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Review: Nordic Giants, Fleece
Like feathery Ents, Löki and Rôka flank the Fleece stage, their impressive, identity-concealing costumes delivering the full Peter Jackson on a Blue Peter budget. The former has a bank of keyboards and an occasionally deployed trumpet; the latter sits behind a large drum kit, emerging every so often to play bowed guitar – an effect that feels oddly like Jimmy Page going full glissando while dressed as a tree monster.
Between them is placed a large video screen. Images are projected behind them and the Fleece’s own video screens are also pressed into action, augmented by clouds of smoke and atmospheric lighting with occasional strobes. Turning a pub venue into a multi-media art installation is quite a challenge, but the duo pull it off with the support of a suitably mesmerised audience.
The short films, some of their own devising but mostly plucked from the international festival circuit and given a live score makeover, are witty, mordant and occasionally bleak, with consumerism and the quest for enlightenment being recurring themes. Rodents pop up on more than one occasion, reminding us of another anonymous social commentator of this parish. Steve Cutts’ splendid animation Happiness, for example, charts the quest for fulfilment in a literal rat race. Most of them are new for this tour, with music drawn from the recent, crowd-funded Symbiosis album, but old favourites get an airing too – notably Together, which loops Martin Luther King Jr’s 1967 A Time to Break Silence speech over Pencilhead’s animation, and the two-part Through a Lens Darkly soundtracking David Jackson’s macabre The Last Breath.
is needed now More than ever
For old-school proggers, there are echoes here of everything from Gerald Scarfe’s contributions to The Wall, especially the marching hammers sequence, to Jess Cope’s beautiful animations for Steven Wilson. But while the live score scene has been booming in recent years, no one else is really working quite so hard at making it a truly immersive experience. And while much keyboard-dominated music of this nature has a tendency to feel cold, Nordic Giants’ piano and drums-driven sound is much warmer and more organic, with Rôka’s muscular, propulsive rhythms fending off the spectre of New Agey blanditude. The only time they falter is when the disembodied, pre-recorded vocals kick in on those tracks with lyrics, such as Faceless, and you’re left struggling to discern through the smog whether a singer has actually pitched up on stage.
Not a single word is spoken by the two musicians all evening, and they only acknowledge the presence of their audience when they come to the front of the stage to take deep bows after the encore. But then ordinary gigs don’t conclude with end credits. Long may their wardrobes and music continue to evolve.
Main pic: Neal Grundy
Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: March 2022
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