Miasmah in Manchester

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Out again to Trinity Church in Salford for an evening of musical performance from the Miasmah label. “Miasma” was a fitting word for this event since all three artists proved very adept at filling the humid air with great clouds of treated guitar chords, loops and electronic noise.

The aural miasms created by The Sight Below, aka Rafael Anton Irisarri and Simon Scott, reminded me of favourites Main whose Hz album I’d been playing earlier in the day. Main were among the first musicians in the 1990s to extend the sound of the electric guitar through samples and other processing, and everyone at the Trinity tonight was following a similar path, albeit with very distinctive, individual styles. The Sight Below add a pulse of heavy rhythm to their sheets of distortion. Svarte Greiner (Erik Skodvin of Deaf Center) meanwhile, played some great bowed Stratocaster then some even better squalls of Strat feedback. Very impressive all round and the combination of volume plus environment (old church carefully lit and perfumed by clouds of incense) showed again why these kind of intimate performances often trump their recorded equivalents; sometimes you just have to be there.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Deaf Center in Manchester
Machinefabriek in Manchester
Trinity rendezvous
Main

Deaf Center in Manchester

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Out this evening to Trinity Church again to see Deaf Center as part of a Type Records-themed event. Greg Haines set things rolling with a mysterious e-bow/autoharp performance where he managed to coax from a stringed instrument the kind of sounds more usually associated with electronic music.

Deaf Center are Norwegians Erik Skodvin and Otto Totland who were assisted this evening by Kristin Evensen Giæver on wordless vocals. Much of their set seemed to be versions of their Pale Ravine album which sounded a lot more substantial played live. Especially good were the clouds of noise with shifting harmonic layers, the kind of thing Boards of Canada do then often spoil by introducing a plodding rhythm. Deaf Center avoid plodding rhythms and are all the better for it.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Machinefabriek in Manchester
Trinity rendezvous
Helios in Manchester