Recording: Contact

Artist: Contact

Song: Contact - Undercurrents [excerpt]^*

Recorded at The Music Gallery (X Avant VII), October 19, 2012.

Undercurrents [excerpt]

Full review to follow. A rich night for the senses at last night's X Avant show. Contact played the complete Undercurrents suite, consisting of mostly slowly-unfolding sounds. The presentation is sometimes "spacialized" by physically distributing the musicians in a venue, but here that task was taken on by Sandro Perri, who mixed the music in room-filling quadraphonic sound. That could have been done in a gimmicky way, with sounds whiplashing back and forth, but Perri instead brought an admirable restraint, with stereo redistribution and occasional effects accenting rather than overtaking the music.

Meanwhile, the night's most striking contribution came from 5D Graffiti's visuals. Quantum theory tells us that nothing around us is really solid, and that concept was made vividly real as the rafters and walls of the St. George The Martyr's sanctuary were slowly brought to vibrating, pulsating life — and from there the visual interventions became increasingly three dimensional, pulling the audience into the furthest depths of the music.

^* Undercurrents is the larger title for these Jordan Nobles compositions. I'm not sure which individual piece we have here.