Irish Times reviewers give their verdicts on performances from the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club; the HUUJ Ensemble at the Hugh Lane and the Bozzini String Quartet at the BoI Arts Centre

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at the Olympia, Dublin

Francisco's Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are essentially a Jesus and Mary Chain tribute band, but in a world over endowed with Beatles/Beach Boys/Stones homage, that is not such a bad thing. Eclipsed by grunge and obscured by Britpop, late 1980s indie rock - where winsome melodies and dirty riffs collide - is a genre long overdue a revival. With their ragged leathers, frazzled haircuts and air of elegant wastage, BMRC are ideally equipped to lead the charge. What's more, on the evidence of their performance BRMC have patented a sound primed for commercial breakthrough. Drenched in distortion yet rich in balmy harmonies, their sleazy neo-psychedelic is equally at home in the mosh-pit or on drive-time radio.

In this respect, it might be argued that BMRC occupy the same territory as the Dandy Warhols. Whereas the Dandies slyly resold a candy-coated version of Goo-era Sonic Youth, BMRC's set hoovered up not only the Mary Chain but influences as diverse as the Pixies, My Bloody Valentine and Ride, distilling nuggets readily appreciable to those who think loud rock began with Nirvana. The most immediate material came from their as yet unreleased second album. Cathartic and anthemic, it screamed of chart success. Older numbers - including lascivious crowd favourite Love Burns - felt hackneyed and cliché-ridden by comparison. An insanely catchy heavy instrumental redolent of the Pixies Tame recalibrated by Pete Waterman crowned the show.

Edward Power

HUUJ Ensemble at the Hugh Lane, Dublin

Serenata per un satellite (1969) .......... Maderna

12.04.09 (2000) ........ ................... Paul Newland

Go Between (2002) ........................ Frank Lyons

File: Misc. (2002) ........................... Peter Rosser

The Gipsy Wife's Song (1983) ..............Howard Skempton

HUUJ Ensemble was formed by Ian Wilson in 2001 as the dedicated contemporary music group of the University of Ulster and consists of flute, clarinet, horn, percussion, guitar and violin.

A lot of contemporary music is very loud, but this recital - with Ian Wilson, Nancy Law (speaker) and Seán Ryan (piano) - in the Hugh Lane Gallery explored the expresive possibilities of softness, most markedly in Paul Newland's work, which was very soft and very slow; it interrupted the silence and yet remained part of it. It is likely that it embodies the composer's reaction to the classical culture of Japan, where he has spent some time. The music is a distillation of calmness.

Both Newland and Maderna prescribe the notes that can be played but leave their ordering, to a certain extent, to the players. Maderna produced an effect of anxiety as the phrases shift their positions but never settle in place. Go Between by Frank Lyons is for guitar and tape and makes much use of the percussive qualities of the instrument. The pitched notes compete for attention with the unpitched; the latter is supported by the taped sounds and wins in the end.

Misc: File by Rosser presents "the surviving fragments of an analysis . . . of Brahms's B flat Piano Concerto". This jeu d'esprit adds speaker and piano to the ensemble, but is at its most amusing in Fragment 3, where conductor and players mime the music, soundlessly.

The Gipsy Wife's Song by Skempton ends with the song, as simple as a nursery rhyme, and accompanied in unison. This was the most surprising moment in this recital of contemporary music.

Douglas Sealy

Bozzini String Quartet at the BoI Arts Centre

^{_{Six Marches (exc) .......................... Gerald Barry}}

^{_{Daydream Mechanics V............ Michael Oesterle}}

^{_{blurt .......................................... Jennifer Walshe}}

^{_{Bagatelle for LB....................... Raymond Deane}}

^{_{Pulau Dewata ............................... Claude Vivier}}

Bozzini String Quartet is one of those groups which gets its teeth into music. Quiet or loud, fast or slow, these still-young Canadian musicians play with compelling engagement.

Their programme in the Bank of Ireland Mostly Modern series consisted of works by three Irish and two Canadian composers, all of them living - except for Claude Vivier, who died in 1983. Unlike so much music inspired by Balinese culture, there is nothing soft-centred about his Pulau Dewata's concentration on small, almost-tonal melodic fragments. At once sensual and muscular, it can be played by any suitable group of instruments; and this arrangement for string quartet sounded utterly authentic.

The arranger was German-born Michael Oesterle. His Daydream Mechanics V is another piece which lives on cellular repetition, in this case controlled so tightly that the smallest change has significant effect. Raymond Deane's Bagatelle for LB is in the tradition of Beethoven's transformation of that genre, from something small and light to a model of miniaturised concentration. Written this year, around the letters of Leland Bardwell, it is as tight as a drum. So are the excerpts from Gerald Barry's Six Marches, each based on a single, simple, characteristically mind-bending idea. Jennifer Walshe's blurt stood out. There is no shortage of pieces to which her own description could apply - "broken up into highly differentiated segments". But not many have a rhythmic bite so ferocious that it crosses the sectional boundaries, makes silence potent, and works as strongly in quiet sections as in loud ones. This is the work of an independent mind.

Martin Adams