Rats On Rafts, by Maarten Mooijman
Širom’s Samo Kutin drops slowly to his knees over a kitchen’s value of pots and pans. He takes a container stuffed with what look like purple lentils and pours them from a peak onto a smaller dish. Then, he grabs a handful at a time and throws them violently to his left and proper in order that they strike a variety of the mic’d up drums that encompass him, creating an odd rippling sound. As if in anger, he casts the remainder over his shoulder on the crowd. These of us within the entrance row take a considerable quantity of lentils direct within the face. Whereas we course of the actual fact, Kutin joins within the sparse and hypnotic lattice of drums that his two bandmates Ana Kravanja and Iztok Koren have been unfurling within the background all of the whereas, unfastened lentils leaping up like rainwater from the pores and skin of the drum each time he beats it.
A number of the crowd at Cloud 9, the smallest of the a number of venues stuffed into Utrecht’s labyrinthine arts complicated TivoliVredenburg, start laughing. Some round me are visibly amused when Kutin spins a protracted versatile tube round and round above his head, but you possibly can’t deny that the whirling drone he creates by doing so is completely hypnotic to listen to. The band’s set encapsulates quite a lot of what makes Le Guess Who? such an excellent competition, the sheer number of inventive expertise it delivers. The road-up’s variety when it comes to nationality, gender and style is exemplary, however it’s also various when it comes to power. There’s ridiculousness and sublimity, craziness and seriousness to be discovered, together with the whole lot inbetween.
Le Guess Who?’s wild facet may be situated most simply in EKKO, a small bar and venue ten minutes’ stroll from Tivoli, which proves to be a critical grasp. It’s there we’re handled to a livid twin xylophone and multi-percussion assault courtesy of Mexico Metropolis’s Son Rompe Pera, and an eye-shaking gig by Colombian ritual psychonauts Romperayo throughout which the room feels in peril of dissolving right into a thousand refracted components beneath the psychicke strain created by pinball percussion and screeching incantations. Earlier, Derya Yıldırım presents a beautiful mixture of “modern-traditional” Anatolian people music performed on her bağalama, (a long-necked lute), her songs operating by EKKO like a crystal clear stream. Yıldırım additionally gently maps out her work with the massive German-born Turkish group in speech and music. To Yıldırım, “music is extra necessary than meals”. Take be aware, sourdough fetishists.
At one other, later hour, Evicshen does unusual issues to copper coils and worktables while piloting a course by the hinterlands of noise. There’s something very sensual about her exhibits that additionally relays the giddy pleasures of this sort of music. No drybone faux-academic extemporisation right here. Maybe a standard thread tying these experiences collectively is the sensational gig given by Tokyo rap crew, Dos Monos. Describing what goes on is tough, however I suppose I can say their set comprises sound particles and aural gestures half-inched from each type of pop music and put by a blender. Akin to the sonic fallout from kicking over large Lego statues of Johan Sebastian Bach and George Clinton. The crew’s puppyish manner (The Banana Splits in human kind, no much less) solely makes issues higher. How did the EKKO membership draw such wild mountain music out of all these acts? Its dedication to pleasure, a concomitant lack of pretence?
Evicshen by Lisanne Lentink
That’s to not say, nevertheless, that there’s no enjoyable available away from EKKO. The imposing Stadsschouwburg theatre in gentil Utrecht is probably the final place I might have imagined watching Rotterdam’s Rats On Rafts, as an example. There once more they’re a band with a way of mission. And if meaning an enormous publish punk opera concerning the paranoid thoughts, with big Squbbsy-style heads and Residents-style eyeballs, writhing dancers and ghostly masked choir, all in entrance of backdrops that nod to Spirited Away, Ingmar Bergman and Hawkwind unexpectedly, then, phew. You’ve got a present in your palms.
Very similar to their spirit animal, Rats On Rafts have all the time managed to adapt, at the same time as they battle towards the tide. And including head on the scene Doortje Hiddema on keys and guitar has been a masterstroke. Out of the blue their sound has taken one other flip: large and empathic, a headspace in itself. The pushed nature of their songs, given appreciable rhythmic substance by Mathijs Burgler, emotional punch by Fagan and color and soul by guitarist Arnoud Verheul, is now possessed of a trickier spirit. On the evening, Hiddema’s piano traces in some way add a really feel of Barrett’s Floyd at their most elfin. Natasha Van Waardenburg’s bass taking part in is phenomenal: a robustly chugging engine steering the ship to port. Waardenburg and Hiddema’s twin vocals, countering Fagan’s barked orders, make groovy tracks like ‘Osaka’ and ‘Tokyo Music Expertise’ sky-high experiences. They’re not taking part in this iteration of their set once more. A tragedy for humankind.
Because the competition’s foremost hub, the 5 venues contained inside Tivoli have extra of an air of a ‘conventional’ competition than these scattered across the metropolis like EKKO, Stadsschouwburg, late-night golf equipment BASIS and WAS. or the distant and dingy De Helling, the place Gnod are left to their very own devious units to program a Saturday of exhibits that sees their affiliated tasks Moundabout and Holy Scum carry out earlier than the venerable Salfordian psych-rockers themselves. But even inside Le Guess Who?’s extra stately environs there’s nonetheless loads of insanity to be discovered.
WaqWaq Kingdom’s efficiency at Cloud 9, as an example, is a riot. Whereas modern artist Kalma offers dwell visuals, sat intently at a desktop laptop, Kiki Hitomi and Shigeru Ishihara (akaDJ Scotch Egg) are each in neon, the previous whirling a glittering streamer round her as she shifts in tempo in time with the latter’s stressed beats, taking the set from whacked-out psych drift, all the way in which as much as pummeling staccato overwhelm. It’s all consistent with the theme of the set, billed as ‘Glitchy Nature’, and impressed by the opulence and fixed change to be present in nature. Horse Lords present a extra constant tempo with a ferocious set of tightly wound noise to a capability crowd on the Pandora stage, whereas the far bigger Ronda area offers ample house for Congolese duo KOKOKO!, whose irresistible spartan pump makes a worthy envoy for the fertile Kinshasa underground from which they hail.
WaqWaq Kingdom by Tim Van Veen
Clipping play the Ronda too, a set that’s amongst this yr’s most anticipated; after hangover-curing Oliebollen (fried dough) on Friday morning I’m instructed by a member of the competition’s management that they’ve been attempting to pin down the band for years. It should absolutely have been value their wait. Daveed Diggs’ sheer dexterity as a lyricist and hyperspeed circulate is breathtaking in itself, however when pushed to the sort of extremes that producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes search, whether or not with plunging bass drones or fragmented and fraying noise, it’s the stuff of genuinely shifting brilliance. It’s value noting that Le Guess Who?’s wider hip hop programming is especially on level this yr, with They Hate Change, Billy Woods and Zebra Katz – all curated by Clipping themselves – pushing the shape to dramatic extremes of their very own.
Typically heaving with individuals each on the steep balconies and the ground (an inevitable queue to enter many venues is one in every of Le Guess Who?’s few downsides), the Ronda can have an intense power when it’s at capability, and few harness it higher than Divide And Dissolve. Guitarist and clarinetist Takiaya Reed units the band’s goals out clearly – their gargantuan, quaking instrumental noise rock is an act of anti-colonialist fury, a sound loud sufficient to shatter the foundations of white supremacy and produce its buildings tumbling. What’s attention-grabbing, although, is simply how life-affirming that sound may be if you’re on board. Reed dedicates the present to the late Mimi Parker of Low, with whom Divide And Dissolve toured (“This one’s for Mimi” will also be discovered written on the boards exterior the venue). “We learnt a lot,” she remembers of their time collectively. “I learnt lots about love, and I need to offer you that love.”
The darkish and crowded Ronda makes an attention-grabbing distinction with the Tivoli’s largest and most stately venue Grote Zaal, the place the partitions are white, the numerous rows of chairs a deep purple, and the main points varnished pine. On Saturday, it can’t be used in any respect as a consequence of scheduling conflicts with Utrecht’s common classical music programme, however in any other case hosts excessive profile artists like The Grasp Musicians Of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar, whose Thursday efficiency makes a venerable opening to the competition correct, and a fiftieth anniversary celebration of the life and work of Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids (an exhibition charting his profession can be peppered among the many Tivoli lobby). África Negra have the corridor dancing with a joyous highlife set, and Oumou Sangare rounds off the ultimate night there on charismatic kind. Her first ever tour supervisor, she recounts, was from Utrecht, and he or she has quite a lot of affection for town that’s repaid in variety by her crowd.
Alabaster DePlume by Lisanne Lentink
On Thursday evening, nevertheless, the Grote Zaal is remodeled into one thing completely completely different by Sarathy Korwar, who presents his new album KALAK in incendiary style. The report’s title is a palindromic type of Kal, a Hindi and Urdu phrase that means each yesterday and tomorrow, and the album’s indo-futurist philosophy relies round a cycle of music which strikes from historical to fashionable and again round once more. Reside, Korwar and his band articulate these themes by way of sequences of spoken-word, soul-shaking lattices of percussion (he’s a generationally gifted drummer), and blistering, mazing squalls of keyboard. For a shock conclusion he’s joined by particular visitor, and fellow London avant-jazz scene fixture Alabaster DePlume who offers a manic ad-lib. 5 minutes later DePlume is again onstage for a set of his personal, which takes issues in an altogether wonkier path. On the finish of each music he jumps up and down with childlike delight, then embarks on a captivating, giddy (although usually circuitous) ramble about his adoration for human connection. It would get grating, had been it not for the tenderness of the music when he and his band (which tonight contains particular visitor Jeff Parker) do begin taking part in.
For extra constantly overwhelming magnificence, there’s the smaller Hertz theatre, the place Alison Cotton’s set of sparsely looped violin is deeply affecting in its depth and directness. There’s additionally the imposing Jacobikerk, the place the famed flamenco musician Estrella Morente is joined by the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra, her voice resounding across the church’s echoing halls with a depth that feels limitless. Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti performs there too, sat nonchalantly on the centre of its cramped stage with a drummer and guitarist on both facet, an enormous crowd gathered in entrance of her; Fratti is a kind of particular artists who has risen to prominence by phrase of mouth. The trio are fast to set their narrative, and a collective empathy and understanding of their taking part in is instantly obvious. This in flip permits perception by particular gestures and an embodying of the music that reached out to the again of the church, solely to return to coalesce round Fratti’s emotive, non secular presence.
Usually a competition expertise means taking in as a lot as you possibly can of 1 efficiency earlier than operating off to the following. However it’s not possible to depart. This present builds and builds. Fratti’s stunning music, with its acid-tinged romance, directly calms and unnerves us. The tracks from her new album Se Ve Desde Aquí are stretched to emotional breaking level, wrung out, confessionally, Astral Weeks model. That is a kind of exhibits the place language is a bit-part participant in conveying that means, and Fratti proves once more that her music is fact music, and a life-affirming power.
Valentín Clastrier by Tim Van Veen
Let’s hear it for the previous guys, too. Architect Richard Leplastrier as soon as mentioned, “Why is it once we make issues into miniature, they develop into a lot stronger? As a result of they maintain the entire cosmos.” Leplastrier is legendary for addressing concepts across the cultures of explicit locations and a tactile, embodied appreciation of the place we’re on this planet, and one thing of his affected person spirit may be seen in two phenomenal exhibits on the ultimate evening from French hurdy-gurdy grasp, Valentín Clastrier and the legendary South African pianist, Abdullah Ibrahim. Like a determine from a fantasy, his stance visibly formed by his marriage to the instrument, Clastrier straps on his hurdy-gurdy, and begins to coax wild sounds from it. Make no mistake, Clastrier’s hurdy-gurdy is sentient. What follows is a mesmerising and thorough tête-à-tête. Man and instrument construct up an atavistic, leftfield set of sounds that’s akin to seeing the climate change. Extremely, a few of it feels like a Center Ages model of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. The final observe (a music cycle about three canines, the smallest one, embodying Liberty, additionally affectionately often called Gigi), sees Clastrier faucet his foot on a mic’d up seat and add respiratory patterns which will nicely have come from the hurdy-gurdy itself. A life altering gig.
In contrast, Abdullah Ibrahim’s present is a masterclass in examinations of house and sensual harmonics. The present is packed and the viewers rapt, bathing within the therapeutic powers of the Satie-esque patterns interspersed with flowing passages that finally return to some extent of quietude and reflection. After an encore, Ibrahim stands up and, hand to 1 ear, sings quietly, seemingly in a trance and at occasions talking in tongues. From the place we had been we picked out only some phrases, the one most repeated and most noticeable, was “pleasure”.
