Music Lover’s Field Companion 07
A 3-Day Musical Adventure.
Music Lovers’ Field Companion is a celebration of music that refuses to accept the status quo; a 3-day survey of all manner of disparate musical activity, which at its core shares a basic artistic kinship; one of exploration and discovery. Those discoveries can be screams, the sigh of bowed metal, or a gruff holler incanted through a sax. Exhilarating things that express something personal, something to share in.
ReadWhat we wrote at the time
Music Lovers’ Field Companion is a festival that we hope refuses to accept the status quo. It’s a celebration of music that is compellingly different and differently compelling to your everyday, run of the mill music festival; a 3-day survey taking in all manner of disparate musical activity, which at its core shares an honest and basic artistic kinship; one of exploration and of the expression of personally discovered musical truths. Those truths can reheard by the adventurous not as screams, or the timbral sigh of bowed metal, or a gruff holler incanted through a sax, but as melodious and exhilarating affirmation, reasons to be alive, things that express something personal, something to share in. And we sort of hope and figure that you might be that adventurous type, that you might fancy sharing in some of those gruff hollers. Oh, and here’s a short disclaimer: we’re well aware that these kinds of claims are made all the time by people marketing music festivals, or for that matter trying to sell you records/ sofas/ city living apartments; that this or that thing is unique, that these things right here are exclusive, you’ll-never-see-the-like-again! How can so many things be so exclusive? But we’ve honestly tried here to put together a festival that contains surprises, both for people already familiar with experimental music, and for a wider, curious audience. It fords as many underground currents in music as possible, so that it’s broad and challenging to loads of people. Kan Mikami doesn’t normally play on bills with Radu Malfatti, and you won’t see Polwechsel on the same line up as Ascension most nights of the week either. We’ve worked at the programme so that it’s as diverse as possible, so that there are no cop-outs, no concessions, just incredible musicians, so that each performance is as unlike the last as it is from the kind of music most music festivals would present you with. And in that, although it’s maybe not unique, we do hope it’s rewarding.
MLFC 07 was reveiwed by Nick Cain for the Wire here, and by Scott McKeating for Rock a Rolla here
Programme Events
Evil Nigger
Julius Eastman
Julius Eastman’s Evil Nigger for 4 pianos performed by Joe Kubera, Kate Thompson, David Murray, Alan Fearon and Simon Passmore.
Gary Smith
Gary Smith
Guitar solo where inscrutable, minute electric sounds are excavated by palms that smother and strangle, that wring sound from the fretboard, from behind the bridge.
Topias Tiheäsalo
Topias Tiheäsalo
A guitar solo of frugal wringing, of notes in the dark, an attitude of making everything count.
Peter Evans
Peter Evans
A sound of buzzing and flickering metallic drones, glottal stops and guttural growls, and also an explosiveness and purity of sound that reminds you as much of Bill Dixon as anyone else.
Kan Mikami & JO JO Hiroshige
JO JO Hiroshige Kan Mikami
Folk poet, actor and bon viveur Kan Mikami in duo with Jojo Hiroshige, a founding member of Japanese Noise band Hijokaidan.
Diamanda Galás
Diamanda Galás
Solo performance by Diamanda Galás one of the great artists of the last forty years. Hers is an emotional expressionism of demonic shrieks, operatic falsettos, glottal clicks and diabolical growls.
Talk by Alan Cummings: A personal history of the Japanese Underground
Alan Cummings
Talk charting the radical history of experimental music in Japan + the lowdown into the careers of many of the artists appearing at MLFC.
Angharad Davies, Tisha Mukarji, Andrea Neuman
Andrea Neuman Angharad Davies Tisha Mukarji
Improvising violinist Angharad Davies performing with pianists Tisha Mukarji and Andrea Neumann.
Los Glissandinos
Kai Fagaschinski Klaus Filip
Los Glissandinos work with clarinet and sine tones beating and thrumming in your middle ear, all beautifully paced and serene, but with just enough steely menace broiling under the surface to keep you on edge.
Ascension
Paul Hession Stefan Jaworzyn
A recently reanimated Ascension, with mighty Leeds drum hero Paul Hession bringing a dense polyrhythmic torrent into play with Jaworzyn’s reinvigorated piercing guitar.
Gateshead 21
Northern Sinfonia Radu Malfatti
We commissioned Radu Malfatti to write a new piece for the 21-piece string section of the Northern Sinfonia: Music striving to discover the exact point at which sound resonates the clearest amidst long drawn out silences.
John Blum & Jackson Krall
Jackson Krall John Blum
Free jazz pianist John Blum with an everywhere-at-once presence in duo with Jackson Krall, incendiary free jazz drummer and sound sculptor
Sanjah: Kan Mikami, Masayoshi Urabe & Toshiaki Ishizuka
Kan Mikami Masayoshi Urabe Toshiaki Ishizuka
HEAVY Japanese super group, featuring the sundown delta blues of Kan Mikami, Toshi Ishizuka’s heavy, time folding drumming and Masayoshi Urabe on sax, harmonica and chains.
Anoyonodekigoto
Ikuro Takahashi Yoko Muronoi
A collaborative duo performance, Anoyonodekigoto sets up a sort of negotiation between a musician, a dancer, the audience and the space we’re all sharing.
Polwechsel
Burkhard Beins John Butcher Martin Brandlmayr Michael Moser Werner Dafeldecker
With a signature spartan sound and long term preoccupation in structural tactics (subtle shifts in density, drawn out stasis) Polwechsel blur the boundaries between individual instruments.
Talk Hosted by Byron Coley
Byron Coley Daniel Carter Sabir Mateen
Free-jazz chat with Sabir Mateen, Daniel Cater, Andrew Barker – hosted by Byron Coley.
Total Music Meeting
David Keenan
Discussion with David Keenan: an author, critic and musician based in Glasgow, Scotland. He is best known for the reviews and features he has contributed to The Wire.
Jean-Philippe Gross
Jean-Philippe Gross
Solo by Jean-Philippe Gross, a French electro-acoustic improviser, working with mixing board, cheap mics, small speakers and an analog synth, built around a honed interest in feedback.
Rhodri Davies & Terry Day
Rhodri Davies Terry Day
Terry is one of the most entertaining and unpredictable musicians in the London free improvising music scene. Rhodri Davies extends his instrument under a battery of techniques creating sound colours and textures quite alien to the harp.
Aufgehoben
A preposterously heavy, eye of the storm musical tug of war, in which two drummers, electronics and electric guitar fall over each other in a droning crush.
Octante
Alfredo Costa Monteiro Ferran Fages Margarida Garcia Ruth Barberán
Acoustic turntable, engines, trumpet and accordion joined by Bassist Magarida Garcia: build long-form quietly detailed pieces that clatter and rumble, that expand and contract with the tension and release of deeply held breath.
Hisato Higuchi
Hisato Higuchi
Some of the most breathtaking, delicate and smoke filled guitar playing this side of Loren Connors or the quieter sides of Keiji Haino.
William Parker
William Parker
William cradles, hammers, and rains down blows, plucking and using 2 bows to attack the strings above and below the bridge, all in the service of a fiery and passionate creativity.
Junko & Masayoshi Urabe
Junko Masayoshi Urabe
Junko’s screaming vocal in a nuanced, piercing duo with Urabe’s fuming and convulsive saxophone, far removed from the codes of musical tradition.
Junko, Ikuro Takahashi & JO JO Hiroshige
Ikuro Takahashi JO JO Hiroshige Junko
Three iconic figures from the Japanese underground assembled as a trio to stand in for the advertised duo of Junko and Jerome Noetinger who was unable to attend the festival due to illness.
Daniel Carter, Andrew Barker & Sabir Mateen
Daniel Carter Sabir Mateen
Daniel Carter & Sabir Mateen’s trio with percussionist Andrew Barker; incessantly driving forward through sweat-drenched bursts of pure ecstatic freedom.