The Attenborough Centre, on the fringe of the Sussex Uni’s Falmer campus, is certainly carving a slot for itself on the city’s contemporary music scene. Filling the void for a much-needed mid-size venue, a step up from the quirky cosiness of the wonderful Rose Hill, it’s becoming a destination for artists and audiences dedicated to the leftfield. The latest happening in their impressive Spring 23 Season, brings the chance to enter saxophonist Colin Stetson’s boundary-pushing space and encounter a genuine alternative Saturday night out.
More than a horn player, Montreal-based Stetson has become a central figure in electro-acoustic music. You’ve probably heard him on recordings with everyone from Tom Waits to Arcade Fire, Bill Laswell to Anthony Braxton or gone filmic with one of his soundtrack compositions (his latest was The Menu) but it’s his solo work that really emphasises Stetson’s significance as a musician. From the groundbreaking ‘New History Warfare’ album trilogy (2007 to 2013) through last year’s expansive ‘Chimæra I’ he is the creator of daring, definitive soundscapes for today.
For tonight the Centre’s main hall, surprisingly stripped of seating, at first feels a little more cavernous as the mill of cognescenti and curious, all caps and Camper shoes, trickle towards the stage. To begin the evening, post-classical keyboardist Faten Kanaan develops an illustrative and emotive set that flows between baroque sophistication and the expansively panoramic. Tonight’s opening trio of tunes show her melodic sensibilities as a composer. Harmonic synth loops make for a celestial swirl through which Kanaan delivers moments of striking detail, an agile piano toned etude, the bass rumble as deep as a walrus sigh, the hint of gothic drama as the pieces unfold. Fixed and focused behind her keyboard set-up, the light subdued but creating a purple sheen around her bowed head, the music is lusciously dark and atmospherically similar to Anna von Hausswoolff’s solo work. A tinge of madrigal and the middle east comes to the surface mid-set before sixties psychedelia, post rock heaviness and sonorous drones power-drive the closing numbers. With a brief “thanks”, a satisfied bow and a meaningful point to Stetson’s stage front sax stand, she leaves with expectations of something special reliably raised.
Anticipation is still high when Colin Stetson slides onto the stage post interval, a tension that seems to hover as he purposefully prepares for the off, unravelling wires and connecting leads. Then one long amplified inhale, taking on breath to fuel an introduction that soon gushes with harmonic patterns fluttering from his horn’s keys. As usual the live iterations of Stetson’s recorded work extend way beyond the need for exact reproduction, this is visceral music made for the moment. As the rhythmic pump of his playing airstream and those ghosted vocals emerge with the sax lines, ‘Spindrift’ from the ‘All This I Do For Glory’ album is suggested in this stunning start but maybe not. Amongst all this, titles seem a bit superficial.
Similarly anonymous, but in name only, what follows takes a heavier, apocalyptic turn. It’s a mighty beast of a tune, reminiscent of the 2013 track ‘Brute’ but stretched through passages of maximal riffing, aching blues phrases and harrowing skronks. Like some cathartic spell-maker Stetson arches and then keels back, appearing to wrestle with the huge bass sax while coaxing some strange ritual language from his instrument. As the whip-cracking valves and reed-smacking parps create cross rhythms, the large screen projections shatter and explode behind his crouched figure, highlighting the audio-visual dimension to a Colin Stetson live performance. No apologies here, with all the visual effects triggered directly from the intricate sounds he is producing. Stetson is literally painting it large.
Between all this dynamism our host still takes time out for some gentle chit-chat. From observations on the “good smells around the campus” to the sensitive positioning of his body mics, his charm is a reminder of the human sensitivities that his music draws from. That emotional dimension is central to his upcoming new album ‘When We Were That What Wept For The Sea’ which he reveals makes up a chunk of the material for tonight’s concert. Inspired by and dedicated to the memory of his recently deceased father, these new songs shimmer with a magical warmth when shared.
Perhaps the elegant beauty of ‘Safe With Me’ is the most immediately affecting with its reassuringly familiar song structure and almost folksy drone but that’s just the start. Stetson in bass sax mode takes this tune somewhere else, the microphoned cracks and spits, the pounding urgency and choral gasps making for a dramatic finale. On the still-unreleased ‘The Love It Took To Leave’ these surges are more restrained within a piece that migrates skywards on ever-elevating pure arpeggios. As the song’s final sigh brings us back from some otherworldly flight, there’s a hush in the crowd while we re-orientate.
The evening closes with an exhaustingly intense physical flourish. Setting up a bass sax drone that seems to growl more viciously with each revolution, such music under Stetson’s control reaches Sunn O))) levels of layered compression. Somehow he then conjures up a thudding techno resonance from his set-up which makes the floor of the ACCA shiver as the inevitable approaches. Finally reaching a shamanistic giddiness the pulses morph into a monotone throb before Stetson pushes out one final gasp into the mouthpiece. It’s then you realise that you have been part of something physiological and that the freedom of the open, unseated floor, to stand in or move around, lean against or rest on was entirely necessary. Colin Stetson put in a shift and we needed space as we shifted with him.
The Attenborough Centre For Creative Arts, Saturday 29th April 2023
Words by John Parry
Photos by Victor Frankowski
