Fennesz/Grouper/Natural Snow Buidlings, St Giles In The Fields, London, 4/11/2009

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Posted on Nov 4th 2009 01:11 am

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Fennesz/Grouper/Natural Snow Buidlings, St Giles In The Fields, London, 4/11/2009

Natural Snow Building is a French duo formed of Mehdi Ameziane and classically trained cellist and pianist Solange Gularte, who met over a decade ago in Paris and whose records, often released in very limited quantities, have gained much praise and respect since. Opening the hostilities for this performance at St Giles in the Fields church, niched in the heart of London’s West End between Soho and Covent Garden, Natural Snow Building spent the major part of their set weaving layers of distorted guitars into a tapestry of dissonant drones, Ameziane and Gularte apparently evolving in their own universe, but converging to a central point. Ameziane provided the bulk of the cloud of noise, Gularte knitting faux melodic features over the top, until the distortion dissipated unexpectedly to leave just a few guitar textures floating in mid air. A ghostly voice then rose from the debris of the previous twenty or so minutes, feminine in aspect, yet belonging to Ameziane, who over the last few minutes of the set blew a gentle breeze over a rather stunned audience.

An Autumnal chill came down on St Giles with the next set, as a persistent wind engulfed the venue, catching distant vocals in its grip while shadows of leaves blown in all directions were projected onto the back of the church.  Rising from this seasonal setting, a lone guitar materialised for a moment before a gentle loop took its place, providing the backdrop for the voice to lie in.

Hailing from Portland, Oregon, Grouper is the solo project of Elizabeth Harris, who has released a string of albums on Free Porcupine Society, Root Strata and more recently Type. In this particular setting, her ethereal vocals, occasionally layered into choral form, framed by desolate soundscapes, appeared oddly at home. Cast into a series of meditative pieces, the gently swirling voices, cloudy guitar textures and atmospheric soundscapes invited to pause and reflect for a moment. Like an infinitely hazier and denser version of the Cocteau Twins, and with a very different guitar/voice context, Grouper dispensed a handful of elegant songs with extreme parsimony, blending them gracefully to the point where it became totally impossible to distinguished where one ended and another began, or indeed whether the whole thing was one long journey through crumbling surroundings.

Topping the bill was Christian Fennesz, master of gravity-defying guitar textures and laptop wizardry. Coming all the way from Vienna, where he performed the night before, and looking quite the dandy in an aquamarine blue jacket, dark shirt and floppy hair, his set denoted, right from the start, a serious increase in volume, with vibrations rushing through the church’s walls and floor. Entirely engulfed in dense yet surprisingly clear layers of distortion, treated through effects and processed extensively, at times to become totally alien and hostile, at others resembling post industrial decay or, on rare occasions, feeling almost pastoral, the granular guitar textures which serve as main feed for his work appeared caught in relentless sonic ebb and flow throughout.

There are few more rewarding moments than when these walls of sound occasionally collapse into a single heavenly chord, and that is exactly what Fennesz offered barely fifteen minutes in, amidst a violent, deafening storm which had, no doubt, the entrails of the whole audience pulsating with cardinal fear. Calm followed, for a moment at least, but as ever with Fennesz, clouds gathered again, bringing with them more visceral torment. At such level, the music is not so much heard as felt. It becomes unmistakably concrete, every abrasion felt like raw tarmac hit at high speed. Fennesz is expert at inflicting such experience on an audience, and its only relief comes amidst the pain, dispensed as another comforting, albeit ephemeral, chord. In contrast, moments of relative quietude are only potent manifestations of the waves that are bound to follow.

One such wave never quite made it though, as, right in the middle of possibly the most delightful moment of his set, the sound cut off entirely, leaving the man alone, standing, guitar in hand, his set irremediably cut short at a key section, trying to comprehend what was happening before retreating, defeated, under the warm cheers of the crowd. Fennesz had, it seemed, just been preparing us for the masterful blow that he was in the process of delivering. Technology might have let him down but this shortened set is a vivid, if involuntary, expression that Fennesz’s best is possibly still to come.

Icon: arrow Fennesz | Fennesz (MySpace) | Grouper (MySpace) | Natural Snow Buildings (MySpace)

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