Irish Times writers review William Dowdall/David Adamsat the Hugh Lane Gallery; Mapsat Dublin's Button Factory; Trentemøllerat the Tripod in Dublin.
William Dowdall, David Adams
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin
MICHAEL DUNGAN
Raymond Deane - Epilogue; Linos 1.
Martin Lodge - Arietta. Eve de Castro
Robinson - Knife Sheer Apple Brush.
Raymond Deane - Spring Leaves. Varèse - Density 21.5. Raymond Deane - Ventalia.
The flute-piano duo of William Dowdall and David Adams returned to the Hugh Lane Gallery to present a fresh programme of mostly short pieces, with the work of Irish composer Raymond Deane featuring prominently. The playing was first-rate, the ensemble tight and the music-making always engaging.
Despite the narrow composing parameters of the programme - all but one piece written within the last 25 years - there was a rich diversity, this embodied in the two main works by Deane. First was his 1998 Spring Leaves, a set of five little pieces for children. Unusually tonal for Deane, and technically tame, they are delightful, non-patronising and elegantly crafted miniatures.
Perhaps there's a parallel here with how something straightforward and representational like a little sketch can remind the public of an abstract painter's pure God-given talent. And indeed Deane's 2007 Ventalia (meaning "fan") comes across as abstract music, especially after the composer's spoken introduction in which he first described and then discounted the various associations connected with the title. Yet abstract or no - with its initial tentative unisons between alto flute and piano, the incorporation of C flute and piccolo, and the way an insistent rhythmic pulse eventually gives way to a unifying meditative quietude - the 14-minute piece matches the children's set for taking the listener on a journey.
Here Deane is careful to make only sparing use of a relatively newfangled flute extension called the glissando head-joint, a sliding mouthpiece that allows the player to bend individual notes or slide smoothly from one note to the next. While Deane uses it to suggest grieving in just a few rare moments, New Zealand composer Martin Lodge liberally colours the slow, Maori and Japanese-influenced Arietta, from his 1996 Sonatina for Solo Flute, with slides and quarter tones.
In her 2007 Knife Sheer Apple Brush, Eve de Castro Robinson - also from New Zealand - calls for the unaccompanied flautist to speak and even sing as well as play. No mean feat, but Dowdall never flinched. The sounds, both instrumental and vocal, became curiously homogenised as they reached the ear via speakers, with an enlarging effect on the minimalist verses of New Zealand poet and film-maker Len Lye.
Maps
Button Factory, Dublin
BRIAN KEANE
Most of the audience at Maps' first Irish show were probably still running around the school yard when the likes of Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine were re-imagining how music could be made in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today it's easier to dismiss the new shoegazers (M83, Ulrich Schnauss, Manual, and so on) as having it far too handy - the sonic effects that required 18 engineers on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless album can be replicated on a computer with far less blood, sweat and tears.
To record his debut, Northampton's James Chapman (aka Maps) decided to shun the use of electronic shortcuts in favour of recording everything on a 16-track recorder. He reaped the rewards when We Can Create went on to be nominated for last year's Mercury Music Prize and garnered consistently ecstatic reviews.
Choosing to perform the first four numbers of this set in exactly the same order as they appear on his album, Chapman also threw away his best songs before the crowd had a chance to settle. With a clear dance music influence, even more evident in a live setting, the extended version of Elouise and It Will Find You, all twisting loops and breathy vocals, are the best examples of what Maps is trying to create.
If there is a criticism to be levelled at Chapman, it's that he repeatedly turns to a few signature motifs in his songs. Joined by two keyboard players, a bassist and a drummer (all with strangely identical hairstyles), there was a lack of variety to the drum and keyboard sounds and during the dreary Don't Fear and Back and Forth, the crowd could have been excused for beer-guzzling rather than shoegazing.
Maps' music should envelop a small venue such as the Button Factory, layering the cacophonous sounds to breaking point, but there was far too much control and restraint in the band's delivery. Unable to play new material due to a "technical nightmare", the short set limped rather than strode to a close. Adequate then, but far from inspiring.
Trentemøller
Tripod, Dublin
SIOBHÁN LONG
Despite a haircut that harks back to the early 1980s, Danish electronica DJ and composer Trentemøller is unequivocally a child of the noughties.
Enmeshing acoustic percussion within his bass-driven synth soundscape, his music is an enigmatic mix of animate and inanimate. It is doubtful that Trentemøller could exist without the precedents of Kraftwerk and, to some extent, New Order, and, wisely, he embraces the hollow, disembodied essence of their legacy with full force.
Watching him wed languid drum lines and cavernous bass with his own layered synths, it's easy to see why Moby and the Pet Shop Boys would hotly pursue his production skills. He marks a mood change with subtle shifts in rhythm, ebbing and flowing, approaching and avoiding an unseen precipice, building momentum imperceptibly until he's got his audience in the palm of his hand. It is only then that the music finally ignites orgasmically - albeit with the coolest Scandinavian restraint.
Trentemøller's world is Hitchcockian: atmosphere built musically is reinforced through the canny use of a triptych of video edits, at times sodden in S&M imagery, at others rollicking in the suppressed sensuality of 1950s Hollywood choreography. Sound and vision are integral on planet Trentemøller, the fear and loathing of just one of the jostling images - a canine space excursion - reinforced by the eviscerating pull of the music.
Dipping liberally into last November's The Trentemøller Chronicles, the show got its biggest audience response for Moan, the louche detachment of the single rendered null and void by charismatic orchestration, a theatrical triumph as much as a musical snapshot of a musician for whom ultimate control is everything.
Splicing forensically edited movie images with organic instrumentation (harmonica, claves and tambourine) and grinding electronica, the sky is unquestionably a different colour in Trentemøller's world. And we need all the Technicolor we can get these days.
