I was at a drone/ambient gig on Saturday. Sunken Foal and Donnacha Costello in the Unitarian Church in Dublin. The former was great, melodic electronic, mostly song based ambient, but the latter was full on hardcore drone. Costello is a minimal techno bod who's done stuff for raster noton and is generally held in high regard. This show was based on his Mouvement album, and had really interesting visuals - a large black rectangle taking up 70% of the screen with subtle gradient changes around its edges. An eclipse or occlusion. Aurally it was synth based drone with a bit of field recordings - somewhere between Anthony Childs and Eliane Radigue.
You dont get to see quite this level of drone very often, so it was interesting to be in an audience, in the dark, in a church staring at a mostly black rectangle with the kind super intense experience that you get from focussed listening to drone at high volume. I was struck by the decadent austerity of it... the dearth of functionality in the music & thoughts of the dissolute society which would allow this kind of ritual to take place - in contrast to the starkness of the content of the music itself. It was like a scene from a dystopian 70's sci fi film illustrating some godless alien future or a Ballardian cult meeting.
Fundamentally though the biggest impact was in terms of intensity. Confirmed a lot of things Ive been thinking about for years. The aural ganzfeld effect is a real phenomenon and it's a potent force. Also, its torture to subject people to thoses kind of extreme sensations without comfortable surroundings - so if going to a sit down 'performance' ambient gig - bring a pillow. I learnt my lesson last time.
Anyway, buy the record, its really good:
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