PREVIEW ROCK THE RED WELL Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh.
Sat 28 Mar
Loud or QUiet. why choose? The best rock bands manage to combine ear- shredding Wig-outs with moments of blissful aCOustic gentility — and so it is With The Red Well.
The Edinburgh-based quartet are part of Files Fence Collective. but stand apart sonically as the label's big. kick-ass rawk outfit. although that's not how they started off. Coming out of another seriously iiOiSy gang called The Supergun, singer and guitarist Jim Abel wanted a complete change ofscene.
‘I still wanted to play songs. but I tried something different.” he says. ‘I got the ac0ustic guitar out. but in the end I c0uldn't reSIst the rock. When we started I Just didn't want to be loud anymore, but the songs JUSl got heawer and heawer as we turned the amps up. b0ught some more pedals and found Ourselves rocking 0th agam.’
It's not all pedal to the metal. though, as their fantastic debut album testifies. Amid Storms We Arrive is a wonderful journey around the finest parts of American-influenced indie. post-grunge. acoustic country and Scottish folk. It showcases a band of diverSity and originality. JUSI don't ask Abel to describe it.
‘I don't even know what we sound like,' says Abel. gently bemused. ‘But I've always liked artists or bands that can mix it up — Neil Young can turn it up to eleven and deafen everybody. and then he‘s got these really quiet tender songs on acoustic guitar. Same with Bruce Springsteen.’
Ambitious touchstones. but then you can‘t fault a band for aiming high. can you? (Doug Johnstone)
PREVIEW JAZZ
JOEL FRAHM & MICHAEL JANISCH QUINTET Jazz Bar, Edinburgh, Sat 21 Mar, City Halls (Recital Room), Glasgow, Sun 22 Mar
This qumtet is led by two Americans. one of whom is likely to be more familiar than the other to audiences in these parts. Bassist Michael Janisch has been based in London for a while now. and has collaborated With a number of Scottish musiCians. including two of our major saxophonists. His role in quartets led by Tommy Smith and Paul Towndrow have established awareness of him as a significant talent. and his partiCipation here is enough to recommend the gig in itself. It's an even more attractive prospect when you throw in the chance to check out New York saxophonist Joel Frahm and a band that includes sax0phonist Alex Garnett. Jim Hart on vibraphone. and Irish drummer DaVld Lydtle.
Frahm was a high school classmate of pianist Brad Mehldau in his hometown of West Hartford. Connecticut. The saxophonist cut his teeth playing in the school's Jazz band. and had his own revelatory moment as a teenager while listening to a Charlie Parker cassette
borrowed from the library.
‘Bird came on playing ‘Kim‘. which is a pretty famous improwsation of his. It was like lightning struck me. It was so immediate and so transforming. It was really the closest thing to a religious experience or revelation that I ever had. To hear that sound and put it together with concepts that l was trying to grasp was really totally transforming. and revolutionised
everything for me.” (Kenny Mathiesonl
62 THE LIST 19 Mar—2 Apr 2009
PREVIEW EXPERIMENTAL INSTAL 09 The Arches, Glasgow, Fri 20-Sun 22 Mar
A church organ sounding the course of the stars, a cello being turned to dust, a sound poet voicing typewriter symbols, long stretches of almost nothing . . .
Instal has been expanding the way we listen since its inception in 2002, building a substantial audience for outer limits sound.
‘The point of what we do is to see more people involved in experimental art forms,’ explains Barry Esson of festival curators Arika, ‘When people create things for their own artistic elite, they cut off the power of what true artistic experience is, to open us up to new ideas of perception and ways of engaging with the world.’
Founder of the Vienna Aktionist group, Hermann Nitsch is best known for gruesome artworks based around eviscerated cattle. At Instal he turns his attention to conjuring the cosmos with Glasgow University Chapel's organ.
Joan La Barbara is one of the great experimental
singers, renowned for her work with American giants John Cage, Morton Feldman and Alvin Lucier, and a fearless composer in her own right. Also pushing the limits of the human voice is sound poet Steve McCafferty, performing his concrete poem Carnival.
Electro-acoustic and ultra-minimalist music is represented by Nikos Veliotis‘s complete works for cello, Otomo Yoshide and Sachiko M’s sparse electronics, and Rolf Julius and Eva-Maria Houben's explorations of found sound and near silence.
Encuentro sees international collective Ultra-red gather activists and community workers to ask: what is the sound of the war on the poor in Glasgow? Field recordings will provide the starting points for discussion, with the outcome being a plan for direct action.
And with Phil Minton's Century FC, the public themselves become improvisers, forming a 100 piece ‘feral choir’. ‘This is the most democratic thing we’ve ever done,’ claims Esson.
Anything but predictable, Instal might just change your approach to music and art forever.
(Stewart Smith)
WI Frahm