Tanya Tagaq Live - Exotic Folk Tradition Spiced With The Avant-Garde

Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq's live performance in Kumu served to prove two. First, exotic type of folk music and avant-garde experimentalism can be amazingly compatible. Second, that the power of music lies beyond convenient labeling.

The avant-garde composers and performers have always looked towards the folk traditions to create, in a seemingly ironic way, something new and exciting. For example, minimalist composers have often adapted the principles of Eastern music for their own conceptions. Avant-garde vocalists have often used their voice as an instrument rather than a tool to convey message. Tagaq's throat singing technique proved that voice-as-an-instrument approach stretches back to the legacy of archaic folk music.

Also, the entire concert was based on improvisation between Tagaq and Michael Red (electronics) and Kenton Loewen (drums). Improv and avant-garde have often gone hand in hand. Then again, folk music can also rely on improvisation very well. In short, the merger of folk tradition and the avant-garde seemed logical and natural in Tanya Tagaq's performance.

Even though according to the presskit Tagaq was said to blend the northern aborigenes throat singing with the indie-rock, such labelling seems misleading. Not only that the indie as such is a rather vague stylistic term by nature, but also because there actually were no elements in the performed music that one could associate with indie rock as an idiom understood in a certain way.

Rather, Michael Red's walls of sounds referred to the manifestations of the more cerebral kind of electronica (musique concrete, ambient, glitch, IDM) and Loewen's drumming spectre encompassed Jaki Liebezeit's hypno-grooving, Tony Williams' free-jazz touch as well as Chris Cutler's sonic conceptions (he used a violin bow on a cymbal, for instance).

Therefore, the power of music does not depend on stylistic frontiers or labels. However, it is found in sounds. And also performance, which was fantastic. Even if during the quieter parts Red and Loewen's accompaniment may have seemed a bit random, Tagaq still held attention with her impressive vocal technique.

The more intense parts however sounded almost danceable and hypnotic and in Tagaq's body movement on stage there was some sexual animistic suggestiveness.

For the "encore", they improvised again: it began with a melodic singing which proved that Tagaq can also sing quite beautifully without special tricks and it culminated with an interplay built on an even dancier rhythm. In summary, it was an exciting, new kind of concert music.

Lars Horntveth - Kaleidoscopic

Lars Horntveth is the leader and multi-instrumentalist of a Norwegian ten-member electrojazz/post-rock/mini-bigband Jaga Jazzist. Kaleidoscopic is his solo album, where he performs with a drummer as well as members of Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, playing a long, continuous 37 minute composition. In this magnum opus one can discern less jazzy influences as could be expected of his main gig. The jazziest element is clearly Horntveth's bass clarinet work. Otherwise the composer combines influences from Bernard Herrmann style classicism (also referring to Steve Reich occasionally) as well as bedroom electronica and even folk, considering a section led by acoustic guitar towards the end. What we have is an interesting synthesis of classicism, orchestration and modern alternative music directions. Kaleidoscopic is a composition worth listening from beginning to end and it is also confirmation that Horntveth is one of the most forward thinking avatars of our current day progressive music scene.

Phantom Band - Checkmate Savage

Phantom Band is a new indie band from Glasgow, Scotland, that initially kept a low profile under other names. Their debut album as Phantom Band is produced by Paul Savage who is primarily known by the legendary Scottish indie group Delgados. The Phantom Band performs a rather rocking, with slight Scottish folk tinge, but nonetheless slightly experimental indie-rock wherein it is telling that the band is heavily influenced by Neu!. The sextet's songwriting skills are pretty good. What is more impressive is that the band can take their longer songs and make them not only capable of sustaining interest but even the highlights of the album, which is a great skill. "The Howling" is epic kraut-pop at its best, "Crocodile" a bold instrumental kraut-jam, "Island" visits the gospel folk paths a la Brightblack Morning Light and "The Whole Is On My Side" as an album closer is a fine slab of the best kind of avant-pop. A commendable debut album.