This amazing evening at Café Oto combined Paul Clipson’s improvised super8 projections with two of the best electronic music artists currently in operation; a show stunning in both concept and execution.
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| Luke Younger with Paul Clipson projection |
Some Truths appeared first; his modular synths instantly engaging; the sharp pops became a mesh of furred clicks and bangs looking for a beat, a path. This was music that coalesces, orbiting parts clashing, a central mass gathering weight and impetus, dub chasms yawning at unexpected moments. The rhythms are conjured and coaxed, persuaded into life, prodded with sudden percussive booms; illuminated by honeycombs of light and green grids, washing in and out of focus, a haze; a wonderful synthesis of sound and image. The performance began to resemble a techno seance, the windows rattling with bass. The images were startling, like snatches of neon captured momentarily from a speeding car snaking through empty city streets, wet pavements streaked with lurid reflections. It all climaxed in a blaze of stuttering and convulsing beats; shuddering to a halt, exhausted.
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| Some Truths |
Luke Younger’s set was remarkable. His drone emerged like a building looming from fog; the film backdrop casting a confusion of sunset and leaves, dappled sunlight on water, sliced into shivering vertical rectangles. Younger adding harshly ringing gongs as time passed. The auditory and visual elements blurred together – the splash-hiss of hot metal in cold water, sparkling arcs of sound-droplets; a rumbling surge, a rising tide of resonating metal and disruptive clang. The elements became a perfect synesthetic blend, like a roaring Tetsuo bio-mechanical melt; audio and image stitching together intimately. One sequence was particularly beautiful; a series of zooms onto various surfaces, their textures explored until abstract: tree bark, concrete, skin, wool, lips, sea foam; a dream fugue, haunting and hypnotic; not nightmarish, just weird and dislocated. The music throughout was just as absorbing, resembling a sudden wind dancing through a field of suspended chains, their links ascending and lost in a humming low grey cloud, condensation dripping from the rusted lengths into rotting brass bowls.
An amazing and inspiring evening of noise and light.
