- Rabih Beaini has perfected the art of curation. Now in its tenth year, his Morphine label presents music at its most eclectic. It is often home to dance music's more freeform incarnations, though the label has also issued everything from jazz to Indonesian folk. It makes sense then, that Morphine would celebrate its 15th anniversary in collaboration with Polymorphism, the Berghain event series that describes itself as "a crossbreed of club night, concert, and experimental laboratory."
So far this year, Morphine has released music from Senyawa and Charles Cohen, with another record from Pierre Bastien on the way. Cohen's album, Brother I Prove You Wrong, explores timbre using modular synthesis. The Buchla Music Easel is his main tool and it travels with him to shows like these. During his performance, a soft orange light doused Cohen as he sketched out parts of the album in a semi-improvised manner. He would occasionally utter something into the microphone. What he said was inaudible, but it didn't seem to matter.
After a short interval, Pierre Bastien took to the stage. His Mechanium orchestra, constructed from Meccano and recycled turntable motors, sat between a projector and a silver screen. Its shadow cast against a backdrop of fade-in-fade-out video, depicting various 21st century musicians (complete with audio) as a strange kind of musical and visual accompaniment. In a previous interview, Bastien described his shows as a "cinema-vérité about sounds and music," claiming what's most important to him is "to have no mystery about sound sources" onstage. The result is a spellbinding audiovisual performance of contact-based instrumentation and machine manipulation.
Intervals became welcome pauses for contemplation. Bastien's set-up remained on stage for a while, imploring closer inspection, before being carefully wheeled off to make way for a new collection of peculiar contraptions. Rully Shabara held a single note as he approached the audience from the corner of the room. His unamplified cry skimmed the venue's high concrete ceiling. Shabara is one half of Senyawa, an Indonesian duo whose thrashing take on traditional Javanese music is more avant-garde than traditional. His partner, Wukir Suryadi, had already entered the stage, surrounded by a number of self-made instruments. Effects pedals processed each twang as Shabara weaved his way through the absurdly extensive sonic landscape laid out before him. The performance was reduced to a single whisper by the end, closing to the sound of sustained applause.