- When extraordinary acts of violence tear through society, the first thing people often lose is meaning. In the confusion, music can give form to our shock and our sadness, and help us feel less alone in our trauma. In the liminal space between classical and electronic music, Steve Reich's Different Trains contemplated WWII, William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops became entwined with 9/11 and British composer Max Richter wrote Infra as a meditation on London's 7/7 bombings.
A rare live performance of Infra crowned the opening evening of "Sounds And Visions," a festival of music curated by Richter and artist Yulia Mahr at The Barbican. Their mission, in terms of programming, was to reject genre and categorisation. "We're fascinated by the alchemy that happens when multiple historical contexts collide," said Richter. So Infra was set on a collision course with two very different sound-worlds on Friday evening—the modern American disquiet of Jlin and the cosmic synthesis of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith.
With track titles like "Guantanamo" and "1%," Jlin's music is obviously political. She arrived onstage with dancer Lilian Steiner, and was quickly bathed in purple light and swallowed by smoke. Steiner's dance was somewhere between ballet, martial arts and seizure. She twisted to the percussive onslaught of "Nyakinyua Rise" and was hunted by spotlights to the toy box melody of "Black Origami." The contrasts that make Jlin's music riveting—cerebral yet bodily, precise yet wild—were expressed by each flex of Steiner's body.
By contrast, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's performance was a healing balm. Using a new A/V setup, she worked through the organic synthscapes of last year's album, The Kid. She coaxed warbling melodies from her Buchla synth, combining them with birdsong on the beatific "Who I Am & Why I Am Where I Am" and her own modulated vocals on the almost-pop closer, "To Feel Your Best." Though the show lagged in the second half, psychedelic visuals by Smith's husband added a vital ingredient, conjuring tactile landscapes of bubbles, lights, minerals and fur. One image appeared to depict the prismatic feathers of a glass bird. Like Smith's music, it was illuminated from within.
Infra was originally written to score a Wayne McGregor ballet in 2008. While there were no dancers at The Barbican, the visuals from the original show were displayed. These stick figures, designed by Julian Opie, referenced the 52 people who left home on a July morning in 2005 and never made it to work. Their ghostly forms walked across the screen, passing each other without acknowledgement, destined to be commuting forever.
The piece was divided between emotive string and piano sections and abstract electronics. Richter and 19 string players worked through the rippling keys of "Infra 3" and the radio static that falls, soft as snow, over the piano on "Journey 5." On "Infra 5," the string sections harmonised, building to a soaring sadness, a moment so nakedly moving that it was difficult to listen to. At its emotional apex the strings were suddenly, brutally extinguished.
In a few hours I'd heard how music can be used to work through the emotional obstacle course of daily life, the traumatising cycle of current events and the journeys we must all take inwards, unguided. On the way out, I overheard several conversations comparing the three acts, discussing how each seemed to change how they understood the others. This felt like exactly the alchemy that Richter was aiming for.
Photo credit /
Mark Allan / Barbican