Aural Aggravation

Christopher Nosnibor

Live music should carry a warning over its addictive properties. Witnessing a band playing a set so good that you’re buzzing for hours, even days afterwards is a unique high, and one that sets a seed of a desperate need to replicate that experience.

I’ve seen a lot of live music since I started going to gigs over thirty years ago, but the number of acts who have ignited that sense of fervent excitement is limited. I’ve seen many, many amazing shows, but few have blown me away to the extent they’ve felt in some way transformative. Dead Space Chamber Music are one of those few, and I left the Cemetery Chapel in York a few months back feeling dazed and exhilarated, my ears whistling despite having worn earplugs. I simply had to see them again, in the hope to experience that same sense of rapture.

Eldermother – consisting of Clare de Lune on harp and vocals and Michalina Rudawska on cello – have no shortage of musical pedigree, and a superabundance of talent which they showcase with their minimal neoclassical works, a mix of covers and original material. They open with Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’ led by harp and with Clare’s soaring vocals, and it’s one of those performances that make the hair stand up on back of your neck with its haunting atmosphere. There’s a rendition of WB Yeats’ poem ‘The Stolen Child’, a work rich with imagery inspired by wild nature and imbued with emotion and drama. The execution is magnificent, and the originals are similarly graceful and majestic. ‘Hurt’ may not be by any stretch representative of Trent Reznor’s career, but it certainly showcases his capacity for powerfully emotive songwriting, and if it’s the song which forms his legacy, it’s all to the good. Yes, Eldermother play a semi-operatic version of ‘Hurt’ with harp and dark, brooding cello, and… woah. It’s almost too much, especially this early in the evening. I find myself dabbing a tear and grateful for the low lighting.

Eldermother

Lunar Cult Club – featuring Doug Gordon, aka Futures We Lost – as the provider of the instrumental machinations, take the theatricality up several notches to deliver a set of otherworldly cold, cold, darkest electro with glacial synths and funereal forms. The bank of synths swirl and grind, muddy beats thud and pop from amidst a dense sonic fog. Sonically, they’re impressive – in the main, the arrangements are sparse, and overtly analogue in form – but visually, they’re something else. Theirs is a highly theatrical stage show, and this significantly heightens the impact of the songs. The two singers, dressed all in black and with faces obscured by long, black lace veils – Corpse Bride chic, as my notes say – sway and move their arms in an unnerving fashion, as if reanimated, exhumed. I’m reminded of Zola Jesus and of Ladytron, and I’m mesmerised by their facsimile of a Pet Sematary Human League with its spellbinding marionette choreography. The final song, ‘No-Ones Here to Save Her’ is as dark as it gets: the vocals merge and take us to another realm entirely.

Lunar Cult Club

I’m still floating in a state of mild delirium when Dead Space Chamber Music take to the stage. The atmosphere is thick, tense, hushed… awed. Something about the trio’s presence alone makes you sit up, lean in, eyes wide, ears pricked. There’s a lot of detail here. Their focus is gripping by way of spectacle, and their set is designed as a linear work which evolves and transitions over its duration, in a way which calls to mind when Sunn O))) toured Monoliths and Dimensions, whereby, over the course of the set, Attila Csihar transformed into a tree. There are props and costume embellishments, mostly on the part of Ellen Southern, who performs vocals and various percussion elements and a strange stringed instrument: she brings much drama and theatricality, delivered with a sense of self-possession and deep spirituality which is utterly entrancing.

Dead Space Music Orchestra

They’re so quiet you can hear matchsticks dropping into a tray. But the fact that these things are audible, amidst cavernous reverb and sepulchral echoes, is a measure of the clarity of the sound and the band’s attention to detail. Ekaterina Samarkina is impressive in the sheer versatility and nuanced approach she takes to the percussion which is truly pivotal to the performance. Her work is so detailed, subtle, the sound so bright and crisp, as she slowly scrapes the edges of her cymbals with a bow. Lurking in the background, Tom Bush – on guitar – plays with restraint, sculpting shapes and textures rather than playing conventional chords and melodies. In combination, they conjure a rarefied atmosphere.

Dead Space Chamber Music

But towards the end of the set, as if from nowhere, emerge huge cathedrals of sound. The last time around, I compared their climactic crescendos to Swans, and having seen Swans just over a week ago, I very much stand by the parallel called then. And this is not volume for volume’s sake: this is about catharsis, about escape. Dead Space Chamber Music make music which is immense, transcendental. And when they go all-out for the sustained crescendo of the finale, it’s not because of a bank of pedals or a host of gear: they simply play harder, throwing themselves behind their instruments, and full-throttle intensity. It may not be as loud as on that previous outing, or perhaps it’s simply because I’m expecting it, but they nevertheless raise the roof, and fill the space with expansive layers of sound on sound.

The three acts very much compliment one another, making for an event which is more than merely a gig, more than three bands playing some songs: this is an occasion, steeped in theatre and art, performed with a sense of ritual. The experience is all-encompassing, immersive, enveloping; it takes you out of life and suspends time for its duration. It will take some time to return to reality.