Food, Vladislav Delay and Eyebrow at the Union Chapel, 12/11/09

Sasu Ripatti and Thomas Strønen are two individuals I’ve been looking forward to seeing for some time, two artists patrolling very different sections of the electronics / live percussion border. Strønen’s work on the Rune Grammofon label is a radical re-thinking of the possibilities of jazz drumming, while Ripatti’s past as a jazz drummer seems some way distant, seeping through in the fractured rhythmic sensibilities of his work under the Vladislav Delay name. Both were to play on the same bill here in one of the Arctic Circle‘s Union Chapel events, each as part of a separate duo with a (very different) saxophonist: Ripatti (as Delay) with Lucio Capece, and Strønen playing with Iain Ballamy as Food.

On the undercard was another duo by the name of Eyebrow, who jokingly described themselves as “The Flight Of The Conchords of electro-acoustic music”. Trumpeter Pete Judge played long, light, breathy notes over the percussive framework provided by Paul Wigens. There was a noticeable Scandinavian flavour, with Judge’s tone heavily reminiscent of Arve Henriksen, and the minimalist, ultra-repetitive, gradually shifting rhythms sounding less like jazz and more like electronica, a little like a Biosphere piece in fact. Rather unlike most Scandinavians, however, they concluded with an excellent piece about the dark arches under Leeds Central station, which required Wigens to get a little funky on the mallets, while Judge layered on some Strjon-like rasping drone.

Given his increasing notoriety – on the cover of the Wire magazine, as part of the Moritz von Oswald Trio, with latest album Tummaa picked up by Leaf – I was surprised that Delay was on stage before Food, although the set he produced may have been slightly anti-climactic in the closing slot. Amongst other things, it was a little on the quiet side. It began with Lucio Capece producing the first of so very many surprising sounds from his horn. He removed the crook to blow air across his instrument, and also played it with a bow, producing some of the unplaceable sounds which litter Tummaa (he was also later to place objects in the bell, including a cardboard tube and empty tomato tin which he played with a vibrator. I kid you not). Delay was looping some of these to play back over the course of the set, and adding his own live percussion from a number of pads and metallic objects on the table in front of him, to create a loose construction which hinted at rhythms obliquely. The ghostly piano theme from “Melankolia” emerged, deep in the mix, eaten away by static, but this was not a performance reminiscent of that most recent album. The abstract nature of set, combined with an almost surgical level of detail was more like prior albums (I’m listening back to the title track to Whistleblower as I write; it sounded much more like that). It actually felt like something that would have worked better on headphones, the tiny sounds were slightly lost in the cavernous Union Chapel. As fascinating as it was to see Delay and Capece build these pieces from such unusual sources (it became impossible to tell which sounds were being produced by who, or from what), at these low volumes only occasionally did it approach the immersive – a distant quasi-orchestral drone briefly filling the venue to provide a hint as to what could have been.

There were to be no bows, tubes, tins or vibrators for Iain Ballamy. He stuck to the more trodden path, creating slowly unfurling layers of improvised tenor and soprano melody. But this Food performance really wasn’t about him. It was much more about Strønen. From the off he was working up amazingly intricate patterns using tiny sticks, bells and gamelan-type objects, like a mathematician calculating and re-calculating to increasing levels of precision. Wearing headphones, he was looping small sections and playing them back, working them into the lattice, building a net that Ballamy could float over relatively freely. But his was far from being a sterile, analytical function – he used electronic pads to trigger some deep bass, and by the end of the set he was getting worked up into a tremendous funk, which made us wonder: is there anything or anyone that Strønen couldn’t play with? I’d love to hear how he’d fit into a bigger band, maybe a full free jazz lineup, hell, even an afrobeat group on the evidence of some of this.

Although maybe it isn’t that simple. Guitarist Mark Wingfield joined the duo for a section of the show, but faced with the barrage of interlocking ideas that Strønen was sending his way, seemed unable to find a way in, only managing to fire off a few perfunctory squiggles of noise. Like everyone who saw him play tonight, maybe he too was just a little in awe of Strønen.

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