EX-EASTER ISLAND HEAD + YOU&TH + CHARLIE KEEN’S SILVER BIRCH – THE HOPE & RUIN, BRIGHTON 7.6.24
The post-minimalism form of totalism is one of my favourite styles and forms of music ever; the New York downtown movements of the 70s and 80s gave birth to the profiles of composers like Mikel Rouse, Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, all of whom are staples in my listening sphere and even make strong influences towards my own musical concoctions. The strict experimentation, the demolition of the box they proverbially think outside of, and the desire to operate within a complete reorientation of conventional musical arrangements. Since their inception 15 years ago in 2009, the Liverpudlian Ex-Easter Island Head create infusions of totalism with experimental music, post-rock, drone and ambient music, culminating in an illustrious career thus far. The group consists of four current multi-instrumentalists, Benjamin D. Duvall, Benjamin Fair, Jonathan Hering and Andrew P.M Hunt, with previous incarnations of their performances ranging anywhere from two to thirty musicians at any one time. Their sound, which also incorporates free improvisation, gamelan and 20th century classical, has landed in a series of critically-successful releases such as 2016’s ‘Twenty-Two Strings’. Courtesy of Love Thy Neighbour, Ex-Easter Island Head came to Brighton for the first time in over ten years, finding base at The Hope & Ruin as they tour their latest release ‘Norther’ in full; this is a night I won’t be forgetting in a hurry…!
Opening the night for Ex-Easter Island Head however are two extraordinary voices, firstly Charlie Keen’s Silver Birch. The trombonist from Brighton-based post-punkers KEG, Charlie Keen explores an experimental and improvisationally-driven arrangement of ambient music that both soothes the soul and unnerves it. Armed with just a trombone, a Korg synth and a Shruti box (an Indian-originated harmonium), quietly welcomes us to the show before heading into his first piece of the night. He opens with a mixtured loop of low synth drones, topped with some higher tones as he pumps the Shruti box bellows with a pedal at his feet. Charlie takes a moment to prepare himself to play his trombone, before he paints noir-laden soundscapes with it. His trombone techniques are remarkable, with a clear sonic connection to New York downtown composer Peter Zummo, famous for his work with artists like Arthur Russell, Peter Gordon and Elodie Lauten (a comparison I know Charlie will be heartwarmed by, as he himself is a huge admirer of Zummo’s work). The loops begin to crush themselves in texture, almost degrading in audio quality before Charlie’s trombone playing becomes more erratic as he clicks the drone off to close.
Charlie describes the second piece as being about the Gosport ferry, leading to scattered cheers from the crowd before he mutters the synth settings of the piece to himself as he starts. The Shruti box drone is gorgeously clustered with some of the soft synths Charlie layers over the top reminding me of Mort Garson’s ‘Plantasia’. He starts to make use of his trombone within his looping equipment, creating a sombre pairing of melodies for him to improvise over the top of. As the synth and Shruti box melt away, we are left with Charlie’s trombone, serenading us into the dark. We were blessed with one more piece to close out, a piece that Charlie says is about his grandpa, already giving the performance more melancholia. There’s something more liminal about this piece, something more nocturnal and foreboding, like a recording by experimental duo Bull of Heaven. Ending on a soft high, Charlie plays to us like the one remaining person in a jazz club, slowly becoming more isolated the longer he stays. What a truly remarkable performance from Charlie Keen; considering this is his second ever performance with this arrangement, I need to see more from him!
Charlie Keen’s Silver Birch:
Charlie Keen – trombone, synths, shruti box
Charlie packs down his stuff, leading the way for the second act of the night, YOU&TH. A violinist for the band Slum of Legs, YOU&TH (short for You and the Horizon), is the brainchild of one Maria Marzaioli, whose music combines field recordings, improvisational music and Neapolitan songs to create a distinctive aura of sound. She interrupts the background chatter of the crowd with a compiled recording of what sounds like distant trains passing, over which she plays a sombre violin melody. Shortly, that melody is looped over and over again, with each passing phrase almost mimicking or phasing the previous one like a Steve Reich piece. The stunning clusters of violins have a strong post-minimalism flair, with the way the notes fall away from each other reminding me of ambient composer William Basinski’s ‘The Disintegration Loops’, a series of pieces that forever fragment in melody and tone. The second track, ‘Rainbow’ opens with a steady E drone on the loop pedal via violin, leaving Maria to display a wonderful choral vocal, moving her body enigmatically with each word that passes her lips, like a fragile Lingua Ignota. This piece was easily one of the strongest from Maria as she demonstrates a more dissonant and vibrant violin performance in respective sound and performance, before she peters the song away with a soft five-note melody.
She describes the following cut, ‘Storm Swimming’ about being young and not understanding that life is filled with dangers, about merely existing in the moment. Based on the memory of swimming with her sister at the age of eight, the field recordings of waves washing against the beach, already creating beautiful imagery, is adorned with a spoken word passage and soft, plucked violin lines. The sparse arrangements of prose and patterns reminds me of Laurie Anderson, like a fractured folk song as the looped violin melodies form together extraordinarily well. The closing ‘The Springboard’ is the most euphoric performance that Maria gives us as YOU&TH, beginning with a spoken word recital detailing what sounds like an apology message for not being able to attend a wedding in the springtime sun. Before long, the violin drones and birdsong recordings introduce electronic pulsing, rhythmic in structure, like a club song from 18th century Naples. As she finished her performance, I simply had to congratulate Maria for a marvellous set, bonding over some of the more local tangents of experimental music like at The Rose Hill where she frequently plays, as well as my comparison of Laurie Anderson which she took like Branca to guitar.
YOU&TH:
Maria Marzaioli – violin, vocals, effects
YOU&TH setlist:
‘Turbine’
‘Rainbow’
‘Storm Swimming’
‘In The Spring’
As the stage left only the set-ups of Ex-Easter Island Head intact, I was mesmerised by the various displays of instrumentation: firstly, a series of prepared electric guitars and bass, each with a metal pipe placed carefully underneath the series of strings (very John Cage behaviour). Secondly, rows of cowbells and rototoms, not forgetting a floor-tom kitted out to act as a kick drum. Finally, watching the four band members prepare their performance by leaving small whirring motors dangling over their prepared guitars, completely puzzling myself and photographer Petra. Jonathan, Andrew and the two Benjamins stand stoically behind their individual set-ups on the opening ‘Weather’, like Kraftwerk in a Steve Reich performance, slowly fading in their guitars, which form flickering drones as a result of the dangling motors. Their 22-stringed preparations open up with the removal of paper strips that were muffling the guitars’ sounds, as well as pieces of felt placed in the middle of the guitars where the prepared pipes are set. Further textures are added to the drones with a motor dangling over Jonathan Hering’s hi-hat and Benjamin Fair fading in a slow moving bassline as he moves his metal pipe across his bass guitar. Several bells and cowbells are bowed by the band before the drones fall away and turn into a soft glitching pulse that brings us into the following cut and the title track from their latest record, ‘Norther’.
Andrew and Jonathan engage in scattered guitar chords on their prepared guitars, eventually filling up the rhythmic spaces in-between before a core rhythm kicks in. Fair’s rototom performances on this track are tribal and propulsive, giving the track a strong movement. It’s here that marks the first substantial appearance of Benjamin D. Duvall’s Japanese banjo, otherwise known as a bulbul tarang, a set of melody and drone strings triggered by typewriter-like keys. This track has an immense post-rock edge but the group’s elements of totalism and experimental music techniques are so vivid that it creates unruly soundplay. The third track, ‘Easter’, opens with pairing cowbell patterns that evolve into polyrhythms, while the rest of the band engage in various means of rhythmic interplay, from Jonathan’s loose and fluttering cowbell hits and shifting bass and rototoms from Fair. The piece’s soundscape plays like something from Coil’s ‘Musick To Play In The Dark’ before the dynamics rise intensely and the band seamlessly move into the next track entitled ‘Magnetic Language’. This was a performance that certainly raised a few eyebrows as the four band members began to sing collectively into their phones, creating loops that they would then buzz through their guitar pick-ups, creating disjointed and fractured melodies. As they settle into a tempo, Jonathan and Andrew enter a pulse with their vocal loops while the two Benjamins engage in brief rhythmic operation through ride cymbals and bass drones.
Drifting into the track ‘Golden Bridges’, Duvall plucks a prepared guitar passage in C# major before Andrew joins in via a countermelody. Soon, the band engage in bowed guitars and fluttering kick drums not unlike a Godspeed You! Black Emperor piece, before shortly dialling the sound down as they transition into the closing track of the album set, ‘Lodestone’. Opening with Benjamin Fair flicking the prepared pipe on his guitar, creating a harrowing droning hit, the rest of the band follow suit, creating a pattern of reverberating chords. The arrangement and tone of these chords, the way they hit on each pulse, I’ve never heard anything so harrowing yet comforting in a live environment before. If this isn’t spectacular enough, the chords are followed and have their surrounding spaces filled with bells, sequentially rung by Fair, Jonathan and Andrew. Samples of muffled drums are sounded via a sample pad to Andrew’s left, completely hitting my heart with each cycle of the chord pattern. The quartet deconstructs the track back down to drones on prepared guitar, bowed bells and cowbells before reassembling the motors above their respective rows of strings, standing to attention to close the set. The crowd were ecstatic, as was I; this performance (especially this particular track) was one of the greatest things I’ve ever been able to experience.
Benjamin D. Duvall takes a moment to thank the audience for listening to their show and for their first Brighton show in a long while, before heading back into play with his bandmates for one last track, ‘Six Sticks’, the closing track from their 2016 release ‘Twenty-Two Strings’. Arguably, this track has the most conventional structure of the entire set, but still goes hard with the Chatham-meets-Horse Lords fragmented guitar textures, quickly evolving into a fast-paced rhythm. Quickfire rototom rhythms and steady grooves paint the two different sections of the piece in fire and ice dynamics, reaching a fever pitch towards its climax. The four members showed their appreciation for the audience before rushing through to get to the merch stand where a queue already began forming. Of course, I, myself, joined the queue, hoping to buy a CD of ‘Norther’ (unfortunately no CDs were available as they hadn’t been pressed, so straight to Bandcamp it was for me). I had a brief conversation with the two Benjamins about my love for totalism and our collective admiration for Rhys Chatham (Benjamin Fair even got the chance to perform in Chatham’s ‘A Crimson Grail for 100 Guitars and 8 Basses’ in Liverpool a few years ago!), and how the group had single-handedly delivered me, in an hour’s runtime, what is now possibly the gig of the year for me!
Ex-Easter Island Head:
Jonathan Hering – prepared electric guitar, cowbells, bells, hi-hat, vocals
Benjamin Fair – prepared bass guitar, bells, rototoms, vocals
Andrew P.M Hunt – prepared electric guitar, kick drum, cowbells, bells, sample pad, vocals
Benjamin D. Duvall – bulbul tarang, prepared electric guitar, percussion, sample pad, vocals
Ex-Easter Island Head setlist:
‘Weather’ (from 2024 ‘Norther’ album)
‘Norther’ (from 2024 ‘Norther’ album)
‘Easter’ (from 2024 ‘Norther’ album)
‘Magnetic Language’ (from 2024 ‘Norther’ album)
‘Golden Bridges’ (from 2024 ‘Norther’ album)
‘Lodestone’ (from 2024 ‘Norther’ album)
‘Six Sticks’ (from 2016 ‘Twenty-Two Strings’ album)
