Last Saturday was The Photophonic Experiment at the MAC. At that link you can play a couple of tracks which should help put things in context, maybe. Here, also, is an article in the Guardian which gives a little more background and is where I stole the photo on the right from. I didn’t take any photos because it was in a theatre with very clear signs saying “no photos”, and I was sitting in a chair. But that wasn’t a problem in the slightest (though I would have loved to). There’s also a couple of blog posts from the Oxford performance and, last but not least, RussL’s GDFAF report which pretty much does the job for me.
I was initially drawn to this due to the involvement of Pram, a somewhat legendary local band who’ve always been on the periphery of my experience, something I’ve wanted to rectify for a while now, and then fully drawn in by the promise of weirdness that couldn’t quite be described in print from new-to-me outfits Project Dark and Blissbody. I’m developing a rule that if the description of an event makes absolutely no sense whatsoever then it’s worth attending. There’s always the risk that it’ll descend into pretentious twaddle but I’ve learned it’s a risk worth taking, especially where music is concerned.
So what was it actually like? In essence it was a bunch of folk messing about with home made electronic light-based machines which made sounds. But it was much more than that. First the theatrical aspect – very formal, no talking, meticulously staged – gave it a gravitas but on top of this was a conscious desire to make the event musical (which is presumably where Pram came in) with actual tunes bridging the look-at-this-mad-thing moments. More than that I cannot say because it’s slightly beyond my capabilities but it was terrific, well worth the £14 ticket price and above all inspiring that there are people out there doing this sort of stuff and doing it well.
Unfortunately the tour finishes tomorrow in Colchester (do I have any readers in Colchester?) but here’s hoping they do a reprise at some point.