Yesterday I went to an amazing concert in Paard van Troje, in The Hague (for those of you who live here, it's very close to Grote Markt). The performers were the ones mentioned in the title, plus others. I must confess I left immediately after Sunn O))) finished because I really needed to digest what had just happened.
The night began at 20.00 with a performance of Nicad with the New European Ensemble. They are more on the pop side, but I could tell some influences from My Chemical Romance and music of this style. They had nice arrangements and the orchestration was very well made. It was a bit too nice and perfect for my taste, though, but listenable nonetheless.
Then came DakhaBrakha (link is to a recording of a concert they gave in Roskilde, Denmark), a group from Ukraine. I have never heard anything as amazing as them in this kind of genre, maybe Eivør Pálsdóttir (Faroese singer). I don't know much about Ukrainian folk music, but the group describes itself as "chaos folk," and you can feel lots of harmonies that evoke this traditional style singing, but with a more "modern" (i.e. western) approach. Very interesting, what they do, I especially like the first two songs. I would really like to go to Ukraine and see how it is, I have seen and heard many amazing things coming from this country, I have met many nice people from there, so I would like to know how it is, to feel the air there, to see the people, to hear the language (which I understand is mainly Russian, but anyway).
DakhaBrakha
Because Paard van Troje has two concert halls, the presentations of Amenra and DakhaBrakha were overlapped, so I missed a good half of Amenra's presentation. But what I heard was amazing also. It's a completely different idea, very dark music, lots of "dirty," distorted noises, 4/4 beat, what you would expect from any metal band of this particular genre. On this sense, it was a very "safe" act, there was nothing adventurous about it, most songs were pretty simmilar between them. Despite this, I liked it very much, but mainly because in general I enjoy this music. It seems to me that it comes from the deepest corners of human despair and desolation. A voice shrieking in the dark, "why have You forsaken us?" while the audience moves convulsively, in a kind of trance that leads nowehere but further and further into darkness. Can we help it? Can we avoid being sucked into the blackness? Should we not sing these songs of anguish and wretchedness? The whole place was filled with this massive sound, with this rhythm that drove the audience into a kind of trance, just twitching to the music, moving as we could, following the shirtless figure on stage, with an inverted cross tatooed on his back, not looking at us, but at some unknown point inside himself. He crouched on the floor, screaming. It was horrible and beautiful at the same time. So much pain, so much.
The lead singer of Amenra, with his back to the audience.
Then came Sunn O))) (link is to a concert they gave in Leuven, Belgium)... I don't have words for describing it, it was a huge wall of sound, or more like being submerged in an ocean of vibrations. Most of the sounds were low, dissonant. I felt vibrations on my throat, on my stomach, my legs. After 20 minutes of this, I began loosing it completely. I have never felt something like that, my mind just began going everywhere, I began remembering things from months ago, then I came back to the sound, then I went off again, then I came back. It was almost as a meditation, but much more chaotic and dark. Some people around me were also loosing it. I didn't move at all, but some people began extending their arms, moving, shaking, touching their faces. The singer mostly spoke, saying incomprehensible things that sounded as some kind of ancient prayer said in a cathedral of noise and chaos. The performers were dressed in dark robes, and the stage was full of smoke and coloured lights. It was very impressive. It felt as a further stage into madness, after the controlled despair of Amenra, this was the uncontrolled rage of the forgotten souls. It was terrible, unbearable. At everymoment I thought I was going to faint, to fall into madness. This is what I meant when I said that no work of art should be made that doesn't plunge the spectator into madness. After experiencing a work of art, it should not be easy to go back to the real world, to face the daily routines. This is exactly what happened to me, I could barely drive my bike back. I remember less than half of my route back home (a 20-minute drive under the rain). Sunn O))), at least in my personal opinion, is pure art. They build mountains of sound and just drop them mercilessly on the audience, not caring if they can cope with them or not, because I sincerely doubt the performers themselves can. Simply beautiful.
Light and smoke and figures dressed in dark robes: Sunn O)))
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