In the run up to this show, someone told me that Keiji Haino once insisted upon playing so loud that the sound engineer at the gig quit in disgust. Someone else told me that, despite the volume he plays at, he thinks earplugs should be banned at his shows (Oto, having somewhat more sense, dispensed them for free). What is the purpose of this merciless pursuit of maximum volume all? And why does the audience willingly submit to it? Despite the forewarnings, I parted with my cash for the first of two sold out nights of a mini-residency which were to match the Japanese avant-garde guitarist with two rather different practitioners of the loud arts: Matthew Bowers’s Voltigeurs project, and on the next night the fiery German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann. The evening which paired him with Bower was to show just how important a weapon volume can be, both in the form of a sustained barrage of noise and in short, dramatic explosions, but also how it can be so easily sapped of its power if handled carelessly. Read the rest of this review over at The Liminal.
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