Shred Room 56: Saqqara

DAY ONE:

arrived at the start of the evening, looked around a bit, got my wristband, ate a dürüm döner and went to...

Mauro Pawlowski & Braaknoot Ensemble play 'Nacht en Ontij': guitarist from dEUS, which appears to be a pretty well-known band, plus some other rock and classical musicians reinterpreting an album from famous Dutch singer Boudewijn de Groot from when he was temporarily off the rails because of mushroom consumption, and then he made an album with a lot of spoken word about satan coming back to earth to lure in little girls. the burned it into a kinda fun kinda cheesy prog symphony

WWWater: was described as alternative R&B in the booklet, which put me off but I decided to check it out anyway because there wasn't much to choose from, and it was a pretty fun brief concert with loads of energy and catchy songs. I checked some out later on yt but the energy carries over pretty poorly to those studio recordings unfortunately

Sundays & Cybele: caught the last 15 minutes from this Japanese psych rock group, pretty typical for the scene, some nice climaxes

then I took a break and went to the coffeeshop (which is not the same thing as a cafe iykwim), then on to the headliner...

Mark Kozelek: I had listened to Benji the day before and I was pleasantly surprised, I liked the vibe to it and was excited to see the concert. in retrospect it's hard to describe what it was exactly, he was speak-crooning some songs off of stapled together pieces of paper while 'his friend Ben' played the piano, and in between making some light conversation with the audience. at points it was almost like a comedy show, but mostly it was more endearing than actually funny. the crowd did crack up however at the start when he admitted he had only woken up a few hours ago, had forgotten that he had to perform and he didn't know the name of the town. then he asked the audience what it was (scroll up a bit) and because he found too hard to pronounce he just proceded to call it 'Lee Warden' for the rest of the night. he also explained to us that the title of the next SKM album will be a response to the title of an album by $uicideboy$, but I'm not sure how serious that was. overall a really nice, memorable show

Bo Ningen + Elmar Kuiper: I caught a part of this combo of a Japanese band and a Frisian singer, another kind of psych rock shoegazey thing. I only had about ten minuted before I had to catch my train home and in that time I really only experienced the end of one song and the tediously slow build-up of another with some more cheesy poetry

DAY TWO:

arrived a bit earlier this day at around 4pm, but then I saw that pretty much the only thing planned around that time was cancelled, so I went to check some stuff on the streets, there was a kind of light show with projecters pointed at buildings with all kinds of artsy images and folklore, some intereactive electronic sound-making devices and more mostly in the context of Leeuwarden being the culture capitol of Europe for the year or something like that, and then I settled on the 'Relaxerette' where they wrap you into a hammock hanging from some huge contraption which slowly spins around over the span of ten minutes while someone tells you some mindfulness clichés on your headphones. then I walked through the park a bit and bought some food and then...

'Myriam' by NYX: a kind of musical theatre show in a small dark hall, where we all got silent disco headphones (the brand was literally 'Silent Disco') with two women speaking into some ceramic head with the ears mic'd up for ASMR surround sound effect, then (opera) singing and various instruments with prerecorded electronica as well and singing from someone who was also occasionally visible in parts film which were intentionally sometimes projected onto the curvy curtains in the back and sometimes on some screen held by one of the performers. it was all pretty brilliantly put together, and musically it was best comparable to mid-to-late era Coil, which is in itself pretty impressive, but yeah, pretty memorable and inspiring

The Ex + Jaap Blonk: a collaboration between two semi-respected Dutch artists whom I both haven't known for too long but whom I both quite like. when I came into the room I noticed I didn't here any input from Blonk, and then I saw some guy just sitting in the corner who looked like him and I thought 'nah, couldn't be him' and then after some blistering Ex songs they invited him on and of course it was him, and he kind of stumbled through the crowd and started to make a lot strange mouth noises into the microphone, as he does, and then they just jammed out together, with varying amounts of input from Blonk, at one point he got into a bit of noise-making battle with the guitarist, where these two grey old men literally chased eachother across the stage like two cats, squealing and scratching at eachother; it was pretty funny

Interview François Cambuzat: I misinterpreted this in the booklet as it just gave the name of the interviewer plus Ifriqiyya Electrique, and since IE were gonna playing later as well I thought it would be some kind of collab thing as well, but it was just an interview in the smallest venue what the guy who kind of put the group together from Berber musicians in the south of Tunisia where he lived and it was pretty interesting. apparently he also played for some artsy rock bands in different parts of the world and he made some ~cultural~ films but he didn't really talk about that as much. there were no more than 12 people in the crowd at any given point. more about IE later

then I finally got some dinner (I had lunch on the train) and called my half-sister because her cat died (R.I.P.), then on to an actual solo performance of...

Jaap Blonk: in the same tiny venue, this time with a few more people, a kind of half poetry, half performance art thing, as pretty much what I knew him for. lots of crazy mouth sounds, lots of meaningless chattering, lots of laughter from the crowd. would often start out almost like a normal poem, then it would slowly become meaningless, he would started wispering or stuttering until he was just making a jittery load of mouth noises. also included a piece with two microphones to show the stereo capabilities of the 'cheeck harmonica, the second musical instrument that's built into the human body' which was just pure absurdity. afterwards he put up a merch table in the back of the room and since there were literally fifteen people there, most of whom left immediately, I got the chance to talk to him a bit, although I didn't really have anything too meaningful to ask so I just bought two of his CDs to make up for the awkwardness of the conversation

Jessica Moss: caught the second half of the performance of the violinist of That Silver Mt. Zion You Know Who Band, where the room was basically packed but everyone was still really quiet as she played some beautiful ambient tape music stuff with violin, voice and machines

Ifriqiyya Electrique: Cambuzat and his Italian girlfriend on distorted guitars, as three Tunisian musicians played spiritual ceremony music on trance-inducing tradional percussion and chanting. long rhythmic pieces with some industrial beats as well, plus some raw visuals in the background of the local population getting into deep trances, 'getting possessed by voodoo-like spirits' (thanks, interview) and a part where they actually cut open a goat and dip one of their drums into its blood. I had heard their album a while back already and wasn't that impressed, and though it certainly worked better live it was still a real one-trick-pony kind of thing and kind of monotonous

in conclusion, all in all a pretty great festival

cheerios