Postby banyan on Thu Sep 19, 2013 1:29 pmA couple of youtube clips from the Torino show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7y0XCCVlSshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VB00274b58Postby inkinthewell on Thu Sep 19, 2013 4:13 pm
Thanks for the links banyan.
I was there
and I'm sure there's more to come. I saw quite a few videocameras and smartphones (regardless of their owners) taking no heed of the warning that "it was not permitted" to take pictures or film the show.
Postby baht habit on Thu Sep 19, 2013 5:18 pm
Thanks banyan.
Being that these are relatively brief excerpts, I wouldn't feel informed enough to judge.
For those who've attended or will attend the shows, I'm interested in finding this out : do you feel that the recitation added to or detracted from the musical content?
Postby inkinthewell on Thu Sep 19, 2013 5:47 pm
Some videos have now been put up on youtube, so I probably won't spoil anything. But if you haven't seen them, don't read or I'm going to spoil it all for you.
The venue: a hangar for repairing trains built at the end of the XIX Century recently transformed into a site for concerts and exhibitions. It is huge. There are about 600 grey seats (Ä 23) in front of the stage, and about 100 blue seats (Ä 18) right at the back. The last time I looked three quarters of the grey seats had been taken up, and quite a lot of people were in the blue ones.
The stage: 3 screens, in front of which are 3 tables. On the table at the far left is what looks like a radio from the '70s, what could be either a lamp or an old phone from the 1920s, and some other unspecified objects (a coat hanger, maybe?). The table in the middle has a laptop, a mixer, and at least 2 guitars are standing behind it. The table on the right has 2 laptops and a mixer, and a grand piano beside it. There probably is other stuff, but it isn't visible.
The Kilowatt Hour: enter Stephan Mathieu, Christian Fennesz and David Sylvian. A bow, applause, and they take their seats as the light go down: Mathieu at the table on the left, Fennesz at the middle one, and Sylvian on the right. I won't be so detailed from now on, but the beginning is quite impressive, with some atmospheric music surging and DS playing some notes on the piano. At times Mathieu seems to use the radio's aerial like a theremin, and at some moments there is a sound like a phone ringing which I think comes from his table, although form my seat he is the least visible, lost in the dark; Fennesz uses two guitars to great effect, tweaking the sounds on his laptop; David moves from piano to laptops, looking like the busiest of the three. Then there are Franz Wright's poems read by the author, and some of them are spine-chilling. After 70 minutes, it comes to an end. The lights go out. Exeunt Sylvian, Fennesz and Mathieu, never to be seen again, notwithstanding the continuos applause which continues, with ups and downs, until the lights come back on.
Visuals & Lights: the whole performance is accompanied by a video, in my opinion good for most of the time (except the section playing with the phases of the moon, which got quite boring), and some light effects shot up on the ceiling which are quite effective and combine well with the music.
The audience: it still amazes me how, at this moment in time, with the internet and its incredible amount of information available for everyone at any moment at a fingers touch, there can still be people who go to see The Kilowatt Hour expecting to see a David Sylvian-song-based-show! I was glad and surprised to see the place almost full, there were people in their fifties and some in their early twenties, there were a couple of teenagers and what looked like a 2 year old kid (I don't know if to bless or gosh golly jee whiz his parents), and I thought to myself: "Wow, I would have never thought there would be so many forward thinking people tonight." It turned out I was wrong
. Some were sensible enough to leave as soon as they understood there was no compatibility between them and what they were listening to (I counted 7). Others stayed there, deadening the shock giggling, making stupid remarks, fiddling with their smartphones or showing their holidays pictures around. All the rest took in what was a good, intense, demanding show as best they could. There were some boring bits, some bits were truly beautiful, and some less easy to interpret. I can't say I understood the whole structure of this work, and I certainly would have enjoyed it more if I had had the chance to get acquainted with it before hand, but I did enjoy it.
My wife, who does not care much for David Sylvian in particular and for music in general, knew quite well what to expect ("It's gonna be plink plink plink, whoooooshhhh" she had said
), so she was ready to suffer, but, as we got back to our hotel, she told me that she was surprised how fast the first 40 minutes went by. It was not her cup of tea, she found the last half hour quite tiresome and was glad when it finished, but, after all, it wasn't too hard to swallow.
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Top 5 things overheard at The Kilowatt Hour's Torino performance.
5. "It's his first tour in 15 years."
4. "Erm... David Sylvian is the one behind which laptop?"
3. "I've been following him since 'Girls On Film'."
2. "What? He is NOT singing?"
1. "David WHO?"
Postby inkinthewell on Thu Sep 19, 2013 6:02 pmbaht habit wrote:
For those who've attended or will attend the shows, I'm interested in finding this out : do you feel that the recitation added to or detracted from the musical content?My opinion is that at least 3 of the recitations added to the music, meaning that they blended extremely well together, producing a bigger effect. On one occasion it got annoying, but it wasn't 'because of' the poem (that was during the 'moon' section I spoke of above, the part I liked the least). As far as I can judge now, all the rest didn't really add anything to the music.