Laura Ager shares another adventure in Howard Assembly Room’s international programme of touring projects.
The last time I went to the Howard Assembly Room for Culture Vulture I was bewitched by an Inuit throat singer. Most recently I was sonically assaulted by two men with laptops – or, in other words, I was lucky enough to catch the one-off Leeds performance of a soundtrack developed especially for a big David Lynch retrospective exhibition in Melbourne in 2015. The current international tour is the result of a commissioning project based on that exhibition.
Seemingly, there is no end to exciting new things in the world of David Lynch just waiting to be discovered. Not long ago I saw some terrifying black and white photos exhibited in a cinema basement in Brussels, and then a selection of his early drawings appeared at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.
For this performance, large scale images were projected onto a screen and accompanied by a live soundtrack created by Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart and Australian composer Lawrence English. This was Lynch’s ‘Factory Photographs’ series; a collection of stark black and white images that were taken during location scouting for The Elephant Man, and also on visits to Germany and Poland. They depict open doorways, shattered glass, foreboding pylons and lots and lots of haunted, empty space.
On taking my seat I waved aside the usher’s suggestion that I might want earplugs for the evening. I am an enthusiastic, if occasional, fan of brutal noisy music such as Einstürzende Neubauten and SWANS, and besides, I had come prepared. I ride on Northern Trains often, so I always have an emergency pair of earplugs in my bag. (Babies can be far louder than SWANS if they choose to be.)
The evening began with a support set from Ashtray Navigations, a Leeds-based two piece, Phil Todd and Mel Ó Dubhshláine, who describe themselves as ‘very, very loud ambient music’.
This is the first time I’ve seen them play live, which is surprising, as the music these two make is of great importance to a number of good friends.
The uncrowned King and Queen of the West Yorkshire ‘unrock’ scene strolled out onto Howard Assembly’s huge stage, and got straight into their groove, coolly mixing Mel’s wobbly synth sounds with Phil’s extended guitar freakouts. Earnest and serious in their work, strangely coming across at the same time as though they were just fixing something in the lounge at home and we were there, sort of having a brew and chilling. It was nice.
After a short interval, Lawrence English and Jamie Stewart (billed as HEXA for this performance) appeared on stage and things started to get nasty. This music, more dark ambient than industrial, built slowly in waves, some sounds seeming to hover above others, but all of them conspiring to shock you out of passively viewing the pictures.
The photographs themselves were of factories in various states of disuse, dark, steeped in atmosphere and it’s atmosphere that the HEXA project deals in too. It was alarmingly loud at times, the music blending with the grimy landscapes to evoke fearful rumbling production lines, the static hum of pylons – startling bleeps and whooshes would interrupt the drone, echoing those of long dead machines, before mysteriously dropping out. A row of cymbals on either side of the stage became the scene of a terrific crescendo for the last part of the performance, and then the two men melted away, leaving us dazed as the house lights came up.
Factory Photographs is available to buy as a hardback book. Then if you fancy recreating the whole effect, you can look at the pictures really close up while listening to the HEXA soundtrack on Bandcamp.
Laura Ager is an event organiser interested in film & festivals as modes of engagement & education. Follow: @doc_u_laura