Location: Klub Gromka, Ljubljana
Concert date: 17.01.2010
Attendance: 0
Gromka served up yet another night of avant-garde music. This time it was supposed to be a show by the American duo Good for Cows, but fate had other plans. Bassist Devin Hoff couldn’t play because he’d over-polished his bass so enthusiastically that he broke his arm. That left us with nothing but the sounds of Kraški solisti and drum virtuoso Ches Smith, who is a lot more careful than his Good for Cows buddy about what he does with the hand that pays the bills.
First on stage were Kraški solisti, straight from the Karst region, who, just like sinkholes, dolines and other karst features, are a truly special phenomenon. The guys seem not to give a damn about any musical predecessors and simply do their own thing. All well and good, but if there were something more going on than the hunt for the weirdest possible sequence of notes, it would be so much nicer. The soloists jump from one instrument to the tenth so fast, as if to say: “Look what we can do.” Each of the trio really does play an impressive range of instruments (everyone plays winds, percussion, strings, and more) – some of them even homemade – but the instruments mostly produce little beyond noise. What good are countless tricks (playing two wind instruments at once, rapidly switching styles,…) if the band, with a few exceptions (some more hard-rock moments with the guitar), delivers nothing but pale attempts at improvisation that would make Miles Davis spin in his grave? I realize the whole point of Kraški solisti is for the music to be as free and untrained as possible, but that kind of cacophony of random sounds is a pleasure only for the rare, even highly seasoned, music gourmand. My taste is pretty broad too, but I always look for some concrete foundation, and with the soloists there’s none to be found. Everything just hangs in midair, with nothing solid behind it. This kind of music-making mostly suits the musicians and a lot less the audience.
Ches Smith’s set (Good for Cows) offered only slightly more to hold on to than Kraški solisti. Maybe the injury to the other half of Good for Cows, Devin Hoff, shaped the performance too. Ches Smith did serve up a virtuoso drumming display, which he tried to build on with a selection of loops he created on his mini keyboards. As a drummer the guy is exceptional, a true master of his craft, but who wants to listen to an hour-long drum solo whose only spice is a batch of goofy sounds from kids’ keyboards? Still, Mr. Smith managed to deliver more than all three Kraški solisti put together, since at least he made an effort to create some interesting rhythmic patterns. He showed us the whole range of his drumming, percussion and improvisation skills, but in the end I still felt cheated. Like going in for a massage expecting sensual bliss, only to have the masseur whack me in the kidney.
I don’t doubt the good intentions of either act, but in the end nobody delivered any compositional highlight. This was the philosophy of total improvisational avant-garde, which satisfied only true fans of utterly formless musical mishmash. Maybe I’m wrong and both acts had meticulously worked-out compositions that were simply too complicated for my little head, and I’ll have to wait a few reincarnations for musical enlightenment. If so, I apologize to both bands for the false conviction and will lynch myself on the spot with the sounds of Veselih Štajerk. Finally, let me quote the title of one of William Shakespeare’s comedies, which sums up this concert experience perfectly: Much Ado About Nothing.
Photos: Rok Podgrajšek
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