"Gig" Review: The Photophonic Experiment

The Photophonic Experiment – An Evening of Electro-Spectral Musical Phenomena. Featuring Pram. Blissbody and Project Dark. QEH 31/10/06

““Gig”” in inverted commas? Yeah well I’m not sure if this was a gig, or more of a sound art performance, or even an experiment (as they described it, due to the unpredictability of the “various electrical apparatus” being used.)

What? Yes well the thing here was the conversion of electricity and light into sound. The stage looked like the den of a mad boffin – think Dr Frankenstein. There were all sorts of glass tubes and vessels and bizarre instruments which produced crackling sizzling sparks. It was kind of like Halloween and Guy Fawkes night wrapped into one. There was even a touch of Chanukah when they used those spinning tops which light up as they spin, in combination with a device called a photo-synth which transformed the colours into sound.

To be honest, when I saw the stage, dimly lit, with a menacing thud of deep throbs of sound circulating in the theatre, I was a little scared. I was in the front row. Some of these devices carry 10,000 vaults. They are unpredictable. Some bass frequencies can be so powerful as to loosen the bowels. Did I say I was in the front row? Knowing what I by then knew, I was even more scared by the time of the second half.

Did Shakespeare having anything to say about this sort of thing? Funny you should ask. “Some men there are … when the bagpipe sings i' th' nose, cannot contain their urine” Merchant of Venice Act IV Scene I.

1. Coolness of crowd: 10/10 – well yes probably the oddest assortment of people I have ever seen gathered under one roof. My particular favourite was a guy who looked like he was in a fetish movie directed by LS Lowry. Stick thin, black coat, a small black formal hat on his head, huge ring with bauble through his septum. He carried a black cane, and a small medicine bag, about 6 inches deep, 14 inches wide. I can only imagine the bag contained instruments of the most deviant sexual torture imaginable. I am quite sure he has a basement styled like a mental hospital clinic, all white floors and walls, where nurses in white pvc uniforms inject large quantities of water into his testicles until they are blown up like watermelons.

2. Bob quotient: 8/10 – high. Although as you will see, a bob is no guarantee of good behaviour.

3. Annoyment factor: 3/10 – disastrous. The two bobbed women behind me talked loudly throughout the second half, and yes one was wearing and shaking bangles, and even at one point took out her keys and started rattling them about. Fucking unbelievable. I tried a polite plea for them to be quiet, but I think this only made them more determined. Someone a few seats along loudly shushed them towards the end and I think this had more effect. Did I say anything to them at the end? I couldn’t call myself a mate of Dickie Silverfish if I hadn’t. I said to the glum looking woman behind me “it’s a pity you had to talk so loudly. You really spoiled it for me”. She didn’t react except to look a little bit more glum.

However a couple of factors saved it from being a complete white-out. Firstly the sonic assault from the stage was really powerful. I don’t mean loud, although in part it was. There was a purity and intensity to the sine waves which gave the whole thing a synaesthetic feel – these were sound waves you felt rather than heard. Big bass rumbles that shook your ribs. Throbbing pitches that made your arms tingle. And a screeching finale that left me barely able to walk for a good five minutes. Secondly, although the sounds would coalesce into something approximate to tunes at various stages, this was hardly beautiful music. The softer moments were more like a sorbet intercourse, refreshing the aural palette before the next onslaught.

What I resented about the people behind me was that their yabbering served as an artificial and irritating interface between me and the sound performance, preventing full emersion, and anchoring my brain to the physical surroundings, so that it couldn’t go awandering too far. Mind you, this might just have prevented my brain from wandering off so far that it got lost and couldn’t find its way home again.

4. Sound quality: 9/10 – superb. I was particularly impressed by the quality of the sampled sounds. The virtual drummer sounded so authentic, and so precisely placed in the mix, that I searched the stage to try and see where he was hiding. Live sampling and processing of a trombone was also astonishing, the live and the sampled were indistinguishable, producing a very weird ear/mind disconnect (cos like the movements of the trombonist and the sound produced were out of sync – keep up!)

5. Comfort: 6/10 - nice comfy seats, good view, couple of marks deducted to reflect the fact that some of the sounds had the effect of making me feel quite uncomfortable.

6. Sexytime: - 7/10 – yes, but in only in the most perverted sense.

7. Percussion / sound effect function: - 25/10. Where to begin? They had a Theremin – that’s a bonus 10 marks straightaway. And other similar instruments played by waving fingers over the instrument. A vast array of knobs, gadgets, things to twiddle, boxes with flickering green lines like hospital monitors. Then there were the home built electric light instruments: a Jacobs Ladder, an Aquaphon, a Spark-o-phone, and the Jar of Charge. Plus the photo-synths mentioned earlier. Strange objects being played by tv remote controls; things being plucked or bowed; things bursting into flames as they were played.

Overall: 68/70 – a strange difficult and certainly unique night out. Probably won’t be appearing at the Arts Depot anytime soon.

Optional categories:

Merchandise: - nice free brochure, some cds from one of the performers, nowt to get too excited about.

Gruff Rhys?: - He wasn’t there.

Visuals: - yeah well the whole thing was visually extreme anyway, but they also had a screen which showed close ups of the instruments or very weird retro Victorian style horror films. Also two large white half-globes either side of the stage, like the device from the Prisoner, which glowed or showed films distorted in the curves. And a great moment when they faked an explosion – loud flash and bang, lots of smoke, everything gone black. The women behind me nearly wet themselves. Shame they didn’t.