Thursday 28 May 2009

Plaid & Will Dutta / Leafcutter John & Heritage Orchestra






Ahhhh, Cafe Oto - favoured home of beardstrokers and muso geeks. The Blank Canvas guys managed a bit of a coup getting a name like Plaid in such a small venue. Sadly, they chose an evening where the overland trains to Dalston weren't running, meaning a bus from Aldgate, meaning a delay. I got there just in time to get pissed off at a queue jumper and take my seat (yep, seat - we're a classy bunch) before the evening started.

Will Dutta started off with a brief rundown of the evening's programme before a couple of solo piano pieces (he did say who, but I didn't note it down - Schubert and Liszt?). I didn't know the pieces, but he The man can obviously play, but for some reason when I hear the piano I expect it to be faultless, and there were a few bum notes and dodgy slurs. That said, it's hard to criticize someone playing at that level too much. A couple of tracks from what sounded like the new Plaid album then filled in while the four members of the Heritage Orchestra set up in front of a set of screens, and the wiry indie-boy frame of Leafcutter John got ready to introduce everyone.

And then his phone rang.

"Hello?... Oh, Hi Maria ... yeah, i'm okay ... yeah, I'm just about to go on"

This drew a small chuckle from the assembled throng.

"Yeah, I should go ... okay ... yeah, I'll see you soon"

[insert perfect timed comedy pause]

"Yes, you're on the guest list."

The screens were there for a reason - they showed a plain black background with lines like a very wide music notation - 5 horiztonal, and one vertical at the far left. As we watched, two thin coloured bars drifted in from the right of the screen, Tron-style. As they met the vertical bar, the Baritone Sax and Violin burst into life, but with no defined note, the result was a dissonant moan. Within a few seconds it was clear how the score was working - each colour coressponded to a different instrument, with a 'Cello and I think a Shamisen alongside the other two, all accompanied by John on what appeared to be a toy accordian. Pitch was conveyed by how high the line was, while width conveyed volume. After a few seconds, we saw a huge incline appear onscreen, and another chuckle went through the audience; how would the players traverse this obstacle? Over the next few minutes, we saw alternating blocks of colour, gentle gradients of shading, patterns, sharp slashes and stabs - at times it felt like watching the 100m sprint being done by gymnasts and reimagined by Kandinsky. To say the result was melodic, pretty, or easy to listen to would be a lie, but it was fascinating to watch. Having a beard helped, as I could blend in with all the others furiously stroking theirs.

The crazy experimentalism/fucking about continued with a brief Leafcutter John solo set, in which his main instruments appeared to be a metal bowl from the kitchen and a guitar played with chopsticks, all fed into a laptop running MSP. By looping the sounds he made and running them through a host of granulizers, pitch shifters, delays and such, he built up a wall of noise, butin comparison to the cacophony of the earlier piece, this was more reflective, placid, even pastoral in places. The inventiveness in his creation of sounds led to a slightly mad scientist feel, and yet for his final track he gave a surprisingly powerful bluesy vocal over some gorgeous shifting drones - it was something like Jeff Buckley's 'You and I', only sung by the bloke from Kings of Leon. Despite that description, it was actually very good.

I then popped up to get a drink, and sat down to what I presumed was the between acts dj - Ed from Plaid. At some point, possibly before I even sat down, it turned out this was the Plaid live show. Always a problem when your act is two blokes sat behind laptops: at what point does setting up finish and playing begin? Unless you've got some Westwood-style intro dubplate of various shit rappers proclaiming your genius, it's difficult to tell. Then again, I don't suppose there's an electronica equivalent to Eminem. Hearing "Er, 'ello, i'm Richard D. James, but i'm not playing, it's those two blokes there, that's Plaid. Err, right, that do?" wouldn't have the same gravitas.

It was clear the set had been tailored to the event - there was a distinct absence of beats, and even for an outfit as willfully dismissive of 4/4 as Plaid, the choices were fairly abstract. Yet the familiar choices of sounds - bells, 'cellos, violins and all manner of natural and unnatural noises - were both incredibly detailed and craftily manipulated. These were not 128kb/s mp3 samples nicked off soulseek, every single noise you heard was at once lush and deep, crystalline in their clarity. It was an audio equivalent of seeing something on a VR headset - despite the minimal PA and some slightly off acoustics, you could easily suspend your disbelief that this was all coming from laptops. They were joined after a while by Will Dutta, and in this setting, given the freedom to play off another source, to fit in and around the existing melodies and suggestions, the live piano fused with the electronics - a perfect symbiosis between acoustic and electronic, physical and mathematical. All of which inspired one bloke to get up and start dancing in what can only be referred to as a Tai Chi fashion. I'd love to think it was because he was inspired by the congress he was witnessing, but I fear he reckoned he was getting techno and got trashed beforehand.

Still, a lovely evening, another gold star for Cafe Oto, and any night where I can get the bus back afterwards is a good one. And barely a month till I see Plaid again. I wonder if they'll play any techno next time.

- Mal

No comments:

Post a Comment