Jóhann Jóhannsson, Greg Haines and Nils Frahm at St Giles-in-the-fields, 27/05/10

I love London history, and this place has A LOT of London history. Since its inception, St Giles-in-the-fields has been closely linked with London’s most unfortunate. A church of some sort has been in this location since 1101, when it was part of a leper hospital. The current building dates back to the 1700s, when it was situated in the middle of one of the most desperately poor rookeries in London, and it was a stopping point for carts carrying condemned men on their way to the gallows at Tyburn. But when I saw the lineup for this gig, then saw where it was taking place, I began to feel like one of London’s unfortunates myself. For I really do still bear the mental scars from the first time I came, for that performance by Tony Conrad in St Giles-in-the-fields a few years back, when he played a seemingly never-ending set of minimalist violin. Despite all that history, and all its character, and its acoustics, the venue – hard pews, one toilet, no refreshments – really isn’t designed for such an endurance test. Yet, back I came, for another evening in these most unforgiving of seats, to see this Arctic Circle-promoted event, featuring the considerable combined talents of Jóhann Jóhannsson, Greg Haines and Nils Frahm. I’m so glad I did.

Nils Frahm is a name I’ve been seeing a lot of recently, but before this performance, other than his recorded collaboration with Machinefabriek, I’ve never knowingly heard any of his work. I’ve spent the time since listening to little else. He seems to be one of these enormously talented young bastards (see also: Nico Muhly, Peter Broderick) capable of creating incredibly accomplished compositions, drawing as much from classical music as pop music, with enough experimental and minimalist edges to keep the likes of me interested. In fact he got me right from the start of his solo piano performance, beginning with what my recently-acquired Frahm knowledge tells me was the piece “Said And Done” from his most recent album The Bells. Frahm’s left hand hammered away on a single note, varying only in volume, before it was joined and finally superseded by a romantic piano air. For much of his set, this was the sort of contrast Frahm was creating – playing some tumultuous repetition against some soaring melody, or some wistful arpeggios being interrupted by unexpected and jagged intrusions. All the while he looked lost in his music, head alternating between being bowed intently and being tossed back with eyes closed; imagine a less cunt-ish Keith Jarrett (people coughed, no rebuke was forthcoming). Towards the end he shuffled to the left side of his piano and piled up the low notes, filling the vast space above our heads with glorious sound.

In comparison to Frahm, I’ve been a fan of Greg Haines for some years now, since his debut album on the Miasmah label. His latest release Until The Point Of Hushed Support (on Sonic Pieces) was not only excellent, but was actually recorded in a church, giving him all the practice he needed to get the best out of St Giles’s acoustics. He had a broader, if somewhat darker, palette of sounds than Frahm, knitting his piano notes into the repeated phrases provided by his violinist, and adding spooked electronics and scrapes from his cello into the mix. It was carefully constructed and layered, building from the sparse to the dense: one outstanding section mingling the decay of some huge piano notes with windy drones and static, deep pulsing piano keeping time while a plaintive violin rang out on top. Haines is a member of Liondialer with Danny Saul, an experimental duo who famously played on wildly inappropriate bills, in wildly inappropriate venues, to the confusion and anger of paying punters. No such issues tonight – this was a perfect combination of set and venue, and was rightfully well-received.

So Jóhann Jóhannsson had given himself a lot to live up to tonight, but backed by the Iskra String Quartet, he delivered a stunning career retrospective set. Jóhannsson began at the piano, letting notes fall like snowdrops onto a soft bed of strings, but was to spend most of the evening hunched over his laptop and other electronic equipment at the back of the stage. He built subtle and not-so-subtle textures, everything from airy rhythms to periods of dense aircraft engine-like noise, the oppressive gloom of the latter finally being punctured by the familiar patterns of “Sálfræthingur” from Englaborn. This bled into a magnificent version of “Processing Unit” from his IBM 1401 album (still my favourite), its cold five note computer signature being echoed and added to by the warm strings, swelling to a rich and emotional finale in which the musical combination of the acoustic and the electronic neatly paralleled the subject matter. Throughout the performance people had been unsure about whether to applaud or not between tracks – I mean there were scores on stage, and you usually wouldn’t applaud between sections of a classical piece – but they were unable to restrain themselves here. After “Odi et Amo” there was a bit of a hiatus caused by Jóhannsson’s computer crashing (another little tribute to IBM, I assume), before he returned to play “Magnetic Tape Unit”, the violins gradually slowing down and quietening, being consumed by a groaning industrial noise, and then finally by the noise of traffic racing down the rookery-clearance project that we know as New Oxford Street.

Throughout, I sat spellbound. The pews were hard? I certainly didn’t notice. These three and a half hours in St Giles-in-the-fields just flew by. Those who attended tonight can consider themselves most fortunate.