Internal Examinations

Spacey Places in Consumerland

Pietre, Hydra Ensemble, Saturno Santos’ Something, Yoshida and Takeda
In collaboration with Space is the Place & WORM

by Richard Foster

WORM, Rotterdam, on a sultry Friday night. And a show at the last bastion of weirdness on the increasingly genteel, crowd-pleasing Witte de Withstraat. The terraces are packed out with chatterati of various social aspirations. Fancy some overpriced craft beer and bijou chips made from ethically sourced potatoes, or some knockout music from four intriguing and exotic acts? Your choice. As this country’s intellectual wants and needs slide inexorably, and en masse from the brain towards the stomach, we have to seize our moments of light relief. 

This one is provided by three organisations; WORM, Amsterdam’s Space is the Place and NSRT. We expect a night of bracing music to fight off the cultural indigestion found elsewhere on the street.

First up in WORM’s spacey concert hall are the multi-talented Hydra Ensemble. No strangers to the place, Hydra Ensemble calmly plot a course through the scrublands of improvised sound. The strings – Gonçalo Almeida on double bass, and Nina Hitz and Lucija Gregov on cellos – tap, chisel and scrape out a number of possibilities that allow spaces for guest trumpetist João Almeida to fill, courtesy of some very affecting passages and interventions; it’s almost like watching a gull swooping down on a discarded bag of chips.  The great Machinefabriek spies out further hinterlands to explore; his almost phantasmagorical, Heath-Robinson-style “ultrasonica” binds everybody together like a guy rope. There’s a lot of concentration and a lot of subliminal, almost psychic interaction on show that feels enervating, and calming in equal parts. People feel wrapped up in this pulsating, questioning music.

After that we are treated to something else entirely. Tokyo’s Tatsuya Yoshida and Risa Takeda take the stage for their first time in Rotterdam. Tatsuya Yoshida is from The Ruins, one of the most legendary Japanese noise improv bands and no stranger to WORM. It’s Risa Takeda’s first time here, and boy, if she’s not going to squeeze out the pips… As such, their heady combo of go-ahead bravado and wily craft overwhelms WORM. The audience is swept up in the giddy cross currents whipped up by Yoshida’s drumming. Takeda’s alchemy with keys and electronica and left gasping for air, like a guppy on the sands. The whirlwind sound comes across at times like Cale and Riley’s Church of Anthrax played at 78 rpm or Can’s Soup reimagined as a never-ending TikTok loop. Everything happens all at once, at high speed, and is utterly consuming; a toboggan ride of melody, clashing rhythms and structures, musical cliches, and wide open sonic spaces where no sound has ever set forth. We are clattered and stunned into submission, but utterly appreciative; how can we not be? A word to remember about their gig? ‘Propulsion’; pass that memory onto your grandkids.

Again change, repositioning, and a new set of questions. The young nine-piece Saturno Santos’ Something brings a welcome lowering of temperature with their almost ant-like structures and very charming, ritualistic approach to melody. Things seem to just “turn up” in the gig; and in that the music is like a conversation – one that passes between all the players, a sort of whimsical late night campfire conversation shared between a diverse cast. It’s very affecting.

It’s late; three acts in, hours of improv behind us. It’s understandable that concentration levels are lowering. The easy siren calls of the terrace grow louder. Why fill your head with “all that jazz stuff” when easy emotional pickings are to be made over a beer with your peers? This is when Pietre strikes. A gig packed with exacting explorations of both musical and muscular sinew. Fongaro on bass, almost bending his instrument against its own grain, squeezes out bass lines that seem intent on solving the most difficult equations. Jesse Schilderink on baritone and tenor sax, and Nicolò Ricci on tenor sax knock out a series of ripostes to the rhythm section’s psychicke mapping. Sometimes their instruments content themselves with talking to each other once they’ve scaled the rock faces placed in front of them by Fongaro and sensational drummer, Sun-Mi Hong. Their instruments’ honks, blurts and sometimes mercurial runs hark back to earlier canons, Coleman, Coltrane, that kind of thing.  Incredible rhythms, that act like weather above all the players, are set out by Sun-Mi Hong; a pilot and seer. So good, I bought the record. Now for an overpriced beer.

Journalist Richard Foster writes a blog for selected performances at North Sea Round Town 2024. Richard writes regularly for The Quietus and Louder than War and has written for Vice (Noisey) and The Wire among others. 

Photography: Maarten Laupman