Kairos 129, 6 May 2021, Concertzender

Kairos, the May 2021 edition. What will it bring me this time? Having heard so many shows, it is not often anymore that I'm fully surprised. Can The Rolling Stones still surprise me? Of course not, but with Kairos, I can never be certain. What certainly does take place quite often, is total amazement about or because of what I am hearing. So let's go, the musical adventure awaits....

The intro to the first song blends in with the Kairos tune. It is a Chantal Acda song from her latest album, the critically acclaimed 'Saturday Moon'. At the same time it is like I am hearing Aboriginal drones on didgeridoos in the background. 'Waiting' admittedly is not my favorite track on the album. For that it is too close to what I call none music. Acda's singing and the intricate guitar part prevent that from happening, but I need a little more for comfort in music. 'Waiting' works better for me in the context of the album, I notice.

Not so much the mood changes, it is the music that becomes filled in. How relative this is from one song to another. There is no way that this is a composition filled to the brim, but compared to the relative emptiness of 'Waiting', 'Fantas Morbida' is chockfull of notes. Yet, it is nothing more than a rhythm played on something or other and a piano's dark and high notes. Other fantasies from the 'Fantas Variations' album are mixed in, changing the mood immediately, caused by a change of instruments, except that mysterious rhythm.

The listener is taken down to a situation where the heartbeat is brought to rest once again. The slow flow of a river is reproduced in music, including the fog horns of the tow boats sailing in a thick fog, having to avoid one another in the pre-radar era. That is the image 'Dream 30' conjures up in my mind. Knutsson and Mullaert's live rendition of this composition must have been mesmerising to have been present at in de Waalse Kerk in 2019.

Eastern bells and a chant, accompanied by a lot of mysterious sounds like a reproduction of wind through the leaves, move over the 30th, western dream. 'Heart Shukra' sounds extremely mysterious to me. Far beyond all that I'm familiar with. Walking early this Sunday morning, I saw the last people shuffling to the Catholic church, all in their 70s or older and I realised that I was looking at a dying religion. The combination of the modern world and a truckload of scandals of all sorts brought a 2000 year old religion to its knees and here I'm listening to the musical expression of an even older religion and way of life. Will that stand up to the demands a modern life makes of those living in it? Time will tell. And yet, only yesterday (all at the time of writing of course) I wrote about the endless repetition of "in the mountains" in Ilsha's song 'Mountains' and how it worked. 'Heart Shukra' works also. The chant with the music behind it does bring the listener in a spell.

'ночная кожа' translates into 'Night Skin'. Dvory makes a lot of noise after the chant. Including some crows, from a field recording. And a story about crows told by Adrian Crowley. In the background some music that in part is a loop of voices, apparently a choir chanting wordless sounds. This combination works exactly one time, as Crowley with his dark, whiskey tainted, smoky voice tells the story, without real music behind him. What is the difference with Leonard Cohen in the last few years of his career? He was still singing, as close as it was to speaking, it remained singing. "Solitary crow with the crippled wing". With the story over some wind instruments come in over the choir. Just a few notes, it is all it takes to accompany the crow to the netherworld.

And from here on it becomes confusing. Well, it already was. What was Crowley's song, what was System Morgue's 'En Passant III', what is Dustin O'Halloran's 'Opus 38'? It is all mixed together by .No. My best guess is that the synth waves that roll over me and roll back, like waves on the beach, is System Morgue and the piano is O'Halloran's composition. And at the end SYML is being cut up into little pieces as well. First, a beautiful and soothing piano part is presented of the kind that is not modern, not classic. It's undetermined. Had it been played less pronounced it could have been elevator music but is all but because of the decisive playing. It demands attention. It could be the introduction to a rock piece. 'Opus 38' contains all these qualities within it. Beauty caught in music.

For me SYML only starts when the singing starts. I am of a mind that I'm listening to Lyenn and not SYML. The voice is able to go up. The music and harmonies are influenced by Nick Cave's last albums, the singing all but and fits more with Coldplay's and Radiohead's. 'Dim' is out to impress but with me only half succeeds. I have heard this kind of music too often the last few years, and, I'm afraid, better.

Underneath SYML's moody song, even moodier and deeper sounds from a cello I'd say can be heard. It is a fragment of 'Fragment' by Giardini di Miro. Well perhaps the composition is called infinity loop as there's an eight fallen on its side involved in the titles to Kairos. I have a hard time making something of this notes with no context. This is provided by the violins of Lárus Sigurðsson's 'We Are Not Swans'. It has a head and a tail and music is played.

But also rudely interrupted by Gavin Bryars, who's 'Four Elements' ends this Kairos. Close to 20 minutes, so best brace myself. It all starts with tubular bells if not recorded church bells. A dark sounding instrument, a bass clarinet or something else made from wood, I would say, has the lead. Dark notes are played in a slow fashion. The accompanying instruments all play slow, long-held notes, always with a short stop before the next chord comes in. I will never play this in my "spare time" (this is my spare time of course), but certainly am impressed by what I'm hearing. Slowly but surely the composition becomes more playful. The darkness recedes and lighter notes on piano and horns come forward and start "playing" with the darker instruments. Spring enters over winter, water over fire. The mood keeps changing as Bryars gives his audience a different mood with each section of his composition. 'Four Elements' is given more urgency as well. If I remember correctly, I was introduced to Bryars in the 1990s with a piece of minimal music with the lenght of a cd. There are still elements of minimal music hidden in this composition, especially in the rhythm section beneath it all. The rest certainly changes faster.

All of a sudden "real music" comes in. Rock with a western style of singing. It is Driftwood with its single 'Counterattack'. What it reminds me of immediately, is the 'The Soprano's' theme song. It has that vibe in the singing, while the music is far more direct. 'Counterattack'  sticks out like a sore thumb after Gavin Bryars, but what an ending to this Kairos.

Wout de Natris

You can listen to this Kairos here:

https://www.concertzender.nl/programma/kairos_606912/

This is this month's playlist:

00:00 – 00:16  Kairos Tune. Wino Penris.

00:04 – 06:25  Chantal Acda. Waiting. Album ‘Saturday Moon’. Glitterhouse Records GmbH.

05:58 – 09:00  Caterina Barbieri. Kara-Lis Coverdale – Fantas Morbida. Album ‘Fantas Variations’. Editions Mego EMEGO279.

08:44 – 09:44  Caterina Barbieri. Fantas Bendik Giske – Fantas for Saxophone and Voice. Fragment. Album ‘Fantas Variations’. Editions Mego EMEGO279.

09:37 – 09 :44  Caterina Barbieri. Evelyn Saylor (feat. Lyra Pramuk, Annie Garlid and Stine Janvin) – Fantas Variation for Voices. Fragment. Album ‘Fantas Variations’. Editions Mego EMEGO279. 

09:42 – 10:39  Caterina Barbieri. Fantas Bendik Giske – Fantas for Saxophone and Voice. Fragment. Album ‘Fantas Variations’. Editions Mego EMEGO279.

10:29 – 10:57  Caterina Barbieri. Fantas Bendik Giske – Fantas for Saxophone and Voice. Fragment. Album ‘Fantas Variations’. Editions Mego EMEGO279.

10:29 – 15 :23  Johanna Knutsson & Sebastian Mullaert. Dream 30. Album ‘In Dreams- Live At De Waalse Kerk 2019’. Modern Matters.

14:49 – 18:15  Nada Shakti & Bruce Becvar. Heart Sutra. Album ‘Jiva Mukti’. Shining Star. 

17:56 – 19:55  Dvory. ночная кожа (Night Skin). Fragment. Album ‘включение’ (Turning On).  ΠΑΝΘΕΟΝ Records (Pantheon).

19:07 – 19:32  Penkok Crows. Fragment. Private field recording.

19:16 – 25:44  Adrian Crowley. Crow Song. Album ‘The Watchful Eye of The Stars’. Chemikal Underground.

20:34 – 20:41  Penkok Crows. Fragment. Private field recording.

22:08 – 22:17  Penkok Crows. Fragment. Private field recording.

23:15 – 33:14  System Morgue. En Passant III. Album ‘En Passant’. ΠΑΝΘΕΟΝ Records (Pantheon).

27:04 – 27:17  Dustin O’Halloran. Opus 38. Fragment. Album ‘Vorleben’. Fat Cat 130701.

27:36 – 27:48  Dustin O’Halloran. Opus 38. Fragment. Album ‘Vorleben’. Fat Cat 130701.

28:39 – 34:28  Dustin O’Halloran. Opus 38. Album ‘Vorleben’. Fat Cat 130701.

34:13 – 34:17  SYML. DIM. Fragment. Album ‘DIM‘. V2 Records.

34:17 – 34:20  SYML. DIM. Fragment. Album ‘DIM‘. V2 Records.

34:20 – 34:23  SYML. DIM. Fragment. Album ‘DIM‘. V2 Records.

34:23 – 38:55  SYML. DIM. Album ‘DIM‘. V2 Records.

38:13 – 40:48  Giardini di Mirò. ∞. Fragment. Album ‘Il Fuoco’. Unhip Records UNHIP21. 

40:00 – 42:17  Lárus Sigurðsson. We are not Swans. Album ‘We are told that we shine’. Volkoren.

41:56 – 58:28  Gavin Bryars. Four elements (fragment). Album ‘Gavin Bryars Vita Nova’. ECM NEW SERIES 1533 455 351-2.

58:13 – 59:51  Driftwood. Counterattack (fragment).Single. Self-released.

59:51 – 59:57  Driftwood. Counterattack (fragment). Single. Self-released.