Rock Paper Scissor by Klast                                     Gotan Project by Tinze at Flickr

During the last week, I have had two amazing digital multimedia music experiences. The first happened last friday, where I went to see a showing of Fritz Lang's Frau Am Mond silent movie, with live accompaniment by a Berlin laptop/electronica collective, Rock, Paper, Scissor. Even though I was forced to sit on a narrow bench for three hours in a cold, dark and damp room (the event took place in an old storage room converted to bar & event site), it was worth it. As one who likes classical music and has seen a fair part of classical concerts in brightly lit rooms, I'm still fascinated by the fact that a "concert" can consist of three guys gazing intently into the screen of their laptops in a semi-lit sombre setting for a long period of time. Nevertheless their staring (and of course intense sliding and typing) can produce amazing experiences, especially in combination with a visual backdrop, such as was the case with the Lang concert. I was amazed at the group's ability to emotionally underline - even cue - the events in the film, on both a psychological and physical level. For instance, they had a nice little "leit motif" going for the female lead, and an impressive "rocket launch" dumb bass that almost shook me of my seat. - If you want a soundbite, visit Mondofunza who also covered the event.

Yesterday, I went to another electronic concert, Gotan Project at Store Vega. Gotan project excels in making modern tango music with a pronounced electronica twist, yet drawing on the tradition of Astor Piazzolla and argentine tango culture. What Solal, Makaroff and Muller who founded the group have done, are to draw in musicans playing real instruments, so on the scene yesterday there were 3 violinists, a contrabas player, a digital? grand piano player, a bandoneon player (featured front stage), a classical guitarist and on occasion a female lead singer. The combination of the electonic music with the live performed music was very powerful, but nevertheless the song that was most amazing, was the song with two argentinian rappers, not performing live, but on the big screen that was projected behind and on the stage itself (since all performers dressed in white and all objects were covered in white cloth, projections could be seen on them as well), and filmed in a way, that made us, the audience feel, that they were really there. In fact, there were small "stories" projected on the screen for each song, so also this concert came across as an immersive multimedia experience.
//Fyi, to be a little bit nationalistic, Efterklang is a good example of a Danish ensemble also doing amazing stuff, combining electronica, live musicans and movies//

I'm wondering if we will come to expect - or it is already sort of a genre convention - that digital music/electronica performances include a visual "backdrop" - or perhaps more precisely, component. Has this need to combine electonic music with images grown out of a generation of performers who themselves are used to always having a visual backdrop (the tv) to their playing around with the computer? Has it emerged because the performers have felt a need to actually provide something more entertaining to look at than themselves sitting in front of the computer screens? Is it simply a new way of making and performing music, where you can no longer distinguish between images and the playing of music, because the concert experience just IS the experience of interplay between images and music, a postmodern revival of the combination of silent movies and live music, in which the music controls and defines the images, not the other way round? And how will that impact our understanding of what music is?

Interesting questions to ponder, I think, but the main thing is that the music was great in both cases!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:09