One of our favourite candid people in Leeds Penny Andrews begged us to go see Plaid at the Howard Assembly Room in Leeds…who were we to say no? We made her pay for her evening by reviewing it and the venue for us…
The Southbank Gamelan Players play traditional music from central Java, alongside new music composed for gamelan, and regularly work with other artists from various disciplines. For this event, they would be collaborating with Warp’s electronic music legends, Plaid.
The term gamelan refers to the ensemble of percussion instruments on which the traditional music of Java and Bali is played, and the experience of seeing the instruments on stage at the Howard Assembly Room alone, wonderfully lit, was beautiful. I have been to the HAR twice before, to see the Forty Part Motet by Janet Cardiff and when Vashti Bunyan visited Leeds earlier this year.
I can’t help feeling that the space was more suited to those two events. While the Howard Assembly Room has fantastic sound, great sightlines wherever you are in the room and the decor itself is attractive, I think that the way room was laid out for the Plaid and gamelan concert felt rather too much like, well, a concert.
Quite a few people were caught unawares by the fact that the time stated on the tickets was the actual start time, like theatre. So the initial “welcoming” piece played by the Southbank Gamelan Players was spoiled a little for me by the shuffling, clambering and lights flickering of people finding their way into quite tight spaces as the gig was sold out. My companion also struggled with the lack of light and shade in the piece – “a bit clangy and trebly and overly repetitive” – although my previous experience of this music is that the repetition is a vital part, and I enjoyed it once the audience had settled down. I must disclose at this point that I have disabilities that mean my senses are heightened, and for that reason I struggled with the seating in the gallery – the shared backrest was constantly moving as people shuffled in their seats or leaned hard backwards, or went out to get a drink, and it made me feel physically ill as well as triggering my startle reflex.
The SGP’s leader wanted a relaxed, casual atmosphere and told us we were free to come and go from the auditorium. The SGP and Plaid were all sitting on the floor on stage, and I can’t help feeling the night would have been better suited to a more flexible room layout; allowing people to sit, stand, dance and move around, experiencing the music from different angles.
The second piece by the SGP was fantastic, with a wider range of dynamics and instruments introduced, including the rebab and suling, and I found the rest of their “solo” set to be mesmerising and hypnotic, especially when the voices were introduced. I am a fan of instrumental music, but the textures and resonances the gérong and pesindhèn brought to the experience sent shivers down my spine.
The first half ended with Plaid playing a few tracks alone, and even though I have enjoyed the duo live before, it just felt a bit flat in comparison with the larger ensemble, and dull to watch. I really felt like dancing when the bass and beats kicked in and was frustrated to be confined on the benches.
The second half was mainly given over to the collaboration between the two groups. The visuals kicked in on the big screen, the gamelan players and vocalists used all the textures, rhythms and techniques at their disposal, and Plaid anchored the pieces with beats, bass and a mixture of organic and synthetic sounds to create a long, undulating piece of music that was enveloping and stimulating and one of the best things I have heard or felt this year. The end of the piece grew in volume and depth and the players all had beaming grins as they thrashed to its climax.
Perhaps the breakbeats were turned up a little high as the encore began, but the SGP’s leader told us this was the first time they had played a collaborative arrangement of Plaid’s own music and it was a great high on which to go out.