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cellos are love
Bloody hell, that concert was amazing. Matthew Barley is a god among men.
I almost didn't get in. Someone had screwed up and I wasn't on the guest list. "Take a seat over there and we'll see if we can squeeze you in," said the snooty woman at the desk, and I sat down feeling annoyed but glad I hadn't badgered![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
secondhand_rick into coming up from London, wondering if it would help at all if I were to throw a but-I'm-a-reviewer strop, but hating the idea of doing that. But they did squeeze me in in the end, and anyway throwing a strop probably wouldn't have worked because this guy doesn't need a review from a little free paper. He's already got rave reviews from everyone in the world. And with good reason.
He improvised pieces based on two fragments of folk song, and it was mind-blowing to think that we were hearing them for the one and only time. Of course I thought "I must get a recording of this... oh, wait." He made Bach rock, though not at all in a Rock Me Amadeus sort of way. He played Hungarian gypsy music with his eyes closed, completely lost in it. I've had a thing for cellos ever since I first heard Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack when I was 12, late at night on a distant fuzzy radio station while falling asleep, and this man does things to a cello I wouldn't have dreamed possible.
The second half, where he had the electronic backing tracks (mixed on stage using foot pedals!) could have gone badly wrong, but it all worked. The first track was backed with fuzzy, warm synth notes that sounded smooth at the edges, as if they'd been partly eroded away by the sea. They sounded random at first and only made a pattern when all five tracks were layered on top of each other. Near the start of the electronic stuff someone's watch beeped twice and a chuckle spread out through the audience. I could guess what they were thinking: was that beep any different from the bleeps and squelches on the electronic track? And he grinned, and took the beep and played it on his cello, way up on the top string, folding it back into the music.
The last track, which he wrote with a dance/ambient producer called DJ Bee, was what Hybrid want to be when they grow up – all lush and symphonic and with bloody good beats, but twisty and unpredictable too, with harmonies that resonate in unexpected ways. (Mmmm, resonance.) I was worried that most of the audience might not have been enjoying it as much as I was. Though there were some studenty-looking people and a few about my age, mostly they were the usual classical concert demographic, the majority white-haired and various teenage and younger children. But I was just stereotyping them unfairly. They gave him three curtain calls. There might even have been some whooping and whistling.
I wrote about this before, when I saw Beethoven's 9th in Dublin last year, but at concerts like these when the music rolls over me and knocks me down and leaves me stunned and enraptured I want to glance sideways and catch the eye of the person sitting next to me and grin, as if to say isn't this amazing? Aren't we lucky to be here? And then I remember that this is what you do at a rave, and you do not do that at classical concerts, you sit up straight with your ankles close together and you clap politely, for goodness' sake what are you going to do next, offer that beshawled lady your glass of water? But I heard him saying in the lobby afterwards, to someone who was saying something similar about the setup, that he'd like to play at a venue where people could lie down or dance if they wanted to.
And I'm such a sucker for people who love what they do, and are doing it with the full force of themselves. All the more when their thing is fresh and surprising; when they're putting something new into the world…
…and he's kinda hot too.
He hasn't recorded the last two tracks yet, but when he does, there shall be YouSendIt, oh yes there will.
Today I have found a whole new way to procrastinate: putting genre labels on my songs in iTunes. 3825 mostly mislabelled songs yawn beneath me like a bottomless pit of wasted time but every time I try to stop I spot a breaks track labelled "blues", or a ten-minute-long track of ambient drone with no beat labelled "dance", or anything at all labelled "new age", and I CAN'T HELP MYSELF. JUST ONE MORE. Argh.
I almost didn't get in. Someone had screwed up and I wasn't on the guest list. "Take a seat over there and we'll see if we can squeeze you in," said the snooty woman at the desk, and I sat down feeling annoyed but glad I hadn't badgered
secondhand_rick into coming up from London, wondering if it would help at all if I were to throw a but-I'm-a-reviewer strop, but hating the idea of doing that. But they did squeeze me in in the end, and anyway throwing a strop probably wouldn't have worked because this guy doesn't need a review from a little free paper. He's already got rave reviews from everyone in the world. And with good reason. He improvised pieces based on two fragments of folk song, and it was mind-blowing to think that we were hearing them for the one and only time. Of course I thought "I must get a recording of this... oh, wait." He made Bach rock, though not at all in a Rock Me Amadeus sort of way. He played Hungarian gypsy music with his eyes closed, completely lost in it. I've had a thing for cellos ever since I first heard Unfinished Sympathy by Massive Attack when I was 12, late at night on a distant fuzzy radio station while falling asleep, and this man does things to a cello I wouldn't have dreamed possible.
The second half, where he had the electronic backing tracks (mixed on stage using foot pedals!) could have gone badly wrong, but it all worked. The first track was backed with fuzzy, warm synth notes that sounded smooth at the edges, as if they'd been partly eroded away by the sea. They sounded random at first and only made a pattern when all five tracks were layered on top of each other. Near the start of the electronic stuff someone's watch beeped twice and a chuckle spread out through the audience. I could guess what they were thinking: was that beep any different from the bleeps and squelches on the electronic track? And he grinned, and took the beep and played it on his cello, way up on the top string, folding it back into the music.
The last track, which he wrote with a dance/ambient producer called DJ Bee, was what Hybrid want to be when they grow up – all lush and symphonic and with bloody good beats, but twisty and unpredictable too, with harmonies that resonate in unexpected ways. (Mmmm, resonance.) I was worried that most of the audience might not have been enjoying it as much as I was. Though there were some studenty-looking people and a few about my age, mostly they were the usual classical concert demographic, the majority white-haired and various teenage and younger children. But I was just stereotyping them unfairly. They gave him three curtain calls. There might even have been some whooping and whistling.
I wrote about this before, when I saw Beethoven's 9th in Dublin last year, but at concerts like these when the music rolls over me and knocks me down and leaves me stunned and enraptured I want to glance sideways and catch the eye of the person sitting next to me and grin, as if to say isn't this amazing? Aren't we lucky to be here? And then I remember that this is what you do at a rave, and you do not do that at classical concerts, you sit up straight with your ankles close together and you clap politely, for goodness' sake what are you going to do next, offer that beshawled lady your glass of water? But I heard him saying in the lobby afterwards, to someone who was saying something similar about the setup, that he'd like to play at a venue where people could lie down or dance if they wanted to.
And I'm such a sucker for people who love what they do, and are doing it with the full force of themselves. All the more when their thing is fresh and surprising; when they're putting something new into the world…
…and he's kinda hot too.
He hasn't recorded the last two tracks yet, but when he does, there shall be YouSendIt, oh yes there will.
Today I have found a whole new way to procrastinate: putting genre labels on my songs in iTunes. 3825 mostly mislabelled songs yawn beneath me like a bottomless pit of wasted time but every time I try to stop I spot a breaks track labelled "blues", or a ten-minute-long track of ambient drone with no beat labelled "dance", or anything at all labelled "new age", and I CAN'T HELP MYSELF. JUST ONE MORE. Argh.
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I want to hear this now.
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:D
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Also ha, I have totally been genre-ing my itunes recently, mostly by sub-categorising my electronica and wondering what the word 'avant' actually means.
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Yeah, I'm trying to rescue things from the huge formless swamps of "Electronica & Dance" and "Alternative & Punk". What would you say Trentemoller are? The ones I have are labelled either techno or house, and neither of those seem quite right.
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Trentemoller is 'intelligent finance'! Though actually I wonder if it's possible to double-genre stuff, because I'd probably call it dub, too. Or 'evening', which is for music that's a bit broody and dark.
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I ADORE that guy, so much fun to watch.
And now I really want to check out Matthew Barley, as I LOVE cellos.
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Last time I saw him (a few months ago) he had these lovely projections with him, too. It worked really well with the music.
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And having just seen an organist improvise along with an entire movie last week, I also know what you mean about the obvious but delicious thought of the one-and-only.
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Exactly. Exactly.
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Two very good early albums, but went downhill a bit once his wife joined in singing over the top.
(And there was another regular Oxford busker, Frei Zinger, who did it with the flute -- that was pretty impressive.)
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My current favourite is that "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End" by Viv Stanshall (massively inventive surreal radio show thingy) is labelled as "Classic Rock".
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The ones who can't spell bug me too.
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I can only hope he's going to do one before the end of his current tour >.
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