KTL: The Phantom Carriage, Vienna Gartenbaukino, 7 November 2009

And the live soundtracks just keep on coming. This was the live premiere of KTL‘s score for Victor Sjöström’s classic Swedish silent horror film, although the music has been available on the DVD of the film for almost two years. I’m tempted to ask why it took Peter Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley so long to put on this show, but given both men’s prodigious work rates and the bewildering variety of projects they’re both engaged in at any one time, it would seem churlish to do so.

In any event this was a deliciously unsettling evening, kicking off at the appropriately late hour of 11.00pm. (By a curious twist, I’d also been at the Gartenbaukino the evening before, watching Lars von Trier’s freakishly compelling Antichrist.) Performing in the wide open space of Vienna’s largest cinema, Rehberg and O’Malley stationed themselves on opposite sides of the screen and proceeded to create a soundtrack of nightmarish proportions that twisted and shuddered perfectly in tandem with the expressionist anguish of the film. From time to time O’Malley would violently strum or pluck his guitar strings, producing harsh metallic tones which were then heavily treated. Rehberg, meanwhile, spat vicious and deadly drones from his computer, adding to the sense of emotional turbulence that pervaded the whole film.

The film itself didn’t really grab me very much, I have to admit. I found it very difficult to follow the plot, given the heavy use of flashbacks and the rather confused sense of narrative. I guess I need to watch it again, to which end the above-mentioned DVD would be a very desirable purchase, or even an ideal Christmas present, if anyone else is reading this.

KTL, IV

This fourth album from Peter Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley finds the duo upping the ante considerably in terms of grim, hellish and agonisingly slow guitar- and electronic-led drones. Moonlighting from his day job as half of Sunn O))), O’Malley turns away from that group’s relentlessly sludgey twin-guitar attack in favour of more silvery, melancholy tones. Rehberg, for his part, makes scalpel-sharp electronic incisions to take the music ever deeper into uneasy listening territory.

Ether column, May 2008

The main event this month is a series of concerts to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Vienna’s leading venue for experimental electronic music. Herbie Molin and Christof Kurzmann founded the Rhiz club in 1998, at a time when Viennese electronic musicians were in the midst of a tumultuous burst of creativity and were bringing worldwide attention to the city. The Rhiz was, and remains, central to the more cerebral end of this activity, exemplified by the challenging laptop improv put out by the Mego label. It’s fitting, therefore, that the proprietor of Mego (now known as Editions Mego), Peter Rehberg, should be appearing at the Rhiz this month as part of the anniversary celebrations. As well as making solo records under the name Pita, Rehberg has worked with many of the world’s top names in avant-garde and improvised music. At the Rhiz this month he showcases his latest project KTL, a collaboration with Stephen O’Malley of drone metal group Sunn O))). The gig is likely to be rib-crushingly loud, especially in the tight confines of the Rhiz, all of which should make for a pleasantly disorientating live experience.

Such a warning/recommendation could equally well apply to the following night’s appearance by the legendary English electronic noise pioneers Whitehouse. The Rhiz is hugely fortunate to be hosting one of the last ever concerts by Whitehouse, who have been a constant and nagging presence in underground music for a staggering 28 years. Having weathered numerous line-up changes over this time, the core duo of William Bennett and Philip Best are disbanding the group to concentrate on solo projects, leaving behind a legacy of fearsome, hostile and aggressive music. The early Whitehouse records were bleak, harrowing affairs, consisting of a barrage of high-pitched frequencies and juddering low-end drones over which Bennett would scream the occasional lyric laced with goading obscenities. The group’s disturbing iconography, replete with imagery of serial killers and sexual sadism, won them few friends in the supposedly tolerant music scene, but they developed an international following and inspired a generation of lesser noise musicians. Their concerts, which they described as “live actions”, were intensely confrontational events that occasionally erupted into physical violence.

Over the years, Whitehouse’s art has matured into an acute and invasive form of psychological inquiry, with Bennett and Best pouring forth dense clusters of unsettling personal questions and blasts of haranguing profanity. Musically, they have abandoned the dual high/low frequency assault in favour of a livid, complex and dangerous sound, characterised by monstrous synth noises and deranged, clattering percussion. (Much of this shift can be traced to Bennett’s recent interest in African rhythms, which will form the core of his forthcoming Afro Noise project.) Live, Whitehouse are great fun, revelling in rock star poses and laying down a compelling and highly original form of electronic harshness. One of the most important and original groups ever to come from the UK, they will be sorely missed.

KTL, Vienna Rhiz, 7 May 2008

So the Rhiz is ten years old this month. It’s a great achievement to keep going a club/bar/venue (like a few other places in Vienna, the Rhiz never seems entirely sure of which it is, and is all the better for it) devoted for the most part to defiantly uncommercial electronic music, and to make a success of it. Hats off and happy birthday, then, to Herbie Molin, his collaborators and conspirators.

When I first arrived in Vienna I didn’t get to the Rhiz much, but I’ve been making up for it in recent months. There was the Nurse With Wound night last month, at which DJs Walter and Martin span a range of classic NWW sides and Colin Potter played a funereal live set. And now there’s the 10 Years of the Rhiz celebrations, with a slew of gigs taking place in May. The first of these, for me at least, saw the KTL duo of Peter Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley play on a much smaller stage than the last time I saw them at the 2007 Donaufestival. What was so impressive about that concert was the way the group utterly dominated their surroundings, transforming the sterile Krems exhibition hall into a proper concert space through the crushing totality of the noise they produced (and also, it must be said, through the use of huge quantities of fog).

Last week’s concert at the Rhiz was all the more exciting for taking place in such an intimate setting, but was curiously underattended. I’m no authority on O’Malley’s principal project, Sunn O))), but from what I do know (and from the memory of their 2006 concert at the Szene at which Rehberg did a support slot; was that the evening that birthed KTL, I wonder?), I would have thought your average Sunn O))) adherent would have been ecstatic to see O’Malley do his massive drone guitar thing in a venue as small as the Rhiz. It’s not as though Sunn O))) and KTL inhabit dissimilar musical worlds, after all. And yet the place (which holds 100 people, tops) was not at all crowded.

In any event, the set was musically as well as literally blinding (the fog filling the room made the duo only sporadically visible, even from a few feet away). Coiled and hovering with malevolent presence, O’Malley’s agonisingly slow guitar reverberated around the room and invaded the listener’s very marrow. Rehberg, meanwhile, issued deep and obliterating drones from his Mac, forcing O’Malley’s guitar lines outwards in a mounting vortex of pressure. The music seemed to be searching for escape within the tight confines of the room and, finding none, turned in on itself; an afflicting and oppressive infiltration.

Donaufestival 2007

Wow, what a couple of weekends that was. Too much drinking, not enough sleep, a bit of sickness on the last night, but most importantly a whole load of incredible music at the Donaufestival.

Week one kicked off, for me at least, with the Friday evening show in Hall 1. Matmos held no interest for me, far too tricksy and glitchy, and Om didn’t really engage my attention either. But the rather sterile non-atmosphere of the hall was broken awesomely by Current 93, who gave a formidable performance with an extended line-up of the band (I think I counted sixteen people on stage). Musically, the thing swelled beautifully, with the deathly pace of the strings and guitars giving a veiled, doomy ambience.

The next day’s curtain-raiser at the Minoritenkirche was a quartet of C93-related acts: two hits and two misses. Pantaleimon bored me rigid, and “Little” Annie was just an irritant. But Simon Finn impressed with his powerful, committed songwriting, and Julia Kent‘s performance on the cello and loops was serpentine and gorgeous.

Everything fell perfectly into place back at the Halle later that night. Fovea Hex were lorn and lovely, Larsen were driven and compelling. Six Organs of Admittance – featuring Ben Chasny and a very cool girl in a very short skirt – abused their guitars effectively out in the lounge. Nurse With Wound – a band I never thought I’d see live – created haunting, massive structures, and their two songs with Tibet on vox were shuddering, berserk blasts of energy. Will Oldham rounded off this superb evening with a set of pure tunefulness and white-hot wisdom.

My first night of Week Two saw a set of uncanny, bruising atmospheres being created by Throbbing Gristle. I simply needed to see these four unassuming people onstage – well, three unassuming people and one unashamed exhibitionist – and acknowledge the immeasurability of my debt to them. The infinitude of their influence on so much I have thought, done, heard and written over the last twenty years of my life.

Preceding their livid set, Alan Vega was a tiresome nuisance, looking for all the world like a confused pensioner as he wandered cantankerously around the stage, hollering useless drivel in our direction. Bookending the evening, Zeitkratzer and Rechenzentrum were rather ho-hum.

Things came to a spectacular end on Monday, with the Boredoms making a holy and riveting percussion-driven performance. Phill Niblock was a necessary interlude (by this stage I was feeling decidedly queasy), before Haswell & Hecker bawled out the place with a set of juddering noise, hypnotically lit by a constantly flickering green laser beam. TG returned for their Derek Jarman performance, and this was a revelation. The film (In The Shadow Of The Sun) was a slow and infinitely sad dream piece, saturated with deeply resonant imagery. And TG’s soundtrack, including a dark and mournful choir, was suitably plangent and sweeping. last of all, KTL (Peter Rehberg and the bloke out of Sunn o) played a set of deep, pulverising drones.

A word about the Esel guys, whose amiable performances I witnessed at odd moments in the lounge. They were very funny, I have to say. The stuff about auctioning off artists’ relics (sample riff: “here is a pill from Fabrizio of Larsen. Fabrizio will suffer pain because he will not take his pill”) appealed directly to my sense of humour.

It’s still scarcely believable how this all happened so close to me, here in Austria this year. Never again am I likely to witness such an extensive and concentrated pile-up of musical moods and experiences. It was, well, life-affirming.