As part of this year’s fabulously curated Recon Festival (how do Andy Abbott James Islip and Tom Hammond ever sleep?) Opera North, in their fascinating Autumn programme, brought Italiian Teho Teardo and German Blixa Bargeld to perform at the Howard Assembly Room, Leeds.
One of the first things that Blixa mentioned in the introduction to the show was his last gig in Leeds with Einsturzende Neubaten in 1983. I was at the performance at The Warehouse where the metal-bashers instruments included a pneumatic drill and Blixa towered above us all spurted vocals with Artaudian angst which you have to admit, as Nick Cave once pronounced, were like ‘strangled cats or dying children’.
In comparison Blixa’s current vocals are more mellowedand ballad-esque now, though still quite menacing at times and very emphatic, a blend of spoken word and voice as instrument. His performance is theatrical with ultra-expressive gestures the are used to conduct the musicians and add another layer of meaning for the audience.
The poetic often stream-of-consciousness (though scripted) lyrics contain a multitude of languages and Blixa quips, in response to rapturous applause, “it’s very kind of you to say you don’t know much of the words.”
For Mi Scusi there are Blixa’s Italian vocals set against haunting strings, a tinkling glockenspiel and Teho Tedo’s guitar that can be restrained and soft at one minute, blasting out and harsh the next.
In Axolotl we hear a deep quaking cello, almost subliminal atompherics on the backing track, harsh Germanic vocals in complex but effective arrangement. Buntmetalldiebe reads like a spell or incantation that namechecks Henry Moore and hocus pocus in a long list in this incredibly wordy song.
Still Smiling and A Quiet Life do seem to have a certain sense of irony given their lilting melancholic tone but the dry humour wins through. By the time they perform What If.. they have a massive sound replete with string quartet on top of the cello and it really is highly emotional and powerful stuff.
Come Up and See Me is a reference, of course, to Mae West which also infers the theatricality of Blixa’s performance with his exaggerated gestures and ultra-expressive facial expressions. Just like Einsturzende Neubaten’s performance back in ’83 this is a gig I’ll remember forever for its intense philosophical depth as well as the mesmeric magic of the music.
http://www.operanorth.co.uk/productions/music-teho-teardo-and-blixa-bargeld-still-smiling