RIO 2: Faust, Blegvad, Present, Nebelnest

Or: too much text by Syzygy with not enough pictures from Victor 77, whose photography is much the best part of what follows:

Present (acoustic) was the concert I was most intrigued by when I read about the festival line up - Roger Trigaux's compositions performed on 2 grand pianos, percussion and vocals sounded like a promising idea. The 11 piece ensemble included 4 members of the current Present line up; Roger Trigaux plus son Reginald on percussion, Pierre Chevalier on piano and Dave Kerman as principal percussionist. Roger Trigaux sat stage left, occasionally attacking a cymbal but mostly conducting the other musicians. Ongoing health problems mean that he is now unable to play many of the parts he composed and performed in the past; like Brian Wilson on his recent tours, he is integral to the performance although at times he actively contributes very little. 3 lengthy pieces were performed, one specially composed for the festival, with the 2 pianos being played extremely fortissimo for much the time. This was where the performance disappointed; there are a whole range of timbral possibilities available with 2 grand pianos, but this was not really explored. Similarly, the multiple percussionists often seemed slightly redundant - there was nothing wrong with the ensemble playing, but more interesting rhythms could have been created. The second piece was the best: Roger Trigaux hunched over his microphone and delivered a truly dark, impassioned vocal while scraping his cymbal, the percussionists used the metal parts of their kits to create the sounds of the machinery of hell, Reginald Trigaux wandered through the audience screaming back at what was happening on stage and the 2 pianists created disturbing discords - the dark promise of Present's early albums was fully realised. The other 2 pieces, for me, were rather montonous and didn't really seem to develop, although Roger Trigaux throwing ping pong balls into the pianos during the final piece was an interesting touch. There was a standing ovation at the end, as much for Roger Trigaux as for the music itself it seemed to me; from discussions I had later and some overheard comments it seems like opinion was divided, but most of the audience were positive about it. For me it was an interesting but ultimately failed experiment, while for many other audience members it was a triumph. Despite my reservations, I felt that it was a performance that was true to the uncompromising RIO spirit - it's in the nature of experiments to fail once in a while, but better that than a cliched run through of the old favourites.

Blegvad gave a hugely entertaining press conference afterwards, in which he revealed that he writes his songs as American rock but that Greaves and Cutler are the least funky rhythm section in the world, and that much as he likes working with them he occasionally dreams of recording his songs at Muscle Shoals with an American rhythm section. He also mentioned a performance of Kew.Rhone in Paris this summer (details to be posted in the performance section) and spoke about a possible Art Bears reunion (the musicians are willing but sadly it looks unlikely; Royal Jelly heard the same from Chris Cutler). Later still Martin & I bumped into the ever affable John Greaves who told us a little more about the upcoming concert in Paris and also that his second solo song was a setting of Verlaine from a forthcoming album of Verlaine poems set to music. Setting poetry to music is a risky business but Greaves has always handled this with aplomb - the album promises to be excellent.