5th DWARS Festival for VPRO : Pt. 2

Sunday afternoon my wife and I headed out to Amsterdam on the train and metro. Near the Hortus botanical gardens we found the Desmet studios and went inside to experience the 5th Dwars festival for the Dutch radio station VPRO. It was a gloriously sunny day outside, not too hot, the perfect weather for being out of doors... People were strewn about on the grassy banks of the canals sunbathing. During the course of the show several jokes were made regarding all of us festival-goers being inside a little black box of a room with such weather outside....

Nalle kicked the show off after an introduction by Berry Kamer. Hanna Tuulikki, Chris Hladowski (also of the One Ensemble), and Aby Vulliamy (also of the One Ensemble) performed semi-improvised free folk tunes with plenty of drone-based melody. I was quite impressed by their lovely combination of traditional folk sounds with the current "free folk" or even "freak folk" trends... Hanna's voice comes off as a combination of Bjork and Joanna Newsom. Chris played bouzouki in the traditional manner as well as bowing it, striking it, and "feedbacking" it, also playing clarinet and singing. Aby added pleasant vocals besides playing the violin.

After a short break James Blackshaw took the stage. He started out slowly, but soon had everyone mesmerized as he drew us in with his beautifully emotional melodies and hypnotic fingerpicking patterns. He played mostly older tunes, but there were also one or two from "O True Believers" (his latest album). He really gets a special sound out of a 12 string guitar, his fingernails and the repetitive pattern give off some great overtones which fill the sonic space up and create a near-mystical atmosphere around his "romantic" melodies. I use the word "romantic" in the classical sense... some of his tunes and chord progressions were rather reminiscent of late 19th century classical music. Of course it was a live solo performance, so all the marvelous percussion and psychedelic and drone additions that you hear on his albums were absent, but it was still excellent to hear just his pure guitar tones. For this performance all the "raga" descriptions were inadequate; he didn't really play an ragas at all. He also announced that he's got a new album coming out May 1st on the Tompkins Square label, and later on this summer his first three albums (now out of print) will be reissued.

After James Blackshaw there was again a short break, and the One Ensemble followed. Chris and Aby from Nalle joined Daniel Padden and Peter Nicholson to make a quartet of bouzouki/clarinet/vocals/electronics, violin/vocals, guitar/lead vocals/kazoo/clarinet, and cello/vocals, respectively. The One Ensemble is a very intense experience with multiple influences.... Berry Kamer said that he counted at least 18 different styles combined in their sound, but I only counted about 8... There was definitely a folk sound (americana, klezmer, balkan, etc...) and a noise and improv sensibility reminiscent of the Constellation records improvisers, yet completely distinct. Daniel Padden's vocals are brash and loud, and his guitar-playing is rather simple, but his melodies are beautiful and cacophonous at once. Something like the Black Ox Orkestar, Barbez, Helena Espvall-Santoleri, and the Danielson Famile all rolled up together... Eastern European melodies, klezmer music, carnival tunes, punk rock energy, and improvisational noise as well as beauty... the One Ensemble made for a fascinating experience.

And during the break after the One Ensemble my wife and I left because we were missing my mother-in-law's birthday party and we'd started to feel a little bad about it.... so we didn't get to see Thee, Stranded Horse. But it was nice to get back out into the great weather, and away from several chain-smokers sitting around us......