Thu 3 Dec – Steve Earle, Joe Pug
Edit this setlist | More Steve Earle setlists
Source: setlist.fm
See also my blog post.
Source: setlist.fm
See also my blog post.
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Steve Earle Setlist + Blog Link
Dez 5 2009, 13h58
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CONTAMINATED NEW AGE
Set 15 2009, 19h26
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A RABBIT NOT A HABIT
Jul 22 2009, 7h44
Tue 21 Jul – BANDS APART
The last time I saw Animal Collective was in dark club in Bologna (Il Covo) where they played for around an hour without pausing for the ritual of applause. There was something intense and mysterious about them that I found fascinating.
Playing outdoors in the beautiful setting of Piazza Castello, Ferrara makes it impossible to recreate such a claustrophobic mood. Their curious hybrid sound of techno-dub-noise-pop is less effective in these surroundings and works only when at its most tribal and trance-like.
The 'songs' they play are only vaguely recognisable from the album forms - the structures that were loose to begin with are transformed into something shapeless - a process of mutation rather than improvisation. In this double-bill with TV On The Radio - they play first and I would say their set is a good half hour too long. The version 'Brother Sport' which should have ended the show on a high was a bit of a damp squib.
There are moments that transported me and moments that bored me - often it's as if they themselves are trying to find the magic groove - the zone that exists beyond the tune or hook. When they find it, the effect is stunning - one moment when Avey Tare was strumming and yelping, Panda Bear drumming furiously and Geologist's head bobbing to the beats was a moment to savour and it was worth the trip to witness this alone.
TV on the Radio are another 'hybrid' of sorts although not in the same weird or psychedelic way. Their sound is quite conventional Indie-Rock fused with a pulse of jazz/blues. They were worth seeing for Kyp Malone’s amazing comic strip beard alone! I found Tunde Adebimbe’s strained his voice too much to make an impact and he and the band blasted out their hits energetically but something of the essential subtlety of their sound was missing. The muddy mix didn't help their cause.
The high point was the encore -
Family Tree is a great song which works its magic without needing a big arrangement and Staring at the Sun is by now an established classic.
The show was a good showcase for these two fine Brooklyn bands but I think the natural habitat for both is an intimate venue with a kick-ass sound system. -
THE MOZZA ALTERNATIVE
Jul 15 2009, 11h29
Tue 14 Jul – Etnofestival 2009
Morrissey cancelled two concerts at Rimini for "un-resolvable reasons" which Mozza later explained via his home page was due to the fact "the venue could not accommodate our PA system or lights, etc" rather than for health problems.
I have a suspicion that not enough tickets were sold too - certainly the shows were very poorly publicized. A friend who lives in Rimini says she didn't see a single poster which is strange since these would have been the only concerts in Italy. Either way the organization leaves much to be desired - was Morrissey planning a a show of Emerson, Lake & Palmer proportions - we'll never know!
The consequence of this was that I headed up to San Marino for day 2 of their annual Etnofestival - one of six concerts in successive nights from around the globe - Corea, Spain, Cuba, Brasil, Colombia and, for the show I attended, Guinea.
It turned out to be a spectacular drumfest. Mamady Keita is a 59 year old master of the djembe (African drum). On stage he is accompanied by a band of 5 other drummers, 3 big-mamma dancers, + balafon, kora, flute & sax players.
They created a real party atmosphere from the start and several members of the audience lept on stage during the show to display their dancing - including one pregnant white woman!
A great show and, I suspect, more fun that Morrissey would have been. -
FEN FLOWERS
Jul 1 2009, 4h25
Sat 27 Jun – Richard Youngs, Lisa Papineau, Claudia Macori
I've long admired the quiet eccentricity of Richard Youngs so I welcomed this rare chance to see him live at a free outdoor concert in the grounds of the Rocca Malatestiana, Cesena.
I wasn't too sure what to expect. I know he doesn't do too many live shows and his recorded albums are hard to pigeonhole. Avant-Folk probably gets as close as anything to defining his music but just to be bloody minded he's recently put out what he calls his pop album (Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits). He plays 'Like a Sailor' from this record although he not really in the business of plugging this release (the limited edition of 300 is already sold out anyway!).
In many ways Youngs is full of contradictions . He lives in Glasgow but doesn't make anything resembling urban music. He has collaborated with artists like Makoto Kawabata, Alex Neilson, Jandek and Alistair Galbraith yet seems to be a man who is quite happy in his own company.
Many of his solo albums have the trappings of classic outsider songs - intense and lonesome although they never cross the pain barrier into tortured or whining. I picture him wandering the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland composing and rehearsing his beautifully enigmatic songs like 'One Hundred Stranded Horses' or 'Soon It Will Be Fire', both of which he played at Cesena. The latter is one of my favourite songs of his - I really like the fragility of his wavering falsetto and the illusive quality of his words.
His songs reference nature a lot and are rich in a kind of pagan spirituality that establish a mood rather than tell stories. When he plays acoustic guitar, there are fleeting shades of Bert Jansch although he seems at pains to subvert being regarded as just another sensitive singer-songwriter.
In this one hour show he frequently dispensed with his acoustic guitar in favour of performing a series idiosyncratic a cappella songs - a kind of a Celtic beat poetry. The most memorable of these was a Allen Ginsberg type rant-chant called Fen Flowers which features with numerous compound nouns prefixed by the word 'Fen' - Fen-energy, Fen-language etc. "This is my next single", he deadpans.
He's called back for an encore which seems to take him by surprise and he admits to not having prepared anything. He finally decides to do an unaccompanied version of Advent - the title track of his first solo album originally released in 1990 . As with his other songs, the words are obscure. When he finishes he says "Let that be a warning to you" , leaving us to guess exactly what we are being cautioned against. -
RAGAPIANO
Jun 19 2009, 21h53
Thu 18 Jun – Ragapiano
The open air space within the complex of the beautiful 16th century Classense Library makes for a perfect setting for this inspired solo performance, part of the 'Bianco Nero Piano Forte' concerts for the Ravenna Festival.
FABRIZIO OTTAVIUCCI plays a blend of classical and experimental piano works. The programme is well judged so that the more 'difficult' atonal or free improvisation pieces are balanced by more accessible works.
For the first half he played 'Quattro illustrazioni sulle metamorfosi di Visnù' by Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988) and a fluid and mesmerising piece by Terry Riley.
He opened the second half with 'In A Landscape' by John Cage, a delicate atmospheric work with a real sense of space. What struck me about this is how Cage’s unimposing textures satisfy the criteria which was later defined as Ambient Music; what Brian Eno described as music which is "as ignorable as it is interesting".
After this, the first of Ottaviucci's own piano ragas is a frenzied work which forces you to engage . With feet stomping to a beat of his own making he practically attacks the piano and literally lets his hair down (he ties it back in a ponytail when playing works by other composers). This ' let's get physical' approach contrasts sharply to the meditative calm of Cage's piece.
It is followed by his Raga d'Inverno and 'PsicoRaga' which return us to balance and spirituality - more in keeping with atmosphere of music as a form of 'prayer' - one of the key themes of the Ravenna Festival this year.
A brilliant musician and a fine way to spend a sultry summer evening.
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BLACK SEA - RED DESERT
Mar 29 2009, 20h35
Fri 27 Mar – Fennesz, punck, Black Fanfare
On stage Christian Fennesz cuts an elegant figure with an attractively haunted quality that shows he's more deep than macho.
He is an intense performer who doesn't feel the need to speak or engage in any eye contact with the audience. Instead, he directs a steely gaze at his laptop as if willing the machine to produce the right combination of loops. With an electric guitar he adds a human touch to his formidable digital creations.
At the Bronson, he performed one unbroken piece for 45 minutes followed by a 10 minute coda. The concert was billed as 'Fennesz plays Black Sea' but there was only the vaguest resemblance to that recorded work.
The stronger emphasis on the guitar gave a more aggressive edge to the sound. A welcome knock-on effect of the higher volume is that he avoided being sabotaged by noisy bar bores. The downside was that there were none of the flashes of quiet after the storm that gives his music such range and beauty.
The music played at the Bronson was more abstract noise than ambient bliss, striking in its own way but lacking the grace and subtlety that makes his albums so atmospheric and calming.
Supporting act punck showed that computer generated music gains little from being performed ‘live’ unless the human element is added.
For all I know Punck (aka Adriano Zanni) could have simply pressed the ‘play’ button on his Mac - the slide show consisting mainly of desolate seascapes was not enough to inject any life his Red Desert Chronicles. -
Vic Chesnutt link
Mar 22 2009, 17h49
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Global is good
Mar 16 2009, 21h36
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IN AWE OF KEIJI HAINO
Jan 23 2009, 21h02
Thu 22 Jan – Netmage Festival
With the best will in the world, the sight of three individuals standing in a row behind a stew of wires and gadgets is not the most compelling visual experience. Yet when those three individuals happen to be at the cutting edge of underground noise-electronica its worth paying attention to the sound they create. On stage, they were, from left to right, John Wiese, Pete Swanson and Liz Harris. John Wiese is a mainstay of the LA scene and occasional member of Sunn 0))), Pete Swanson was one half of the sublime Yellow Swans duo while Liz Harris is the artist still currently known as Grouper.
They performed a single improvised piece for around half an hour which developed into a dense mass of impenetrable noise before gradually evolving into something gentler. A babble of jumbled voices added a human dimension and when Liz Harris took up a microphone I thought she was going to add her otherworldly vocals to the mix but sadly that didn't happen.
Wiese and Swanson looked to be just passing through as they were dressed in chunky outdoor gear while Harris in black t-shirt and legging looked in a sportier mood. She'd been active beforehand too as the visuals displayed on the monitors were all her own work, a piece called 'Mirror Hall' which featured an organic kaleidoscopic flux and digital rainfall. This added a welcome counterbalance and distraction to the sound collage the threesome concoct.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, they never reach the transcendent peaks they have achieved as artists in their own right but they set the tone for a fascinating evening of what the Netmage programme describes as "a sonic cloud of weird-impro-psycho-noise" combining "vernacular and hybrid" elements .
Netmage takes place in the heart of Bologna in the splendid setting of the city's Palazzo Re Enzo. The medieval arches and towers and faded renaissance murals are in marked contrast to the now-ness of the music being showcased.
Next on the bill were America's great white hopes of drone -Emeralds- whose recent releases show such great promise. These three young guys from Cleveland go about their business efficiently but in fairly uncharismatic fashion and the live performance doesn't really add much more than you get on record.
This criticism cannot be levelled at the evening's main attraction - the enigma that is Tokyo's Keiji Haino ( Keiji Haino).
There are no words to adequately describe the brilliance of this show. I only know that I felt immensely privileged to witness an artist who, in his mid 50s, is still pushing the boundaries of how we define music and performance art.
For nigh on two hours he switched between tortured vocals, frenzied guitar abuse and contorted blasts of electronic noise. With the bank of huge speakers, the amplification was deliberately pitched to hit the pain barrier; not since a mid 70s encounter with Hawkwind have my ears burned so much at the end of a concert. At one point the screech of his voice was of such an acute pitch it made me reel with shock.
Despite the aural mayhem he conjured up, Haino, wordless and in sunglasses throughout, remained impassive and seemingly without emotion. Only the jerky movements and the tossing of his mane of long greying hair gave any hint of his state of mind.
There were no catchy rhythms, no words to sing along with, no songs at all in the accepted sense of the word - there wasn't even space to applaud. Yet for its shear intensity and for its uncompromising assault on the senses I would rank this as one of the best performances I've ever seen. I don't expect to see its like again this side of the grave.
This rough video hardly does him justice but gives something of the flavour of the show:
