stage and lighting and layout and bar down the back. Two of the Inventi Ensemble of Canberra, Melissa Doecke (flute) and Ben Opie (oboe), were playing, all decked out to the nines and entertaining a diverse audience as a breather from the Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! comedy session. Just proof of the diversity and impish mischievousness of this festival.

Finally, we've all seen this plaque on the corner of Northbourne Ave and London Circuit. For once I stopped to read it. "EIIR Here on 15th February, 1954, the citizens of Canberra greeted Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the first reigning British Monarch to visit Australia". It has this republican musing of many things. First reigning monarch to visit? Maybe the delay is understandable given commercial flights were just new. British Monarch? Isn't she claimed as the Queen of Australia?

Not really jazz, but a tightrope

The locals do experimental, too. I’ve come to experimental music and free jazz through Richard and Shoeb and SoundOut and Smiths Bookshop and a few more connections. It’s not a popular form. It’s not even something I warmed to at first. I guess it’s got rules. It looks like it can be faked but the cognoscenti see through it. Skills make the difference and you can sometimes judge them. Some skills are just too far out of the mainstream for common recognition, like separated sax mouthpieces or playing underwater and the like. I can recognise bass technique, even if it’s unconventional, and also standard instruments played with trained technique. Similarly, I can recognise musical sensibility in the use of echo and processing and loops and electronica. It’s otherworldly but still human. And often, even without conscious recognition, but closing your eyes you can tell that something has structure or flow or harmony or tonality. This music is largely post-tonal so needs to be judged in its own context. So as I newcomer, I like to hear different approaches, different people, different skills and conceptualisations; to cover the waterfront. This night, at Smiths, before Philipe Petit, I heard three short sets and three groups: interesting and educational.

First up was Luke Pendeaux and Danny Wild. As I understand, Luke played sampler and sequencer (Roland SP404 and MC303) with Danny on laptop sequencer (Ableton live). This was rhythmic music an underlay of drone, heavy in repetition and minimal in change. Various samples were dredged up, edited and discombobulated, mixed with occasional voice that was similarly processed, the whole changing gently over time, with occasional squeals and whale calls and space ship launches and detunes and slow downs. I liked the slightly latin starting groove but wondered how we got to a shuffle swing at the end. I initially felt a sonata-like form in three parts - exposition, recapitulation - but then it seemed to continue to further parts. One thing that’s quite unique about this music is how it’s busily automated so leaving time for swig of a beer between thoughts. That’s civilised. When I go for a beer on stage, it’s usually an unholy intrusion.

Second was Shoeb Ahmad. He would have played duo with Philipe Petit but equipment availability intervened. His key instrument is the guitar, a telecaster with single pole twang, slow arpeggios, sustained chords. This is not a music of guitar virtuosity but of watery change. He uses a string of effects and a sampler. The twang undergoes watery change. But it overlays an unrelenting noise of notes without end. It’s overwhelming, threatening, other than human, throbbing. We felt lost, threatened, rolled by a tsunami of sound. Just breathing, throbbing with heartbeat regularity. But then human sounds like clap slicks, primitive, cicada sounds, and a final crescendo of sampler then strummed chords and silence. Unsettling music, dark despite the country twang.

Third was a trio of Andrew Fedorovich, Reuben Ingall and John Wilton. Their presentation was earthy, animal. These were calls in the wild from sax mouthpiece. Rugged slaps and windblown shudders, echoing and grooving like ants and bats in the night. Then decay, an electronic drop in pitch, like a plane falling or a perhaps a crow circling, aware, calm, observant. Then night nocturnal creatures, mystery and unknowingness, Sustained twisted, bent animal tone from sax and splashed of malletted cymbals to replace the regularity of mallets on skin. Then suddenly violence leading to slow decay and some relief. Here again I noticed the automation, laptop wielding Reuben able to take a swig while sax and drums were immediate, in the moment, living as in humanity.

How else to describe this music? I close my eyes and more than other musics, its soundscape expands and its logic appears. Its direct and unconventional and even uncivilised, and that can be good in art. Whatever, I’ll be hearing more, especially with the fourth SoundOut Festival of this music coming up in just a few weeks’ time. The performers were was Luke Pendeaux (sequencer, sampler) and Danny Wild (sequencer); Shoeb Ahmad (guitar, effects, sampler); Andrew Fedorovich (alto sax), Reuben Ingall (laptop) and John Wilton (drums). The location was Smith’s Alternative Bookstore.

An Ark in a storm

The Loft is now underway for the year and I caught the Silver Spine Arkestra last night. It’s an obvious reference and tribute to Sun Ra and I locked in the date when I saw it. I found the electronica and experimentalism of the band was a reminder of Sun Ra, but his embedding in the greater jazz tradition and swing and Ellington in particular was not on show to my ears. I trust the cult-like personal demands of the original were also missing: Sun Ra was inventive but he was also a demanding and idiosyncratic leader. I’ll put it down to his background on Saturn. The SSA played two sets, each comprising a single improvisation. The first was more rhythmically and harmonically obvious. Shoeb played bass guitar here on steady quarter or eighth notes that outlined a two chord pattern. I particularly enjoyed a 2 chord bass loop that was nicely tentative and meditative and seemed to merge the bass into the group improv rather than feature it as a definer of the groove. The second was more airy, as Shoeb toyed with mixer and electronics. For me, the defining point of contact for both improvisations was Evan’s drums with his unconventional rhythmic patterns that defined feels and moved to create structure and improvisational spaces. These spaces were effectively filled by laptop-generated drones and digitally effected, refracted and refactored tones from Reuben, and long, slow contrapuntal notes or bowed sax bits from Andrew on alto. Miro provided the melody, close harmony and percussion that added detail to the whole. I heard a similarity to modal Miles of the fusion period and Miro also mentioned that. I delighted in one precisely placed trumpet harmony with Andrew’s alto that was indelibly pure. And Miro’s trumpet reappeared in processed form from Reuben’s laptop at times. He also played some fascinating African percussion instruments and whirling drones. The second improvisation featured visitor Andy on piano. This was minimalist, meditative, modulating piano taking both gentle bass and alternative rhythmical roles and using closely spaced chords with slight alterations of one note or unassertive arpeggios. Like SSA’s namesake, this is challenging and unconventional music; music for closed eyes and not for visible pleasure; music as sound that crosses into free improvisation. Nice one.

The Silver Spine Arkestra comprised Miroslav Bukovsky (trumpet, percussion), Andrew Fedorovich (alto sax), Reuben Ingall (laptop electronics), Shoeb Ahmad (bass guitar, synth) and Evan Dorrian (drums). Andy Butler (piano) sat in for the second set.