From abenn Sent Sat, Oct 24th 1998, 13:08
From abenn Sent Sat, Oct 24th 1998, 13:08
Heatsink wrote:- >Just got back from the Terry Riley gig at the Barbican...still feel >a bit woozey and I keep hearing music in everything, like computer >fans and next door`s air-conditioning. "In C" was fucking superb, >with about 20 people on-stage playing various instruments, went on >for about an hour I think, beautiful improvisations and interplay >between the musicians. Jarvis cocker didn`t do much, just pressed >a few keys on an organ and blew into a vocoded mic... Springheel >Jack and Paul Hartnoll did this thing with a load of turntables in the >foyer afterwards. It was alright in a let`s-get-horizontal kinda way, >but nothing like what I witnessed before-hand. I didn`t make it to >the LUX or the Spitz though, cos I was on me own and got scared >and ran home. > >G`night. > ><---HEATsink---> Heatsinks opinion of "'In C' was fucking superb" was bang on, errrr Phew! he totally blew us away ... Terry Riley is truly the gentle giant with a genius talent. Unfortunately, we arrived a bit late at the Barbican and missed the first 10 minute piece by Riley, but caught The Smith Quartet performing Riley's 'Good Medicine'. This was an interesting prelude to the "In C" piece, as although the musicians were reading from a full score, not relying on improvisational skills as they would be later on, one still felt the effects of a loop of music, as on a tape loop, swinging round and round, dippin in and out ... twas rather hard for me to concentrate fully on this one tho, as my boyfriend, who, well let's just say, is not used to sitting down in a concert hall listening to a String quartet, was gettin a rather bad case of 'Ants in is Pants' ... ohhh man, he was drivin me bonkers! Stretchin out his long legs, scratchin his arms, twitch twitch twitch ... scratchin his armpits, fidget fidget fidget! ... lettin out big bored sighs, squirmin around in his seat like a hyperactive 11 year old on speed, ... and then when he was complainin that it was waaay too hot in there, decided to take his fleece off, totally forgettin that it had a big zip up the front of it, pullin it up over his head, whereupon he let out a big yelp as his hair & tshirt got caught in da bleedin zip and I had to extricate him ... his loud, pained & strangled yelp addin a new top C to the String Quartet's rendition of "Good Medicine" that wasn't in Terry Riley's score! Blokes eh? can't take em anywhere! (Heatsink, if you were sittin behind us, I doooo sincerely apologise on his behalf, he must have been a bloomin nightmare for the people sittin behind us!) (Anyways, thank Phew! Terry Riley's 'In C' worked its magic upon him and his bod went into deep-in concentration mode and I didn't have to resort to tyin his arms to the armrests and tyin his ankles together!) At first, Terry Riley performed this beautiful haunting piece called 'MissiGonno', on the piano and voice, which he had written for his granddaughter who had a pretend friend called MissiGonno. When Terry Riley came onstage again, a huge gentle giant with a long white beard and a little silk Chinese hat, he greeted us all with a Thai Buddhist greeting, smiling & bowing gracefully, hands clasped together in prayerful, honourful mode ... he was then joined by an 11 piece orchestra, 2 trumpets, 2 French horns, 2 trombones, tenor sax, bassoon, flute, marimba player, vibraphone player, the Smith string quartet and from Pulp, Jarvis on organ/synth & vocoder?, Steve Mackay on bass and Mark Webber on a Fender Rhodes. Terry Riley was one of the first exponents of experiments with delay effects/tape loops and here, in his piece 'In C' we heard the full transcendant sublimity of the effects of these explorations in sound, in this truly mind-blowing, breathtaking glorious sweep of a compostion. Each performer had 1 page of sheet music containing a series of 1-3 bar phrases. The phrases were introduced at intervals by 1 player and would then be repeated, as an answering echo, by the other performers giving the impression of a tape loop or delay effect. The Marimba, Vibes and Fender Rhodes kept up the 3/4 rhythm playing octaves and arpeggios in C. The music swelled and subsided, like a great heaving sea, as the musicians dropped in and out of the piece, their concentration fierce as they improvised with one another, with no direction from Terry Riley whatsoever as he was playing the piano, which was in the centre of the stage, with his semicircle of musicians wrapped around him. I was quite awestruck with respect for the musicians, as an ex trumpet player in an orchestra myself, I knew just how focused they would have to be to perform such a piece, relying totally on their improvisational skills and perfect sense of timing. Towards the end of the piece, Terry Riley started singing very low and quietly, with oriental sounding voices coming in from somewhere ... (was this Jarvis on the Vocoder or synth, I'm not sure?) ... sounding as if he was veering off into a more Indian tonal scale or perhaps Thai influences being introduced? (I DID have a programme that featured a little article on Terry Riley, explaining that he had studied Indian music in India and Thai music at a college in Thailand but the boyfriend had put it in one of his combat's pockets and flippin well gone and lost it, dint he? ohhhh he's flippin opeless! twas probbly in the midst of all is frantic fidgeting! :( Shame, cos I could have expounded on this a little more for you all.) Afterwards, Spring Heel Jack and Paul Hartnoll worked together on their piece using 10 turntables, strangely, perhaps deliberately? echoing the same swelling and subsiding tape loop effects sounds that Terry Riley had just engulfed us all in. We didn't stay till the end for this, as it was rather hard to get deep into da vibe, in the ghastly concrete shell that is the Barbican's foyer, with full fluorescent lighting beamin down on us. God, why oh why didn't they employ a decent architect when they were designin the Barbican, bad design just REEEEALLY annoys me, grates on my nerves somethin rotten ... and their sad attempts to brighten the place up a bit, by painting all the ceilings in what seems to be a tribute to Seurat's Pointillism painting techniques, well ... it aint a pretty sight, made me feel quite queasy! Twas a well strange mix of people there: - loads of beaming, bumbling, velvet jacketed music proffessor types with trails of earnestly excited music studes at their heels ... lots of Terry Riley fans who must have been fans of his music from the 60s ... da "Farts from St.Marts" in all their "Black Only, darling!" togs & Joe 90 specs ... (this is what we, here in London call, what some on here have mentioned as "Art fags' - St. Martins is an Art college in London, where da sneeriest of da sneeriest Poseur Supreme fashion wankers and art studes hang out), Jarvis studied here too, but his Northern sensibilities must have kept him safely grounded to planet earth, a man apart indeed, thank Phew! for that! Then of course, the Pulp crowd, easily spottable amongst da crowd ... the lads all wearing a combination of suits/flares with 70s polyester shirts, and Jarvis hair and the girls who seemed to all favour, severe hard little geometric haircuts with knee length skirts, popsocks and well scary Stern black rimmed glasses, looked like an army of school librarians come to tell you off for gigglin and rap you on da knuckles for not puttin a book back up on da shelves straight! YIKES! When we were about to leave, Jarvis brushed past us,with his posse, dandied up in his green velvet 70s suit, all bare chested underneath, (blimey, Jarv's got a hairy chest! Heavens above!), lookin as adooooorable as ever but rather worryingly anorexic lookin ... but the girl he was with dint look like that Chloe Sevigne lass who he's meant to be an item with, hmmmm ... well, whoever she is, she needs to feed him up propper, cos he's waaaaaay too thin! I was well worried bout da poor lad! ohhh I've rambled waaaay too much, as is my wont, oooops! am off out to hit da record shops now, maybe catch dem naughty VVMers down Rough Trade if I'm lucky! Aless