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Concert at the Victoriaville Festival |
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21:57 testing, testing. Well, this is the only plug I could find; I'm at the extreme right of the Colisée room, getting ready for the Jon Rose performance. This may become a description of the sonic qualities because a) I am some 200 feet away from the stage and Jon will appear probably only an inch tall from here, and b) this is the place where people congregate when they can't decide whether they want to go in or out. Now, I could choose to be an obnoxious critic type and insist that they move out of the way (should the need occur), but like I said, even if they move out of the way, I probably won't see anything. The set is like a sort of American sitcom representation of the lower class decor; very nice wood couch draped with an inferior cover, several small objects which will most likely be used to produce squealing and squeaking sounds, about a te foot high pile of empty boxes (obviously produced from the shopping mall across the street - how about that for appropriate venue? This is the only concert stage near a shopping mall, you see...), a cash register, a set up for digital musical production, lots of squiggy things on the stage right (my left), paper cups and debris strewn all over the place. Michel is here: announcing that the first portion will be solo, about twenty minutes long, and followed by the Shopping Theme piece which will employ the entire ensemble. "On commence tout de suite après avoir dit in English", dit Michel. "Is it big enough, the big piece?" Jon Rose comes onto the scene. High frequency tone followed by light fluctuations, establishing a tonal centre around that base frequency, the fiddle sounding a bit like mid-Eastern tonality, floating. A bit of feedback (intentional or not? Seems not because he surfed out of that high squeal)... 22:07 He starts to shift away from the high frequency, still gliding around the high notes, pushing each time and grandly hitting the same pressure, much louder, in the lower octave. Rhythmic bridges of about three seconds, followed by very fast gliding through the registers, puncutated by a bottom note repetition of a high velocity. Note; it is pretty hard to keep up and at this point I have a wall of people standing in front of me. He is producing sounds that sound like harmonic rhythm patterns, but suddenly starts to slice at it from every angle, diagonal cuts, a Paganini burst, Paganini becomes Glass on speed, the Reich at wrong speed, and a rumble is created permitting him to be simultanously accompanying himself. Motor driven sounds at this point, allowing a kind of a harpsichord ambience against the motor driven rhythm and the slicing across the octaves. Feedback type tonal bridge and back to the speed fiddle. 22:10 Feels out the tones and the burst become shorter and believe it or not, faster. Circular pattern, being shot out into the mid air and finally ... oh, I just noticed that there is no one standing between me and Jon and that i can see him clearly. That Paganini twirls again, with some kind of rumble underneath which sounds like the sort of bass support I heard last night during the Glenn Spearman. Multiharmonics entering the picture and now all the elements are slicing against each other. Solid rhythm tone, swirls up towards toward register capacity, sound that imitates piano upper register, and the return of the harpsichord timbral quality, followed by squeaking upper circular tones, and hitting a repeat pattern on a few notes. Back to the bass rumble (22:13), and now drifting quickly back and forth between the rumble force and the upper register biting. This of course is all amplified, but the amplification seems to be for clarity of large room quality. Patterns holding and circles become larger in shape, finally squealing into softness while not losing the speed. A sound like a pedal steel train (yes, that's what I mean) followed by the introduction of microtonalities electronic in nature, now moving towards the reinvention of the Hammond organ (supported by soft fiddle harmonics). Back to the harpsichord (ok, it sounds like DX7 too), which pushes into a flutter of electronic harmonics (fiddle always chattering away in the upper register, rumble becoming more predominant). Insert of long form burps, matched by upper harmonic twirls and electronic pitching. Fast fluttering producing rapid clicking, which he plays with a fun intensity (all of this is quite light), and the clicks are broken up by burps of colour, drifting into 70s moog stylings for a few seconds, piano imiation (don't ask me how he does it), and he uses those colors to play catch with his fiddle tones. He keeps them and now the swirls seem to have shifted into electronic tones. Long organ sounds supported by soft chamber violin, as if you were listening to Beethoven (late quartets) at the wrong speed on a bad radio (but enjoying it nonetheless)... this moves into a two or three note swirling pattern, and finally into a Mellotronish cloud (actually streaks of colour would be the better comparison), and the holding pattern is definite. Moog like tone again seems to indicate bridge and the tones are backing into a very nice ambience which is backwards played orchestration. Swirls at the top end again, slicing and again jumping to an octave or two lower on the harmonics. This now sounds like a fight between bulldogs that seem to have a crush on each other (puppy passion?) followed by another run or through diagonally up and down the scale. Running again (actually, I don't think he's slowed down since the start). A bunch of clicks leads into electric guitar type fury, fuzzing short notes until they become a plummeling drive into a wall, with the drum bursts completing the end of each paragraph. This gets more frenetic (geez, I seem to be running out of superiority descriptions at this point) until this rumbles loudly into a breaking pattern. Suddenly a cohesive bridge of funk and right back into fuzz fury, followed by fiddle folly, followed by the bleeps and bloops of a nice electronic work (circa 1969), and these are now swirled in a circular holding patterns. Lullabye (with feedback decoration) tones, followed by a stop-start bridge, and finally back into Paganini tones, and back to what I guess could be called the theme of the piece. Bloops and piano tones (Nancarrow maybe, on an electric piano), is fed through the whole mix, then backwards speedmetalfiddle, and softly into the bloops (I guess he just went into a tunnel), splashes (I guess he just came out the water) and down into a moog tone. Whale sounds finding themselves swirling in soft motions, a nice dance accompaniment type tone, and the backwards swirls now support the upper register Paganini fluttering). Buzzsaw introduced over real Paganini riffs (sorry I can't find another allusion.. Kreisler?) lead into frenetic fuzzing (all the time slowly going down the scales), the fuzz growing, and finally buzzsaw over pizzicato, buzzsaw dominating, but fiddle trying to cut through the morass,and suddenly cut into a soft bloop pattern, with bass tones establishing a note for long (here long means about .66 second) slices. Bloops now feeding into tinwhistle background, slice, slice, and cutting away (bloops now gone, harpsichord back), and the fiddling is back in fury with the accompanying fluctuations). Bloops and tones softly talking to each other, one note holding itself against an undercurrent, bass tones providing a puncutation, or something to return, three note variations with rumble support, pushing harder, branching out into up, low and up octaves. 22:28 Harpsichord back with circular rhythms, rumble backing here (these are provided one at the time), and the whole thing settles on very soft backward tones, back into fury, hesitation, hesitation against rumble, hestitation pushing against rumble, burp, bloops on a very high tension piano, microtones being sprouted in every direction. Finally, chopping against the bottom end of the fuzz tones, and now into hard bass, followed by guitar fuzz, supported by jackhammer fuzz, branching out into electric guitar fury (keep in mind he looks quite dignified throughout all of this opening section), very hard sledgehammer bass support, fuzz running hard against the wall of bass sludge (actually, sludge is mean, because all of this has a crystal clarity). Back into moog fury (the electric guitar has not yet left us). (Oh, it has now left us), and the fuzz bass tones are now running against a wall. Very very soft pizzicado, sneezing, rumble against the bottom of the bridge, back to funk machine like fury, and finally slicing out into fuzz rock vocabulary (with machine bass support), finally with the rumbles of an amok assembly line production device of a very high quality in which someone forgot to fasten a bolt, because it sounds like it's going to explode, followed by an alarm and a final fiddle volley. Constant polite applause. "merci" "quinze minutes" Intermission Now, a word or two about the decor while we cool our bearings. This is usually an arena, a rare all metal arena, and they have done a bang up job with the acousting tiling on the ceiling (placed in perpendicular patterns). No awkward resonance (yeah, wait until Borbetomagus comes in here tomorrow, though...) has been heard even through the most painful of Diamanda Galas' shreiking. The three non-stage walls are decked out with the large formats of Rene (I forgot his last name) and these have truly impressed me throughout the festival, allowing a shy person to imagine himself at a gallery opening rather than feeling as if he (or she) should find someone to talk to. I counted over one hundred light standards over the main stage, adeptly handled by the staff for all the moods that I've seen portrayed by the various artists (this is my third show here), and the floor has been carpeted with the indoor-outdoor stuff you find on patios. The chairs are the plastic fold type, but if there are funky rhythms you can almost rock in them comfortably if you feel too self conscious to dance. Jon remarked that he felt nervous about holding a whole stage of that size by himself, and he resolved it by standing at absolute stage left throughout the opening solo. But it's the floor space that is immense, and it must have been perfect for Claude Schryer's veloperformance yesterday. The back wall (all three non-stage walls are matted with thick velour black curtains) contains the largest work by the featured visual artist, a 3 x 7 (10 X 10 feet each approximately) collage of immense patterns. At the opening vernissage, he remarked that the creation of most of these works have been inspired by the listening of music, though he never mentioned which. Actually, my favorite one is back at the Grand Café, where the largest work is composed of hundred of wood panels all melded together with a sort of lightning bolt (or aerial photography of a river type pattern) crossing the squarity of it all. George Dupuis typed 'LIVE' |
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