The Art Deco cathedral that is the main gallery space of PICA, is the perfect setting for New Music ensemble Decibel. The evening’s proceedings were Decibel’s final instalment in a trilogy of concerts at PICA throughout 2011. The concert was also part of the line-up of the 10th Totally Huge New Music Festival that is taking place in Perth until the 25th of September. Camera Obscura tied images and music together, with intriguing visual scores, a screening of the 1963 Stan Brakhage film Mothlight, and Marina Rosenfeld’s modular piece ‘White Lines’; which relied on sensitive improvisation upon the visual stimulus provided by lines of varying transparency and size.
After an introduction by ABC Classic FM’s Julian Day of the New Music Up Late show (who will be broadcasting the concert this Friday the 23rd at 11pm), the first section of the concert focussed on new compositions by emerging composers. Currently playing with Pollen Trio, Austin Buckett’s ‘Mothlight’s begun with snippets of flute played by Cat Hope bouncing around the auditorium, before percussionist Stuart James scraped his twin snares with sandpaper, leading into the screening of Mothlight. The projector’s hum and the flicker of the red wing/vein/leaf images added a further element to the sparse interplay and signal processing of Decibel. The second piece, by Lindsay Vickery and Cat Hope explored a beguiling (for the audience) score where the brass and strings were instructed what to perform by a ‘planchette’ – circles for the four musicians, that shimmied and swung around a palate of 10 images including genome-like stripes, a homage to Franz Liszt and astronomical themes. At times ‘The Talking Board’ was a somewhat nauseating slide through the visual score, and the small ensemble sounded like they were trapped underground, their instruments being played by a writhing mass of insects. Diverging from this frenetic mode, a window opened out on a field of drones as the circles drifted higher.
Samuel Dunscombe’s ‘West Park’ explored the tensions between the western classical tradition, electronics and sound art, as a vestigial resonance from the interplay between flute and clarinet was subsumed beneath thundery, avian atmospherics. Local composer Kynan Tan’s ‘Split Mirror Planes’ utilised a semi-circle of laptops, ebbing and fading through multiple graphics – a glow of thermoluminescence. From the musicians, microscopic gestures and extended techniques foreground the nuance and understatement of a defiantly lowercase sound.
After an interval, the composer of ‘WHITE LINES’, Marina Rosenfeld joined Decibel on turntables, the ensemble augmented their strings, brass and percussion with Malcolm Riddoch on guitar, rather than processing duties. With varying projected images (80s femme hair metal band, flowers, clouds, and a smoking hand), which were overlayed with the aforementioned white lines changing in dimension, informing the performers reactions to the visual stimuli. At times this piece came across like a musical workshop, as the players took turns to improvise. A more collaborative mode was eventually entered into, the smoking hand image was the doorway into the whole ensemble joining as one for a short time, reminding me of Luc Ferrari’s Cellule 75; a frenetic vibrato from the strings and a keening, woozy lament from Rosenfeld’s turntables brought the evenings performance to an abrupt end. A sold-out event, the bleachers rapidly disgorged the audience into the subdued atmosphere of Northbridge on a Monday night, planning their next Totally Huge gig.
Oliver Laing
