Sloppy alliances

Really nice set from trumpeter Sanne van Hek’s new group. (Ahm, if that sounds like I knew the name five minutes ago, I didn’t. She’s now composer in residence in Moers, no idea how heavy that is.) It began like a live emulation of trying out your new loopstation. The first layer was some crackle from a computer, then a few bass notes, trumpet and bari, piano, trumpet sampled from a second computer, clatter from the drums, ghost piano from a third computer, and somewhere towards the last third of that process we had overstepped saturation point and had entered repetitive chaos. That’s the worst kind of chaos, because it simulates order.

I’ve already talked about that intro much too long, because it was just a matter of a couple of minutes, then it turned out this was some kind of calibration process. Led by Onno Govaert on drums’ meticulous punctuation (and hey, I work as a copy editor, so I know about that) the whole ensemble sought and found a sort of semi-abstract state of mutual distraction, where it was always possible that players would form sloppy alliances, but mostly everybody talked to themselves openmindedly. If that sounds like a backhander, no, I thought it was great. Then slowly they moved towards a lazy arpeggio and ended sort of on the same stage.

The second track was held together by the fact that each player now and then chose a single note from their flow of things and rang it out bell-like. While everybody mumbled to themselves. This kind of thing depends on every player’s reticence, if somebody starts to go the easy way and make too much sense, the whole effort crumbles. But nobody did that after the initial calibration process.

Again, this set benefited from the amplification, which added a sort of psychedelic layer, it was easy to immerse oneself into the many-minded music.

Having fun, Lutz