Well this year’s A Midsummer Day’s Dream was another real treat of experimental, electronic performance & film presented by Optimo and Glasgow Tramway once again, with the cherry-on-the-cake of the day being Chris and Cosey‘s first ever Scottish performance with Carter Tutti play Chris and Cosey. A reworking and updating of some of their early 80’s groundbreaking electronica.
I started off with some experimental short films (you can see/download a full programme with details here) followed by the Tristan Perich performance, which was a 1-bit electronic composition with a stereo projection of what looked like the notes sequence nicely in one bit black & white!
Tristan Perich
It sounded a bit like this (lo-fi snippet recorded on my mobile phone)
Then in a break I spotted MILLIMETRE and Charlie Poulet (Throbbing Gristle and C&C‘s Sound Engineer) who were both utterly charming! :) Charlie went from coolest soundman in the solar system (well TG and C&C’s actual soundman!!!) to coolest in the universe when I found he was a fellow Suzuki SV650 owner :D
Then a performance by Lucky Dragons who did an audience participation piece (haha! not as bad as it sounds!) it was actually very cleverly done and sounded not bad at all, playing seed pods, people and CD’s by reflecting light off them! (tech details here)
Lucky Dragons (audience playing CD’s by reflecting light!)
Next were London band Rhosyn who played violins and big violins (violas/cellos?), percussion and vocal harmonies and sound …err quite like that if you can imagine it!
Rhosyn
Chris and Cosey themselves turned up before the main evening session and I was lucky enough to have a quick chat with them and take their photo too :D
The Wonderful Chris & Cosey
Opening the gig were Arthur’s Landing who are a collective of musicians who perform music by Arthur Russell – I’m not familiar at all with their work but enjoyed their set even tho it seemed slightly out-of-place to me!?! But then again what do I know?
Arthur’s Landing
But of course the REAL reason I was there was the Carter Tutti play Chris & Cosey performance which was, as expected, absolutely brilliant! It sounded quite different and had a different sorta audience ‘vibe’ to their recent ICA London performance and went down a storm.
There are a couple more gigs coming up in Europe in the near future if you get the chance to go to one – don’t miss it!!!
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