- I developed a mild obsession with Beatrice Dillon's music in the weeks leading up to her performance at The Trilogy Tapes' takeover of Café OTO in East London. Just recently I discovered her 2013 mix for Blowing Up The Workshop, a wonderful 30-minute percussive tapestry of archaic instruments. That selection overlaps with her Folkways II cassette for The Trilogy Tapes, which pulls together drum recordings from around the world. Dillon's solo EP from 2014, Blues Dances, is quite a different proposition: it's dubbier, moodier and more synthetic than her mixtapes. It's this sound that she explored in her performance at Café OTO.
The venue was darker than usual—black draping hung to the left of the entrance and the only lights that remained came from the bar and the glow of MacBooks onstage. Dillon's set toyed with dub techno drums and chords, and there was a broken beat section that wouldn't have sounded out of place up the road at FWD>>. It felt like her live show was still a work in progress, so it'll be interesting to see where she takes things from here.
Rezzett followed Dillon's performance with their own live show. A strobing light illuminated the duo as they carved out loops, managing to tease more out of the modest soundsystem than Dillon. Their locker of sounds—synths, kick drums, hi-hats—are impressive but heavily degraded, like an expensive sports car with a knackered muffler. Their set, as with parts of Dillon's show, was essentially club music presented outside a club environment, and it was hard not to wish Café OTO had a slightly weightier system.
The night also provided a relatively rare chance to see Will Bankhead play some music. He started off blending library records and experimental curios but lifted the mood as the night went on, setting the tone before, between and after the live shows. His selections capped off an evening of unusual and intriguing music. A showcase for The Trilogy Tapes could take on many different forms—in 2014 alone it released records from Low Jack, Theo Parrish, Willie Burns, Maxmillion Dunbar, A Made Up Sound, Dario Zenker and Anthony Naples. Tonight was merely a glimpse at one facet of one of the UK's best experimental record labels.