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Sounds Dec, 2003
It was, without a doubt, the most
surreal and spooky concert I've attended, outside of classic
Bauhaus.
It was held in a low-ceilinged dive
bar that stunk of stale, cheap beer and cigarettes. The audience
was perfectly balanced between leather-clad goth-punks and young,
straight-laced types. Both groups seemed shocked to find the
other there, as though they were intruding on each other's turf.
There were four, folding metal chairs
on the stage. I swear I didn't even see them get filled. I turned
my back one second, and then everyone stopped staring at each
other and started applauding as four young folks were sitting
on those chairs.
They were dressed in high Victorian
clothing (bombazine, tophats, veils and all) and had their instruments
(one cello, one violin and one flute) ready to go. It was like
they'd been there the entire time, but were somehow hidden from
sight.
The applause died down as if on cue,
and without a word they set right into... Something.
I think it was Górecki's "Piece in the Old Style
1," except that the speed wasn't constant, and the singer
started whispering an eerie poem halfway through.
And the way the flute predominated
- the playing of the flute itself, for that matter - was as chilling
as a sea breeze from the wrong direction.
It was Górecki's piece, and
yet it wasn't. The band had taken it apart and reconstructed
its pieces into something new. Normally, that composition makes
me misty-eyed and contemplative. This time, it scared me - scarred
me - and I wasn't the only one. The combination of that scouring,
scornful flute and the sweet, loving whisper was almost too much
to take.
And so it went through the night.
We heard the song everyone's been talking about - "The Staircase"
- as well as numerous classical pieces they'd reconstructed.
Sometimes I could recognize those pieces, however distorted and
idiosyncratic their performance. And sometimes I was totally
puzzled, wondering if I wasn't hearing two or more pieces stacked
atop one another like building blocks.
But I was never less than completely
enthralled. Or mystified.
What is
Bone Dance playing? "Chamberpunk" is the word someone
from another music magazine came up with. The band scorns the
label, but it's stuck, and it's damned hard to describe their
sound as anything better. What else would you call "Adagio
for Strings" played with only a cello, a violin and a flute,
while the girl reads the Rosenbergs' last letters to one another?
But they (or at least their violin
player, who does almost all their talking) reject the label as
"sloppy thinking." They say there is no punk involved;
They are chamber music, through and through, only with an "explorational
approach." Trying to ask what they're exploring gets no
real answers, but more questions asked in return. By the end
of the interview I was back where I'd started, only more confused
than before.
Perhaps they aren't
punk. Perhaps it's a certain other magazine's inability to
see something new and different and come up with a new name for
it. Perhaps it's their leatherclad fans, too.
Then again, it might just be the
fault of their surly flautist.
The night of the concert, someone
who came late started talking loudly by the bar, not caring that
there was a relatively-quiet recital going on. The flute-player
stared daggers at him for some time, and then almost got up to beat the stuffings out of
the fellow. If the singer hadn't put a hand on his shoulder and
calmed him down, and the bartender hadn't had the sense to tell
the talker to shut up, I think I would have been an eyewitness
to murder...
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