Review: Subcurrent second night, Friday 14th April 06

Standing obliquely to the audience, with a wooden electronic box placed on a lectern, Jessica Rylan cuts a neat figure in fitted denim and neckerchief. She speaksings in to the sonic deconstructor kit to create wild ,bubbling ,insistent sounds. Her long fingers reconfigure the parameters of the fx unit, from shrill and cracked to dense and pulsing.

She is possessed of great self-confidence. Between songs, she tells us a recent trip to Belgium left her with the disconcerting feeling she had become a US patriot, and then counts of the next selection in Flemish. Midway, she sings it straight, and her voice is real and true, an old folk lyric invested with the kind of sincerity that would have had Alan Lomax hitting the record switch. She has a curious trick of making her outsider performance seem accessible and friendly. The human voice, even after the spectacular elisions and transmutations wrought by Rylan, remains human.

Prurient takes the stage. Dark clad, stocky and leather gloved. Velvet distortion oscillates. His back is turned and he signals the lights to be lowered. Like a revelator from the psychic dungeon he hurls forth bolts of aggression, excavating the sick oil slick caverns of the shadow self. His mic lead is coiled like razor wire, he spits on the stage, throws his head back and rails to a cracked open sky. From nowhere a beautifully damaged melody loops and leaps from the amps. Wave on wave of distended electronic entrails envelop the audience. He sings from an apocalyptic heart, Kurtz recast in the Theatre of Cruelty.

A lot of credit has to go to the sound design for the festival opting for two small speakers plus a couple stage amps as opposed to the usual wall of sound stack. Though still ferocious there is huge amount of detail in the output, the full frequency spectrum is released allowing the inherent musicality of an artist like Prurient, among others, to be revealed.

Burning Star Core masticates his way into the zone. Bespectacled and smartly dressed, he is seated next to a table, overflowing with alchemical audio apparatus. The chewing gum intro is followed by a deep space navigation of real beauty and invention. Wide open, multi-layered drones chart orbital geometries and galaxy implosions. If there are aliens out there listening in to earth I sure hope there tuned to C Spencer Yeh’s frequency, he makes our planet sound like a good solar system citizen. The audience applaud as his signal moves out of reach but he bids us quiet as he produces a violin and effortlessly balances it between shoulder and chin. He then begins an extended improvisation of great dexterity and skill. Cultivating the spores John Cale set loose 4 decades ago BSC walks the line between conservatoire and Lower East Side loft effortlessly. He closes out with a split personality, comedy mouth piece that sends the people home smiling.

Simon Ross