Music / electronic dance music
Review: Cold Light and Felt present Adrian Utley, Strange Brew -‘Seriously captivating’
These days hip hop moves in mysterious ways and this gig featured some fearless explorations of its possibilities.
The headline collaboration brought together Bristol’s Cold Light crew, Swedish soundscaper Civilistjävel, Copenhagen-based producer and Felt record supremo Fergus Jones/Perko and London rapper Rael (from Nukuluk) with the sometime Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley and tenor sax player Gus.
They hadn’t all come together until the day and it would be intriguing to find out the conversations that had led to the concept for the gig.
is needed now More than ever
Needless to say, as the room filled around the centrally assembled rectangle of electronica, expectations were high and wide open.
London MC Rael, of experimental hip hop collective Nukuluk
Rapper-poet Rael announced himself by launching into his impassioned declamatory poetics (“I wake up every morning feeling lost at sea!”) to an electronica backing track built around resonant sub-bass, crashing guitars and found-sound collages.
A prowling mobile figure moving freely through the crowd, his words and music were intensified with heavy drones and visceral bass as he howled “I’m tearing at the seams!” with desperate conviction.
Bristol-based harpist Bethany Ley, formerly mastermind of Stanlaey, string arranger for Ishmael Ensemble and GROVE
The strength and honesty of Rael’s opening set had drawn the gathering audience together, ready for Bethany Ley’s more artful conceptualism.
She began with a processed vocal piece, multi-tracked harmonised voices looping and swooping like a choir of psychedelic angels. Then her distinctive blend of beats, harp and delicate vocals moved into Sun/Moon, a quasi-religious mantra over spare electronica and percussion.
It was new music, the sound distilled from her previous work and mediated through more complex tech stuff which didn’t always co-operate.
It mostly did, though, enabling her to disrupt the flow of her own ideas with sudden surprise sounds, carefully rationed to advance the pieces framing her vocal versatility. As with Rael it added up to a strongly personal statement.
‘Sometimes’ Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley, more lately known for experimental film scores and soundtrack work
After those two solo performances the harp disappeared and suddenly there was an industrial hive of purposeful activity as people arrived and began activating that four-sided electronica set-up from all angles.
Quite how they did this so efficiently in the self-imposed gloom of the room remained a mystery but it was a testament to skills that would be borne out by the music that followed.
Surrounded by the densely pressed crowd they kicked off an unbroken flow of music and words that must have lasted nearly an hour and somehow included the ideas and styles of some half a dozen gizmo-twiddlers, three (or was it four?) rappers plus Utley’s guitar and Gus on tenor sax.
‘An unbroken flow of music and words’ created by a ‘many-headed’ collective in the round
Crammed together it was impressive that nobody either literally or metaphorically trod on anyone’s toes. The sound remained balanced throughout, blending and reshaping around new ideas reflecting the verbal stylings of the rapping poets.
These took themselves out into the crowd – Birthmark and Rael were lost at times in the press, voices disembodied into the stream of music. Crazy references collided, The Last Poets meeting electronic composer Glen Branca, or a 90s Bristol reworking of reggae hit Under Mi Sensi rethought by Aphex Twin.
Someone (Rael?) chanted about ‘wanting to smell like honey’ and there was a momentary shift into almost electro-pop territory that broke down under the weight of guitar dissonance and wailing sax into a dub frenzy amplified by the strobing lights.
A heady mix of sound and sonic shifts and references created a night unlike anything else
A further sonic shift led to a big hip hop beat while someone (Birthmark?) chanted that ‘truth is, apparently, we are tired of freedom’ until an overall beatless wall of sound took over, overloaded past the pain point with massive bass drones, high sax insistence and crashing guitar phasing.
Someone (ELDON?) moaned like a broken record, the sound juddered accordingly and then it was over, washed away by a deafening silence that, in turn, was washed away by the huge roar of approval.
Massive respect must go to the sound desk crew (alongside the many-headed performer collective) for keeping a coherent sound together, doubly so given the spontaneity of the collaboration.
And big respect to Adrian Utley who, despite being the ‘big name’ on the poster and very much the musical elder statesman in the line-up added his carefully-judged contributions at just the right moments.
If there isn’t a genre name for this kind of free-floating electro mash-up yet – and I haven’t found one myself – there surely soon will be. It’s seriously captivating stuff.
All images: Tony Benjamin
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