Afterwards the Qbus came together in a mild celebration coloured, it has to be said by a considerable outpouring of relief that such a difficult prospect had come off so beautifully, but then there’s no substitute for great music, wherever it’s performed.
Afterwards the Qbus came together in a mild celebration coloured, it has to be said by a considerable outpouring of relief that such a difficult prospect had come off so beautifully, but then there’s no substitute for great music, wherever it’s performed.
How’s this going to work? Approaching the Qbus’s doors for the TAGC show, Incendiary felt that everything to do with this event was shrouded in mystery. Qbus has a sound limit, and a low bar to the side of the stage, meaning that previous shows we’d seen there had always had to contend with noisy drinkers. And getting the complex sounds and imagery that is associated with The Anti Group in there… well that would be something else entirely. We’d been promised an “ambisonic sound-field that will be integrated into the final recording production – a performance that will act as the finalisation ceremony of Meon 3”. Golly.
Luckily, long and exhaustive preparations at the Qbus meant that our concerns were unjustified; the stage had swung round so the viewer had their backs to the bar and could, if they so wished, sit in the middle of a veritable surround sound system flanked by three huge screens, whilst the band would negotiate their way through the gig on a raised dais in the corner. All well and good.
After some pretty nuts intro/mood music, (we ran the gamut from Renaissance to tribal), the band took their place behind their Apple Macs and proceeded to create a suitable mood by virtue of some long, atonal hissing sounds, sounding for all the world like a giant fridge shuddering into life. This sonic process took another 10 minutes or so and as the screens were not yet producing moving images (outside of the general TAGC broadcast logo) there were some sat huddled in the viewing arena who were doubtless wondering just what the feck they’d let themselves in for. “Oh get on with it” was heard from the bar….
But once we got the screens active things were pretty damned spectacular. The broadcast concerned itself with a series of episodes – illustrated in sound and image – that dealt with Pataphysical and esoteric ideas as well as some audio snippets inspired by such luminaries as Alfred Jarry and Michael Bertiaux. In practice this meant some spectacular imagery was projected onto the screen; as well as a lot of mandala-like forms and depictions of space, a host of mediaeval and Renaissance depictions of half human, half animal beings flickered over the three screens in bewildering variety. Most spectacular of all was the sequence illustrating Barry William Hale’s illustrations where his clean, strident images of Beelzebub were programmed into a frenzied interweaving of form and line.
And of course the music drove all: pulsating, powerful, looking to slip between conventional considerations of space and time but always clear-headed and defined; the rhythm was always present but often as a rumbling, pulsating presence that only showed itself at given moments. When things did get driven by a beat, the show was truly astonishing and lift-off was at least attained in a mental and spiritual form by those sitting…
Afterwards the Qbus came together in a mild celebration coloured, it has to be said by a considerable outpouring of relief that such a difficult prospect had come off so beautifully, but then there’s no substitute for great music, wherever it’s performed.
Here’s a shot from the show