After a long day I wanted to take a stroll, take some air and I knew there was something on at Ateliers Claus, a ten minute walk from where I live. I got to hear about it through friends who like to hang out there, a musician-composer and a dancer-choreographer, if these categories even suffice these days, because we all do a lot of things, right? It's an open, mixed audience with a broadly professional connectivity.
The programme covers a range of contemporary soundscape / sonic / experimental music, film and video screenings and delightfully small scale events. The space is recently refurbished with a good layout, essentially downstairs for music and upstairs for screenings. It's a very friendly place with a small bar. The neighbourhood is so cool I'm not going to say any more in case you all turn up and want to live here.
When I arrived Norboto Lobo was on. This was very fine solo guitar playing, delicate and soulful introspection, a wonderfully calming expansive sensation. A chorus of flurries of longing and returning. Enough hope to ease a worried mind.
Soundcloud - three: four records
Then a short pause for the turn around for David Maranha and Helena Espvall. At first I wondered if my mood was ready for the initial sound, even though I love 'resonant drone' music, if you can say that. So, it was a single forty minute piece that drew a smile on my face and an unexpected state of euphoria. The brain waves can get a work out and a gradually expansive disentanglement, following a day or a week of focusing. They took it on a ride and to the top over and over, and after twenty, some of the crowd was thinning out and after 30 a few more, but it was pretty hardcore in the beautiful register. Espvall on electric cello and Maranha on a moog keyboard and later violin. Every resonant sound teased out of the instruments and yes, pretty heavenly communication in the playing.
I found it inspiring and it closed my day or my week in the best possible way. This was a moment when actually going out is better than the hour on the sofa watching some news channel carve up your life, and yes, being close by helps. But that's what the city and a neighbourhood is about.
Maranha is Portuguese and Espvall, from Umeå is now based in Lisbon, which she says is the greatest place to live and perform.
The program was described as "A night dedicated to the Swiss label Three:Four records, which presents one great release after the other." I could agree with that. And you know, this is the way to stay sane. Get out and about when the mood takes you, try something unknown, become surprised.
Feeling good and being in the zone; also thank the others, who make it happen
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