I’m sure it said on my tickets that doors opened at 7pm for this Wire XXV / No-Signal night of avant-jazz.  So I was surprised to get there at 7.15 to see some closed doors and a queue.  A queue with the luxuriantly moustachiod Boredoms dancer at the front, looking rather restless and  impatient.  Rather than standing around in the freezing cold, we went for a drink somewhere warm only to find upon our return to the venue that not only were the doors now open, but that we had missed Archeti and Wigeti; further the venue was laid out with rows of seats, and there appeared to be a top-heavy bums/seats ratio.  Bugger that, we thought, we’ll sit down the front; after certain events earlier in the day I was both ill-tempered and very much in the mood to lie on the floor and mong.

So the first act I saw was Gary Smith and Bernard Gunther’s Klangstaub venture.  Smith played some curious guitar, sounding like a statically-charged frog eating rice krispies on a bed of bubble wrap.  Gunther added brass on top, as often as not more fascinated with the sound of the breath than the note itself.  Overall, an interesting performance, although not enough to shake me from my prevailing torpor.

Next was Rafael Toral (wait a minute!  That’s not an Italian name is it…hmmm, no it says Portuguese here…safe to proceed) with his Space project, his “quest for a discipline to structure musical discourse in “post-free jazz electronic music”, using experimental, custom-built or modified instruments”.  That appears to translate as faffing around with a tiny little box that looked like a miniature Fender amp / Roberts Radio making noises like on of the Clangers.  A-wee-weee-wo-wee-weee-weee-wo.  Fortunately the great drummer Roger Turner was on hand with some muscular improvising; his cymbal-tossing bell-ringing rim-scraping tube-blowing repertoire totally dominated proceedings, rendering Toral’s wibbling slightly irrelevant, and coming close to lifting my mental fog.

Trapist wrapped up the evening with some sedate and stately electronic jazz.  A trio of drums, double bass, and guitar/electronics, their’s was the most satisfyingly meaty and substantial performance of the evening.  Martin Siewert led the group through some gently-paced delicately-evolving compositions, switching to some heavily processed guitar in order to rouse me from a state of near slumber to one of complete immersion in their soundworld.  As the pieces blurred together and then faded out, I felt my annoyances lifiting from me and rising up to nestle amongst the chandeliers; all memories of those cheating Italians earlier injustices were gone.  Well, almost all.

More photos on the flickr.

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