Live music offers a unique opportunity to test musical theory against practice, allowing us to experience sounds in a communal setting that, while perhaps less comfortable than our homes, enables shared emotional connections and collective enjoyment. Such was the premise of an evening at Milan's Auditorium San Fedele on Monday, October 14.
The event began promisingly in the theater's foyer, where attendees were treated to a pre-concert listening session of Aphex Twin's seminal "Selected Ambient Works 1985-1992" (R&S, 1992). This piece, chosen by audience members through a Facebook poll, served to inaugurate the venue's new speaker system while guests enjoyed wine and conversation.
The evening's first performer, Japanese DJ Wata Igarashi, known internationally for his live sets, unfortunately fell short of expectations. While his ambient compositions demonstrated competent use of dynamics and variations, they offered little beyond what audiences have heard since the genre's emergence in the 1970s. His most noteworthy contribution was the application of aging effects to his sounds – reminiscent of Boards of Canada's more accomplished work on "Geogaddi" (Warp, 2002) – creating a sonic equivalent of a Polaroid filter. However, the overall musical development remained predictable and lacking in innovation.
The evening was redeemed by Drew McDowall, whose performance elevated the proceedings considerably. A veteran of influential groups like Coil and Psychic TV, McDowall presented material from his latest album "A Thread, Silvered and Trembling" (Dais Records, 2024). His setup, combining synthesizers with recorded strings, harp, and flugelhorn, created an extraordinary sonic palette that transcended conventional electronic music boundaries.
McDowall's composition drew inspiration from Scottish funeral melodies contemporary with Carmina Burana, weaving them into a tapestry of drone music and orchestral elements. Performed in complete darkness, his set constructed an immersive soundscape of devotional, crepuscular music that was at once melancholic and powerful. Rather than merely juxtaposing elements, McDowall crafted a cohesive journey into a shadow realm of mystery and introspection, allowing listeners to explore their own inner dimensions.
Looking ahead, the venue will host performances of Eliane Radigue's "Tryptich II" (1979) and Lorenzo Senni's "Canone Infinito Extended" from his latest Warp Records release. Reviews of these performances will follow.
Those of you who are familiar to this blog are
still aware of the interesting even if somehow bothering parade of electronic
music and musicians that takes place every year at the San Fedele Auditorium in
Milan. Bothering because sound is not always perfect, some choices – not only
about the musicians involved, but also about how music is presented,
acoustically speaking – are questionable and if you want to know more you can
read my review of Eliane Radigue concert last year at this
link.
But more important, yesterday night I attended
a couple of performances one of which less interesting and the other one very
cool. Let’s start with the worse: Mattia Loris Siboni, born in 1996, winner of
a San Fedele prize in 2019, presented his work “In Memoriam Hieremiae
Prophetae” (i.e. “In Memory of the Prophet Jeremiah”). For those of you who
don’t know the story, and trying to make it as short as possible, Jeremiah
opposed the political power of his time during the war against Babylon, and for
that reason was immersed in the mud into a tower.
Siboni mixes in this work field recordings and
ascensional melodies, indicating the prophet was saved by the pity of an
Ethiopian councillor of the king, Ebed-Mèlech and taken outside the mud. So we
heard for half an hour the ascensional melody interspersed with the field
recordings: a not particularly brilliant solution to be honest, a little bit
boring and lacking a dynamic development. Even the use of the field recordings
is too simply descriptive, to be honest. I believe Siboni deserve to be
recognized as a composer, but sometimes the urgency to communicate a story or a
message kills the music or affects the way a given musician tells his own
story.
Luckily, the same didn’t happen with Francisco
Lopez. Another disciple of Pierre Schaeffer and the idea of ‘musique concrète’
(i.e. concrete music), Lopez presented a work titled aptly “Inner Sound”, where
the field recordings taken into the Amazon forest were interspersed into an
industrial sonic landscape. Here the dynamics of sound were not only
interestingly realized, but also imagined. As an example, for a couple of times
(e.g. the passing from the industrial to the equatorial lanscape) we faced a
sound that was increasing its volume not vertically but horizontally, in the
face of the audience.
For the sake of the record, I have to admit
that at the end of the performance part of the audience were discussing about
whether Francisco Lopez was developing a way of thinking about the music or
presenting a mere reproduction of past glories of concrete/industrial music. I
really believe that the grace and the mastery we heard were solid gold, and
that Lopez deserves to be taken as one of the most intriguing electonic
composers nowadays.
Francisco Lopez for almost forty years has
developed his own sonic universe, trying with success to destroy the boudaries
between industrial music and environmental sounds creating a sonic world of his
own. Working in almost seventy countries of all the continents, he realized
works, many or which are available through his Bandcamp page, including music
created with sounds taken from both artificial (i.e. human-built) and natural
environments, and his idea of music is so open that the listener is taken as
the last but not the less important ring of the creative chain, so to speak.
In fact, Lopez believes, as Ludwig
Wittengstein, that every work of art need an end-user, a listener, who will
give the work its final but partial meaning thanks to his senses and
connections he’ll be able to create between what he’ll listen to and a possible
sense. Wittengstein is more explicit than that: he declared that every work of
art changes meaning thanks to every user every time it is enjoyed. I believe
Lopez wouldn’t disagree with that.
As far as me, the sense I gave last night to Lopez’
work was that of a discovery: in fact, I was more fascinated by the industrial
sounds, with its far echoes, the circular and slow rhythms, than by the
analogic and natural ones. Not a surprise since I live near a big city, but I
really asked myself if the first group of sounds, the industrial ones, are more
interesting to be manipulated while the animals and the rain are in a way more
penetrating.
That is to say, maybe, that industries are part
of a fascinating trip nowadays, as if the dream of the contemporary composers
has become true, while the nature is still wild and indomitable, more dangerous
for us as individuals and maybe as species. That’s why not all we are implied
in fighting against the global trauma of the climate change: we have relocated
ourselves during the eras, so as far as we are from nature, we can’t really
understand her. At least, not the majority of us.
More prosaically, obviously the industrial
sounds are more regular and dark than the sounds of nature, more organic but
also more accidental. We do know what to expect in an abandoned factory, and
that’s part of its charm, but we don’t know what to expect in a rainforest, and
that’s why it can be really scary. So, many of us will continue to live in
alienating cities instead that in warm nature. A pessimistic message, but don’t
bother Francisco Lopez for that: blame it on myself only.
The review “Inner Spaces” will continue on
April 8 with Syntax Ensemble and on May 2 with Otolab and Marta De Pascalis.
There is also space for the Responsories of the Holy Week on April 10 – we’re
talking about a review promoted by the Catholic Church after all – and for
cinema, with the projection of the movie “North by Northwest” by Alfred
Hitchcock.
