On no, Ze Germans are invading the London Southbank!
Ether Festival 2011 review
Wednesday 6th April 2011
Following in the footsteps from last year's festival, which saw genre pioneer Brian Eno take to the stage, together with a crate of finest synthesisers, the Queen Elizabeth Hall saw ambient heavyweights Wolfgang Voigt and Jörg Burger joined by support act The Field from the iconic Kompakt label to unleash a torrent of floaty pads, obscure samples and zappy effects as part of the Ether Festival's ambient night. Given the nature of ambient music, it's difficult to accurately describe the atmosphere created by the music, however the addition of projected visuals do help explain the moods created.
Kicking off proceedings saw The Field, a two man crew of DJ and VJ who weaved music and visuals together to create a variety of musical textures, pairing elongated string chords with a video of cars passing along a dusty highway for example. The pair kept the music and visuals varied, keeping things interesting both to listen to and to watch, from the instructional (driving electronic pop versus videos of gutting fish, filleting meat and slicing chickens) to the risqué (harsh syncopated rhythms matched with videos of babies receiving ear piercings) to the serene (slow keyboards mixed with video loops of a man blowing air bubbles from the bottom of a swimming pool). All the while tweaking timings and filters to effect subtle differences, adding soft changes or chord progression to keep things moving. Relaxing? Yes. Artistic? Very. An enjoyable performance that kept things interesting and relatively easy on the ear.
After a brief intermission and catch up with friends, headliners Wolfgang Voigt and Jörg Burger picked up where was had left off, with their own interpretation of ambient music. Theirs is a more sedate form than The Field, relying less on percussion elements and focusing more on electronic instruments, synthesisers and other sounds, which they used to great effect to produce slow and often complex arrangements. In particular, their visuals had a nice abstract look to them, with waving lines morphing into glittering chains, birds flying in formation to form musical notes and twinkling stars falling in a sunset sky, all which was a great accompaniment to their music, however after about 15 minutes the video started looping (albeit in a different order and with changed colour palette), meaning that attentions did wane during the performance. However, theirs was an enjoyable set nonetheless, assuming that you go to a gig to receive a calming influence and a sit down (this brings to mind the euthanasia scene towards the end of Soylent Green - without the death part, obviously).
I think the description on the ticket said it all: Kraut / Pop / Ambient, delivered exactly as ordered. In closing, an enjoyable Sunday afternoon; just add a glass of your favourite tipple and zone out. Brian Eno surely has a lot to answer for.
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