When this year’s Meltdown festival curator was announced earlier in the year, the choice was met with a rush of excitement by many, including myself, this was one that promised a bill of genuine difference. Antony Hegarty is an artist of immense talent, of wide interests, and one who comes from a rich history of performance and collaboration, she is a real one-off, and someone who wears her influences on her sleeve, be-friending them, working with them, supporting them, she truly is fearless.
As the list of artists who would be performing as part of the two week festival at the Southbank grew longer, more and more wonderful and enticing artists were added, and the more nights I wanted to attend. Some I knew and loved; Laurie Anderson, Elizabeth Fraser, Matmos, some were unknown to me at that time; Diamanda Galas, Buffy Sante Marie, but through researching, listening and finding out about these artists they proved to be a rich source of inspiration, making choices around what to attend that much harder. Geography (not living in London), timings and budget played a large part in the eventual choices made, and we made it to a choice few of the nights.
CYCLOBE + MYRNINEREST + DEREK JARMAN FILMS
ALBION - HYPNAGOGUE - GHOST
Hallucinatory Queer British Paganism
Saturday 4th August 2012
One of the most intriguing and perfectly formed of nights on the festival list sees David Tibet’s new project Myrninerest perform for the first time, alongside the first UK performance from Cyclobe, and only their second live performance to date, despite forming back in 1999. Including several little seen super 8 films by visionary British filmmaker Derek Jarman the night promised to be a unique celebration of queer British paganism.
Myrninerest take their name from mediumistic artist Madge Gil’s ‘spirit guide’ and has David Tibet working alongside James Blackshaw, a composer and guitarist whose acoustic finger picking playing style has previously brought to mind John Fahey, accompanied live by other performers on violin and harmonium, and electronics.
Performing their debut album, “Jhonn”, Uttered Babylon”, their performance is concerned with, and dedicated to longtime friend of David Tibet and member of Coil Johnn Balance.
Opening with Balance’s favourite Jarman film, A Journey to Avebury, the night begins in a hushed and reverential atmosphere with the unmistakeably English pastoral scenes of pagan Avebury and its monoliths, soundtracked by Myrninerest, with repetitive piano motifs and echoey drones.
Myrninerest then begin their live performance, David Tibet’s vocal recogniseable and unmistakeable in its unique quality and half sung/half-spoken style, and despite the music on this new album being composed exclusively by James Blackshaw, there is a deep familiarity with the work for those familiar with Current 93, using elements of folk, and subtle electronics, with the main focus for much of the music being Blackshaw’s guitar. With his unique sound of eery magick, idiosyncratic, emotional, and an unmistakably English, no one quite sounds like Tibet. His lyrics are clear in annunciation and yet cryptic in meaning, making sense on an unconscious level perhaps, certain words ringing out, repeating like the repetitive guitar motif underpinning it. Musically, Current 93’s Aloma Ruiz Boada provides beautiful violin, and the harmonium is most effective when taking centre-stage, when both James Blackshaw and Comusʼ Bobbie Watson work its bellows to produce its unmistakeable, multi leveled sound.
Accompanied by visuals that chart Johnn Balance’s life from boy to man, and frequently including private correspondences between Tibet and Balance, poignant and prophetic, Tibet’s work is almost unbearingly, heartrendingly personal, his bond with Balance opened up and visible, woundlike, to all. Talking to other audience members in the interval, there was a strong emotional reaction to his work, and the tears that Tibet shed at end of the set, were shared by many. The second half begins with three hallucinatory and magick Jarman films, Sulfur, Tarot, and Garden of Luxor, soundtracked by Cyclobe. Dream-like imagery layers and repeats, protaganists playing with mirrors reflecting the glow of the bright alchemical sun, mirror and repeat, ritual and chance play out with the fitting and evocative sounds produced by Cyclobe. Cyclobe are longtime partners Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown, both previously members of Coil, alongside Johnn Balance, Sleazy and others. I came to them through their latest album, Wounded Galaxies Tap at The Window, a blend of curious electronic, esoteric, and drone elements which create a sound uniquely theirs, and yet with clear links to their pasts as members of Coil, and the aesthetic dsplayed by Ossian Brown in his book Haunted Air, of eery black and white images of children, faces concealed, in Halloween costumes, forwarded by David Lynch. On my previous blog I did a longstanding series collecting children in costumes, so this is a subject matter dear to my heart. They number 6 tonight, Ossian Brown playing hurdy gurdy, described by Brown as ‘pregnant with history and pagan’, and duduk, and Stephen Thrower (guitar and electronics), joined by Ivan Pavlov (laptop), Michael J York (Tulum, an Anatolian bagpipe, and border pipes), Cliff Stapleton (hurdy gurdy), and Dave Smith (percussion), all similarly kitted out in flat caps and tweed. They start their set tonight with the first track on their latest album, it sounds like early electronic music conjured through a séance, mediated through several layers of reality, Cyclobe acting as medium. Although the sound is clearly related to previously mentioned bands like Coil, and could be thought of as their offspring, with elements of post industrial, folk and drone, the parts add up to a sound that hasn’t got an equivalent, and is more developed in complexity, the way the elements communicate with each other, and is a more complete symbiosis of traditional and modern. They create a whole greater than the sum of its parts, with the space inbetween sounds being as potent and wrought with meaning as the sounds themselves. There are dangerous sounds, drawing the audience in with a word-less language, with communications from realms without words. They create the ultimate seduction, sounds that draw you in with nodded head, that you would follow to the ends of the earth, hidden, felt but not seen. Mid-way through the set a four person recorder piece gives the audience a stronger sense of the folk inherent throughout, to be followed by the arrival of a new member, Antony Hegarty joining them to lend his voice as another ancient instrument that gives the potion even more of a seductive edge, the sound could entice you to sleep, as the best of lullabies undulate and beckon, and it could equally hynotise you into other worlds. She leaves as quickly as she had appeared, and they finish with a track emphasizing tribal and primal roots, another of undulating sound, before emptying the stage to eckstatic applause.