Great gigs 2001

12/10/2001 – Faust at the RFH. Right, first off I’m talking about Faust the Krautrock legend, not some opera, book, or play, or whatever else the ignorant may confuse them. Real Germans beating real crap out of bits of metal, pounding drums, guitars, cement mixers within an inch of their lives. No one in Faust these days looks old enough to be in Faust, this is a tad confusing. Some seem far to young to have been born when their bewildering clear vinyl, clear sleeved debut hit the unsuspecting public in the early 70s. Faust have evolved, this is no lingering old timer outfit, their music has a strong element of contempary click / cut / glitch electronica whilst retaining their identity. Quality stuff, and as always well worth catching. Bizarrely a big fight broke out in the audience at the RFH, not something I have ever seen before in that location, and something I strongly suspect that the RFH employees hadn’t either. Annoying as it seemed to put Faust off their stride for the first few numbers.

13/10/2001 – Stockhausen, Hymnen, Barbican Electronic season. This was my first exposure to this piece, and what better way than in the presence of the composer. Stockhausen took to the stage and gave a 30 minute talk that placed the piece in both its historical and his personal perspective, he is one of those rare individuals that within a few seconds had me totally gripped. Once he had completed his talk he left the stage, the lights dimmed to blackness, and the start of two hours of some of the most amazing music I have ever experienced began.

Hymnen is effectively a collection of recordings of national anthems from the four corners of the earth which are shredded and manipulated almost beyond recognition and definitely beyond belief, then spat out through far more than four corners of the concert hall. Everything is manipulated, pitch, time, space, the feeling is of throwing all the worlds individual identities into a melting pot and meticulously reassembling the contents into a new whole atom by atom, a concept that seemed especially poignant in the current political climate. I had landed a really cool seat well within the confines of the multiple speakers, and the effect of sounds colliding and fragmenting from all around and above was exceptionally intense, in true Germanic fashion none of this was sonic fireworks, everything was done with a sense of precision that would be extraordinary today, and must have been next impossible between 1964 and 67 when the piece was recorded. One of many things that completely stunned me regarding this piece is that it sounds totally ‘now’, this is no historic curio, in fact being honest it makes 98% of current electronica sound unfeasibly moronic, kak handed, and shallow. Anyway, I am now a total convert, and as a brand new Stockhausen fan I managed to get my program autographed on the way out…

14/10/2001 - Stockhausen Electronic Studies 1 & 2, Gesang Der Junglinge, Telemusik, Kontakte. Electronic Studies 1 & 2 date from the early 50s and are unfeasibly precise manual combinations of individual sin waves – sort of a DIY Yamaha DX7 made using just a tape machine. Gesang Der Junglinge, Telemusik and Kontakte are 50s and 60s compositions that explore more complex textures of both concrete and electronic origin. I already own a copy of Kontakte, so new pretty much what to expect there, though hearing it in its original four channel form added much to the experience. Truly excellent stuff.

I now need to find a copy of Hymnen.

Tony.