John Duncan, Testicle Hazard and Fjorden Baby! at Landmark: Late Modernism / New Expressionism / Daft Punx.

If anybody turned up to the event at Landmark on Thursday evening to be shocked by the controversial artist John Duncan, then they were sorely disappointed.

«If anybody turned up to the event at Landmark on Thursday evening to be shocked by the controversial artist John Duncan, then they were sorely disappointed.» Jeremy Welsh rapporterer fra tre konserter på Landmark på torsdag. (Teksten er på engelsk).

John Duncan.

If anybody turned up to the event at Landmark on Thursday evening to be shocked by the controversial artist John Duncan, then they were sorely disappointed. A mild mannered, rather headmasterly, grey-haired figure in regulation black clothing stood placidly behind the mixing desk and sketched a series of sparse acoustic landscapes that gradually unfolded over a period of forty five minutes. Sitting across the table from me were the Holy Trinity of the New Art Criticism, Tommy, Grethe and Erlend (I’d forgotten my camera, no pictorial proof of this cabal). What shall we call them – the New School for Antisocial Research, for example? Also present was video artist Ellen Røed who appeared to be discussing with Tommy why she thought that John Duncan’s performance reminded her of Lars Von Trier’s film Breaking The Waves. Actually I didn’t hear much of what anybody was saying as I was using the vibrant orange foam ear plugs that had been thoughtfully handed out to the audience. I had to set a good example; my eighteen year old son, Laurie, was with me and I don’t want him to go deaf yet. We seemed to be taking it in turns to fall asleep. This is not necessarily a bad thing at a noise concert. It probably has to do with Alpha Waves or something like that, and after a long day of strenuous mental exertion, to gently drift off into an undulating landscape of modulating, shifting noise has quite a calming effect. I could imagine having a cd of John Duncan’s music for listening to on headphones when I can’t sleep at night.

But you can’t spend the whole evening dozing! Testicle Hazard (Lasse Marhaug and Tommi Keranen) notched up the volume a few decibels more so that sleeping would be an option only for the profoundly deaf. They launched into their set with admirable enthusiasm, wrenching a broad spectrum of mangled sounds from an array of desktop electronic devices and performing the kinds of manic twitching body movements associated with heavy metal guitarists. But something bothered me and I realized it was a kind of Baselitz/Kiefer effect. So macho. So expressionistic. So eighties German. And then It occurred to me that John Duncan’s proto-minimalist sound sculpture was like Donald Judd to the neo expressionism of the testicle boys. Yesterday I was at another Borealis event, Sound Bank, where there was a significant contribution by women artists Maia Urstad and Jana Winderen, and it was more interesting and more open. Draw your own conclusions.

And finally: never mind the bollocks this is Fjorden Baby! Only problem is, this is the real bollocks. Hailed as one of the most promising young bands in town, they clearly, tragically, believe their own hype. By observing a few simple rules they could possibly get better. The first, and most vital is: if you want to play (something like) Jamaican dub, bass is the most important instrument, closely followed by drums. (It’s no accident that Linton Kwesi Johnson called one of his albums Bass Culture). Next, you have to work up a seamless rhythmic integration of bass and drums that gets the audience to “wind up the waist”. If you can’t manage that, retire, with immediate effect. And finally, remember that almost all great Jamaican music was made by highly skilled studio musicians with disposable singers up front who were only brought in to augment the rhythm. So: no posing rock star boys, please, for these are the major downfall of Fjorden Baby. A complete idiot of a lead singer who apparently regards himself as a continuation of the Mick Jagger/Iggy Pop/Johnny Rotten lineage, coupled with a guitarist who’d be a Keith Richards or a Mick Jones if he could, but he can’t because he isn’t. Get rid of them, they’re completely useless! Testicles, Baby!

Jeremy Welsh

(Konsertene var del av musikkfestivalen Borealis 2007 som har foregått på forskjellige scener i Bergen den siste uka, og som avslutter på søndag. Red anm.)

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