Music / free jazz
Review: Limpe Fuchs/FACS/Copper Sounds, Brunswick Club
As the sundry denizens gathered in and around the building it emphasised what a shame it is that the Brunswick Club’s future as a venue is in question. It was certainly perfect for this event, the two good-sized rooms allowing for the installation of the performers handmade musical oddities and ensuring a smoothly run programme enjoyed by a sizeable gathering.
Copper Sounds had promised rock music and indeed that was what they delivered via a triangular contraption on the floor in the downstairs room. Three linked bicycle wheels each bore a medium sized lump of stone which, as they turned, interacted with microphones and triggered synthesised sounds. One scraped out an irregular looping rhythm, one brushed out bursts of noise and the third bashed the pulse beat. It was an ingenious and witty idea, allowing for the electronics to evolve and revisit the essential rhythmic minimalism with a kind of sub-Dub formality, and the whole thing was enhanced by sound-triggered bursts of red light that encouraged staring at the structure as those diligent rocks rotated.
is needed now More than ever
FACS were similarly sparsely lit with red light in the gloom of the downstairs room but there the comparison with Copper Sounds ends. Using the classic guitar/bass/drums triad the Chicago threesome carved a dispassionate post-art rock sound, disciplined and minimal, driven by Noah Leger’s non-negotiable drumming and Alianna Kalaba’s deliberately withheld bass. The results, especially when Brian Case’s laconic vocals overlaid his screaming effected guitar slabs, echoed the slacker moments of precedents like PIL, Television or Morphine to satisfyingly chilling effect.
And then it was upstairs for the headliner Limpe Fuchs whose remarkable hand-made percussion set-up was assembled in the middle of the room (under an incongruous disco ball). Once everybody was seated around the walls or on the carpeted floor she emerged almost stealthily into her gloomily-lit domain and began to stroke, strike and tinker about between the different sonic elements of her kit. She was like a sonic shaman holding us all spellbound with the artful simplicity of her music whether in flurries of rhythm, swooping metallic glissandos or eerie combinations of bell-like resonances and howling string vibrations. Most fascinating to see and hear were the pair of ‘ballast strings’ – curved metal tubes dangling on wires from elevated bass drums which produced deep gong sounds or tunable vibraphone notes depending how she held or hit them – but possibly even more effective were the two thin sheets of metal she dragged, dropped and shushed to narrate her way across the floor.
As you’d expect from someone with half a century of musical experimentation neither her assurance nor the performance ever faltered and our respectful silence was rewarded when, as a kind of encore, she scattered a variety of wooden sticks across the floor for people to roll and throw in a complex barrage of clicking sounds. It was an invitation that extended even farther when the lights went up and she freely let whoever wanted to play with the instruments for an anarchic scratch orchestra finale. It was a fittingly liberating end to what had been a delightful experience of musical originality.
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