Boiler Room X V&A Friday Late: "Sound It Out"
In my short life thus far here on earth, I have never seen a DJ play to a huge crowd in a museum nor have I seen the V&A museum (South Kensington) anywhere near full. Then Friday came and Boiler Room, PAN records and the V&A added an experience to plug those two gaps in my life and develop my musical experience to new levels.
Firstly, the V&A was at full capacity on the evening and operating a strict 1 in 1 out policy and the reason why? Music. The Boiler Room used their evening in an ornate and incredibly large venue to deliver an insight into all aspects of music with technology, the interaction between the two and development of each concomitantly.
Bill Kouligas & Mat Dryhurst
I arrived a few minutes early and headed straight to the Medieval and Renaissance area to witness PAN records' Bill Kouligas and Mat Dryhurst perform a piece specially conceived for the evening combining a live video edit of the boiler room feed and the musical work of Bill Kouligas in what is a new direction for PAN into the audiovisual dimension.
Huge ambient audio testing sounds echo out from the walls of the Medieval and Renaissance Section, wooden corner posts & door frames almost creaking under the bass and giving life back to items that have not been used in centuries as the speakers are tested out.
A Korg A42 sounding synth bounces sporadically onto the statue of Judith and Holofernes* and spirals up and around the modern spiral stairs opposite. Higher pitch frequencies break the deeper warps and the sound descends into organised chaos. The sounds dampen down into a whisper before lower frequency numbers strike out at each pitch. The wall of sound seems to fall from the rafters rebounding off every brick and landing firmly in your ear drum, before you have time to realise it, you are under.
Things hot up as lighter synths are introduced. The helicopter type light percussion builds pace and heavier darker synths complete the melée. A drunk onlooker sips from his smuggled in wine as he tries and fails to comprehend the densely layered sounds and in his confusion breaks into and out of dance every other couple of minutes. As the crescendo builds and effects build layer on layer, a new helicopter type percussion starts to sweep in and out. The sound of high pitched falling ceramic bricks joins the sonic landscape.
The attention arrested by the futuristic and carefully produced performance, with the exception of the drunk man sipping away, was that of the London Symphony Orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall but with even more history surrounding it given its position in the Medieval and Renaissance area of the V&A. You wonder why and how the digitally arranged compositions can hold itself in such lofty company but the wall of sound is of such a level now and it keeps building. This would have the London Symphony sweating and bleeding as they tried to continue playing and still it keeps building..
Off-tempo synths increase in number, they spark into your ears from different areas of the Museum, off different sculptures, arches and empty windows. Sounds reverb more from side to side, up and down and swell into your eardrums as they build to the final crescendo. The overall feeling coursing through my body as I walked away from the finished set is one of intense warmth followed by complete relaxation, a feeling it would be difficult to recreate without a year of meditation or a similar amount of drugs (without the broken legs from sitting cross-legged for a year or the come down unless you include the pain of walking away from such a beautiful composition).
For more from the PAN record label boss. Check out this mix and the record label soundcloud:
Equally, the audiovisual experimentation continues this evening at South Bank Gallery, Friday 7th February. Head down and witness a further spellbinding show from PAN in a really cool setting.
Heading to the Grand Entrance, I am met by a crowd of people all bouncing up and down to Bradley Zero on the decks popping out some typically chilled and interesting deep house with plenty of panache and soft synths cooling everyone’s ears as some French girls got their groove on and others followed suit. The atrium is full, the rafters are full, this is the Boiler Room in the V&A!
Into some groovy techno, feeling the need to dance...
Some little garagey numbers enter the fray with some high claps keeping the crowd moving and hips swaying. Enjoying the mixing combo of CDJ and Technics carrying on the theme of digital meet items from history and while technics are still a DJ’s bread and butter, it shows the theme carries all around the museum this evening. Sadly for Boiler Room, the LD speakers didn't really have the minerals to fill the Grand Entrance and getting bored of missing out on layers of music I headed off to see Eli Kessler and Helm. I think if you were to give the hosts a smaller room with the same speakers or a more powerful selection of speakers then it would have sounded sweet. In terms of track selection, we moved from Acid, to Demon Fuzz, to African percussion and so much in between but staying true to Rhythm Section roots, not a lot more I would ask for except more layers of sound.
Check out Peckham's/Bradley Zero's Rhythm Section here.
HELM and Eli Keszler
10 huge metal wires dangle from the top banister on the first floor down to the base of the stairwell on the ground floor, operated by miniature robotic arms which pull now on again on each. With each mechanical pluck a deeply synthesised and amplified tiger growl enters the space around the stairwell.
Eli Keszler (EK) is sat at his drum-set in the corner of the space and creates an eerie high pitch sound from playing his bow on brass rings on top of a snare drum. This is similar to John Cage’s type of experimentation but it sound good in combination with HELM’s digital mastery. The bites and growls of the wires get louder before EK turns to the smallest brass disc and the harmony hits new altissimo heights that anyone over the age of 30 would have had difficulty in hearing.
The sounds fan upwards and reflect deeply off the tall period ceilings. EK introduces drumsticks into the fray, playing the brass circles snare and side in equal but eclectic measure to add to the storm of improvisation or carefully orchestrated madness by the little robotic hands and the HELM in front of the mixer.
The performance, while not as ambience inducing as the earlier one was another fine example at how digital methods of music can interact and work beautifully alongside analogue methods.
There were many other events on that evening, from Rival Consoles and Michael Zoidis, light and sounds shows outside in the wet of South Kensington (V&A Garden) to workshops on experimental music, oak synth machines to try out and Boiler Room playing on until 10.30pm but these were my PAN dominated highlights of a unique evening in London.
Ok, Here is a cheeky video of Rival Consoles' Odyssey by Mike Zoidis to enjoy before you read the history of the Judith Statue. Peace.
* The subject is taken from the Old Testament book of Judith. The King of Nineveh, sends his general Holofernes to subdue the Jews. The latter besieges them in Bethulia. Famine undermines the courage of the besieged and they contemplate surrender, but Judith, a widow, claims that she will deliver the city. She goes into the camp of the Assyrians and captivates Holofernes by her beauty, and finally takes advantage of the general's intoxication to cut off his head. She returns inviolate to the city with his head as a trophy. The story is thought to be an allegorical interpretation of Humility triumphing over Pride.
