Filed under: live reviews | Tags: achim mohné, berghain, berlin, elektroakustischer salon, fennesz, hildur gudnadottir, kaj aune, sohrab, touch, touchmusic
Even if a dream can’t be remembered precisely, what you choose to recall from it should mean as much as its real content, assumed Freud. Well, let’s consider the “Touch night” I am reviewing here as a remote dream. It took place in Berghain three weeks ago.
At the end of his introduction speech, label boss Mike Harding clearly wanted us to fear the first performance of the evening. “Kaj Aune will burst into your lives”, he said to the audience with a smile, “in fact he must be among you right now”. A few minutes later, plunged into darkness and waiting for the show to begin, you knew (indeed) that he was among us. A loud creepy noise and a flash of light. Then a series of flashes, shortly illuminating Aune’s face and figure like a stop motion, along with some music that could have been the soundtrack of a gripping horror movie (a short one, not even 5 minutes) or a sparse and radical take on a old scary post-war piece by Penderecki. He only played an amplified violin, the bow’s horsehair flying away with his own greasy long hair. Every single detail frozen on your retina thanks to the disturbing stop motion.
After Aune’s deconstructed violin performance came Hildur Gudnadottir’s cello melodies. The unveiled romanticism of her elegant playing, haunting or annoying depending on the listener’s mood, took the audience by surprise. Perhaps the Berghain’s concrete and steel building was not the most appropriate (and intimate) place for a cello solo; she sang only one song. Later, Achim Mohné’s set reminded me of Francisco Lopez’s Untitled #92 (a piece played by Stephan Mathieu last month within the frame of Echtzeitmusiktage) in a more minimal way. Basically, the heart of the music was rooted in the intertwining background noises (hissing, popping, crackling) coming out from prepared vinyls on turntables and building rhythmic patterns. Appearently, Mohné does a lot of installations (not necessarily related to sound) and more rarely makes music: a shame because his music seemed very subtle. So subtle maybe that the sound engineers decided it should be heard at low volume: not a good idea (unless you’re at home). As a result, you could hear people’s conversations more clearly than Monhé’s music.
Then came a live set by Fennesz. Harding announced him as “one of the best modern album makers”. The thing is, Fennesz’s live sets are really something else, not at all structured like an album, and Harding’s remark could have been misinterpreted. Although I cherish his albums as some minutely organized inner soundscapes, I can’t help loving his best sets for their immediacy and rawer material (when not borrowed from previous recordings or live shows), for their invitation to voyage. That night he had that songwriter’s gift for summing up various attitudes or states of mind in four- or five-note melodies. Around each guitar melody, he built textured layers of sounds, large ripples meant to make everything disappear eventually before the introduction of a new motif. Sitting on the floor, it felt like swimming across a sea of sensations and memories. A very powerful set.
Harding then introduced Tehran-based laptop artist Sohrab (aka Sohrab Karimi Asli), doing here his “first legal gig”. What I recall from it is an endless soothing stream of sounds floating away and a few voices speaking Persian. It all had the same lullaby effect as some of Grouper’s music but it sounded more like a peaceful Philip Jeck or Biosphere gig. His first release is due in November, let’s hope it will be as good. Touch is an exceptional record label, isn’t it?
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[...] Touch night in Berlin: Kaj Aune, Hildur Gudnadottir, Achim Mohné, Fennesz, Sohrab [...]
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