- Since Jeff Mills released Blue Potential, a collaboration with the Montpelier Philharmonic Orchestra, in 2006, mixing electronic music and classical compositions has become a common practice, toured throughout concert halls and art centres around the world. Melbourne promoter Realtime should be commended for doing the opposite, inviting techno artist Rrose to perform a challenging piece of modern classical in a club environment.
Rrose's relationship with James Tenney's "Having Never Written A Note For Percussion" is not new—in 2015, Further Records released two recordings of Rrose performing the piece three years prior. Tenney's original score specifies that it may be performed on any percussive instrument, and Rrose has always preferred the 32-inch gong. While locals PWD and Split Silo played appropriately deep and hypnotic warm-up sets, the instrument sat out of place on the small stage at Hugs&Kisses, a reminder that the music of microtonal composers rarely makes it into dingy club settings. Nor do you usually encounter a dance floor with clubbers sitting cross-legged or sprawled out in various stages of rest.
When Rrose strode onstage, she blew out the five candles surrounding the gong, took her seat and picked up her mallets. At first barely audible, a faint drone was perceptible after around two minutes. After five minutes, the room began to fill with sound and it was possible to hear new tones and resonances. A number of audience members I spoke to suggested they could hear a backing track with a bassline and melody on loop throughout the performance, but they soon realised that these sounds were being produced by Rrose and the unamplified gong. The performance swelled into an ear-shattering sheet of sound, before gradually returning to silence.
Rrose once described the purpose of their music as to "induce hallucinatory states, to move bodies, to emphasize the tactile qualities of sound." All of these aspects were perfectly captured in the rendition of Tenney's composition. Listening to the tones, I felt entirely removed from the surroundings of an inner city club on a Saturday night, a detail that many in the audience later shared.
This was less effective in the subsequent drone performance, which found Rrose on more familiar though less rhythmic territory. The soundscape evoked the work of the pioneering queer experimental group Coil, particularly their releases Musick To Play In The Dark (volumes one and two) and the recently reissued Time Machines. Even so, it couldn't quite match the immense power of "Having Never Written A Note For Percussion." Overall, though, the event succeeded in making uncompromising experimental music work in a club space.