Saturday, June 28, 2008

Oramics Live


Last night went to hear (and see) The Life and works of Daphne Oram at the Purcell Rooms. Oram is a little like Delia Derbyshire’s maiden aunt; older, rather primmer in appearance and voice.

Things kicked off with Snow the Geoff Jones film for which Daphne did the soundtrack. Snow deserves the term “classic” a masterpiece of cross cutting and on the beat edits of locomotives pitted against the winter elements all set to Daphne’s slowed down and treated version of a Sandy Nelson number. The lights were then dimmed for the playback of a number of Daphne’s works. This was altogether quite odd; after the screening of Snow this was very much music with the picture turned down as we were now as an audience in a cinematic mode of reception. Surprisingly it was actually highly effective. There was no sense of feeling cheated that we were just listening to a playback with no one on stage even pretending to tweak the EQ or stare at a MacBook. It created a perfect space for concentration and the space for visualisation was left purposefully empty.

The music itself was quite a revelation. The Oramics CD released last year suggested Daphne’s music to be more of historical interest than delivering actual musical pleasure but hearing Four Aspects, Episode Metallic and Pulse Persephone (which are included on the CD) in this context made one aware of just how subtle the works are. The CD mixed such pieces in with some of Daphne’s more commercial work; electronic jingles for power tools and so on and left one with a feeling of quirkiness without substance. This notion was quite dispelled by this playback.

Perhaps less mesmerising was From One to Another  for viola and tape. This reminded me of those rather worthy pieces one used to sit through at St John Smith Sqaure which combined tapes with a classically trained musician’s bowing. Things were to go further downhill though for there followed a 30-minute live remix in which a selection of tired beats and buzzes were overlaid with samples of Daphne's music, which seemed to bare little resemblance to anything Daphne originally recorded. Accompanying this was some basic video manipulation that did little to enhance the music. Many of the audience left for the refuge of the bar.

The evening rounded off with another Geoff Jones film Trinidad and Tobago; a documentary funded by BP that avoided using an overbearing commentary but just combines beautiful footage with an Oram soundtrack. The film helped to restore the mood somewhat and sent us off into the night.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Tagging

There was a time in the great hegemony of mainstream musicalsim when only one or two tags were needed to categorise music "file under progressive or popular" was all that most record shops needed with a smattering of spoken word, country, jazz and misc. Tags as a way to define or carve out a musical territory are now so prolific as to be all but absurd. Here for example is just one group's tags from Last FM: alternative rock ambient electronica contemporary electronica dark electro dark pop depeche mode downbeat downtempo dreams and fantasies electro electro psychedelic electro-acoustic electro-psychedelic electro-rock electronic electronica electropop elektro elektro-indie full-on indie electronica instrumental intrancewetrust progressive trance psy-trance psychedelic psychedelic trance psytrance retro electro...

Tags though date faster than Nike trainers and all of the above already seem a little past it. "Anyone for trance, one lump or two" they murmur in the retirement home disco. So we need a new supply of tags to keep us box fresh. Being prompted yesterday to tag some of my own tracks I responded with nu-bleep, downdrone, avantient, sickstep, homesung, duityorself, fadfleet, voodle, etc, etc.