Rumor 46

Well, here I am in Utrecht two weeks later, without an internet connection in my room, so I haven't gotten around to posting lately. The first couple weeks have been fairly eventful, classes are pretty good, and so on, but that's a story for another time. Right now, the topic returns to shows. I've actually seen two since my return, having seen MDC at dBs last Sunday, but I'll be discussing the show(s) last night here.

Last night was the 46^th iteration of Rumor, a “festival for adventurous music” which happens at random intervals. I was at Rumor 44, which was excellent, particularly the headlining-ish band, Deerhoof, and 45 happened while I was in Ghana, so it's safe to say Rumor is a quite frequent fest. This time, it consisted of four shows spread over three venues, all for 10 euro with a student card. Not a bad deal, especially with interesting international shows. This was a particularly exciting occasion because it was my first time going to a show with Tim, the Indian-Singaporean exchange student with music taste remarkably similar to mine who's quickly becoming my new show buddy. Anyway, the proceedings commenced at Rasa, the great multicultural performance space in the centre of town.

The first act was, like last time, a modern classical piece. This was a lengthy violin piece by Sciarrino called “6 Capricci”, performed by Barbara Luneburg. It was just like I normally think of modern classical shows – interesting in composition, impressive in technique, and hard to appreciate beyond that. The piece was very obviously a product of quite a lot of musical talent, but to my untrained ear it sounded incohesive and a bit repetitive due to it only being in one key. I'm no expert on modern classical, though, so I can't judge it well. It was a fine start to the evening nonetheless.

The next show, still at Rasa, was rather more compelling to me. Push the Triangle, a French three-piece, opened up with weird, ominous prerecorded noise before setting in with winding minor-key jazzy foreboding on a high-pitched, serpentine sax and highly distorted guitar. This erupted suddenly into thundering, almost funky free jazz crescendo, propelled by fantastic drumming by Michel Blanc. He held everything together remarkably well, between providing a rhythmic base for the experimental looping interludes and hammering away in the intense moments. The overall dynamic was quite impressive, as the instruments all worked in very different ways, often even in differing time-signatures, yet managed to be very consistently cohesive and rhythmic. The many effects included, most often mid-note guitar volume shifts and odd turntable artistry, didn't seem forced or artificial either, so the overall impression I got was very favourable. An enjoyable show by all means.

The big attraction of the night was up next, at the fantastic volunteer-run venue Ekko: Sunburned Hand of the Man. Their crazy bandname has nothing on their crazy music and performance art. They started with most of the band sitting or lying down, obscured by darkness, with odd psychedelic sounds emerging from the few visible instruments. It was a trippy experience from the start - “how many of them are there? What are they all playing?” was augmented by the fact that a completely ridiculous film, “The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda”, which they described as the only psychedelic film ever made, was playing on a projector in the background, and the music was timed to go with it. The music itself was equally wild: brooding psychedelic-folk-noise-funk insanity, with 7 members on stage switching instruments seemingly at random. I observed at least the following, and probably more: bass, guitar, drums, synths, sax, handclaps, maracas, a tarbuqa, a small terracotta drum, several bells, shakers, prerecorded sounds, reverb-laden spoken vocals, and something that resembled a tin kazoo. Needless to say, the music was bizarre and approaching mind-blowing, with segments of sludy noise accelerating into near-funk at times, and breaking down into total chaos at others. It's hard to describe such a unique sound in words; the best comparison I can make is the Pop Group minus any traces of punk influence or song structure, with additional layers of noisy psychedelic insanity overlaid onto it. This was only accentuated by the way the band switched places, donned white opera masks, sat down at random points, waved huge reflector plates, and at the end picked up the snare drum and waved it around while playing a marching rhythm. This was an experience. This was incredible. This was unique. This probably would have been even better had I been stoned.

After that, nothing could have held up the standard of craziness, but the next act did well anyway. We arrived at SJU, the more avant-garde jazz venue in town, to see a guy with a guitar and a big board full of electronic devices setting up. This was Machinefabriek. He created a dreamy, laid-back wall of sound from several pulsing sounds emanating from the electronics he had in front of him, which looked more like a prop from an awful old sci-fi film than a synth or computer. He wasn't too active – he spent all his time adjusting dials and poking his guitar with a stick to get it to make odd sounds - but he produced a wonderfully ebbing and flowing sound collage that resembled something like Mogwai or My Bloody Valentine with all the standard instrumentation stripped out. It made me a little sleepy, but was quite enjoyable. A good cap to a great night, which ended up with a party at Wall 1 for a friend's birthday, so it was an even better night than I expected. I'm certainly looking forward to the next Rumor.