Playing Flat

This one was cut very slightly for this month's Nightshift. Firstly a couple of words were trimmed to squeeze it into the page, and secondly the rape image was toned down. Can't argue with that, really, but I must say that Harpo raping a swan, like some sort of inverse carnival Zeus, tickles me enormously.

That's all.


APARTMENT HOUSE, PLAYHOUSE, OCM/Sound & Music, 15/6/11


“The trouble with state arts funding,” runs the common argument, “is that it only supports things most people don’t like”. Funny that. It’s like asking why Baron Sugar doesn’t get any housing benefit. Tonight’s show, four pieces performed by the excellent Apartment House, selected and introduced by composer Jennifer Walshe, is exactly what Arts Council funding is for: niche interest music that simply wouldn’t work in The Wheatsheaf. The Playhouse is inhabited by a sparse knot of listeners, but the performers make full use of the excellent onstage facilities.

Amnon Wolman’s “Dead End” pits a clarinettist against four noisy toy vehicles that bumble around his feet, as if he were an unfeeling deity surrounded by excitable mortals. At first their constant buzz is annoying, but as the ear calibrates itself the noise makes sense with the clarinet lines. We start thinking about tape hiss, vinyl crackle and all extraneous noises we unconsciously experience alongside music.

Zachary Seldess attempts to evoke the sound of a cranky old New York shower in “124 Milton Street Extract”, using marimba, drums, radio static and rubbed wine glasses (played by five solemn middle aged performers at a table, like a glum seance convened by Jilly Goolden). The two drummers are superb, teetering on the edge of a cohesive rhythm, and the music is more like a photofit of the sound of plumbing, than a snapshot. It’s fascinating and immersive, if a touch too long.

In Peter Capaldi’s film Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life, the Czech writer is trying to stay miserable enough to finish Metamorphosis, but has trouble as parties rage around him. “Plateaux Pour Deux” by Pelle Gudmondsen-Holmgreen is pretty similar: a cellist plays parodically dour notes, trying hard to ignore the fact he’s on a small motorised platform nipping across the stage, and that someone is smacking cowbells and honking vintage car horns making noises like Harpo Marx raping a swan. The solo cello coda is pointless, but for sheer spectacle, this is truly unique.

Finally, Jonathon Marmou’s “Dog Star” is composed from randomly selected snippets of melody, but this is unimportant because it sounds like Parisian salon music created by Brian Wilson. At another time it might seem too prissily pretty, but it concludes the night gorgeously, with a fragmented chamber elegance that might just entice fans of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra.

The next in OCM and Sound & Music’s Listen To This series is at the same venue on 8th September. Should minority interest arts be funded by the tax-paying majority? Take the odd risk on new experiences, and they wouldn’t have to be.