Daily Archive

This pretty box of a church has watched with silent suspicion the towers of the Barbican sprout up around it, and was probably regarding the electronic equipment within its walls, installed for the artists performing as part of the increasingly essential Atlantic Waves festival, in a similar manner.  On approach, I could hear the rumble of the church’s air conditioning through its ancient walls.  How odd, I thought. 

Of course, I was running late.  Upon entering, I realised that the industrial howl was the bitter fruit of the collaboration between American John Duncan and Portuguese Alfredo Costa Monteiro.  Stepping into the pitch black, I could just about make out sound artist Monteiro, delicately probing his equipment with lengthy springs, elastic bands and tuning forks, as if in a real life version of a David Lynch film of the game Operation.  Duncan would allow the sound to grate and grind, before repacking it amongst a cacophony of sine waves and sending it swooping bat-like round the rafters.

Stephan Mathieu and Paulo Raposo set us flying round the same rafters amongst a flock of birds.  Sounds were layered until they were coming out of speakers hidden in the church walls, and coming out of speakers that may only have existed in my head.  Suitably hymnal organ and submerged choral parts stood in contrast to Duncan and Monteiro’s nightmarish imagery, sending me into warm and blissful reverie.  So much so in fact that I momentarily nodded off; a state of affairs which should not in this instance be taken as a slight on the joyful noise filling this crypt-like gloom with light.  I think I remember seeing one of the two, the tartan-trousered Mathieu as opposed to the behatted Raposo I think, stepping back either to admire his creation or to wonder what on earth he could possibly do to improve it (not much, I thought).

Touch label artist Oren Ambarchi had been paired for his hands-across-the-water-moment with improvisational double bass player Margarida Garcia, and from my position near the back looked amusingly like fair-trade-making Chris Martin hunched over his piano.  His music was wildly dissimilar, sounding like bombs being detonated around bee hives, with the bees escaping but flying blindly into corrugated iron.  The crunch of Ambarchi’s guitar jarred against some brushed and bowed bass which sounded like terrified and frozen breath.  All too soon it fell apart, probably much to the relief of this charming old church, but much to my confusion; a state of mind only heightened by my attempts to pick my way back out through the Barbican.