The four-day musical journey of discovery, that the Le Guess Who (LGW), held in Utrecht for the fifteenth time, will be held again this year, starts on Thursday in the main hall of TivoliVredenburg with Noori & His Dorpa Band. It’s one of those names on the bill that won’t tell the visitors much, but the hall is still full. A special performance too, because Noori, who plays beautiful tambo guitar, and his band are one of the first Sudanese music companies to be seen in Europe since the 1990s. But the main reason why the representative of the oppressed Beja community is on LGW is because Noori & His Dorpa band makes special music, which takes you live just as trans as their album released this summer. Beja Power! is doing.
But then there is also that typical unrest feeling that characterizes most good festivals: where to now? Am I in the right place here, isn’t it (whatever that ‘it’) happening elsewhere?
Don’t give in to that stress of choice, just calmly follow the route you determined days ago. For example, on Thursday at the top of the list is the Chicago-born guitarist Jeff Parker. He made at the end of last year with forfolks a beautiful lucid solo album, on which he alternates his own miniatures with arrangements of classical jazz pieces such as Ugly Beauty by Thelonious Monk. His transparent playing, which follows a tradition from Wes Montgomery to Bill Frisell, slowly comes to life in the packed Janskerk. The church reverberation is compensated by the beautiful ambiance. The siren of the ambulance rushing past the church is not part of it, but the city sounds that Parker gives to a wondrous version of neo-soul singer Frank Oceans Super Rich Kids adds, yes.
Actually, Parker doesn’t need extra effects. The sampler with which he doubles his own guitar lines remains untouched for a long time. If after an hour La Jetee fade-out feels like waking up from a dream. You would have preferred to have been absorbed in the silences between the beautiful notes. This is not a Ugly Beautybut pure beauty.
For ‘ugly beauty’ you walk a few hundred meters back to TivoliVredenburg. There the duo Divide & Dissolve confronts the visitor with a good dose of ugly beauty. Drums, guitar and occasionally soprano sax form a monstrous alliance. It’s crushing, but also moving, especially when guitarist Takiaya Reed references the death of Mimi Parker, Sunday. Parker, singer and drummer of Low, was not only one of the main attractions at this festival with her band; Low would also curate LGW. Divide & Dissolve has toured with Low and Reed dedicates their concert to Mimi Parker. Nobody in the Ronda room doesn’t think about Low, and that will happen more often in the coming days.
Is Divide & Dissolve an attack on the ears, the highest state of ‘ugly beauty’ will be reached on Thursday by the duo KMRU & Aho Ssan in the Hertz room. A Kenyan-French duo illustrating their deeply layered, devastating electronic noise with equally destructive-looking film footage: a camera zooming in on a dilapidated warehouse, images of rusty nails and shredded concrete – all while the electronic bombast swells. lime is the name of the performance, named after the album the duo released earlier this year. From a ruin, the camera lens moves through a lava landscape to a volcanic eruption, while the dark music forces itself relentlessly on the audience. A sensory experience to remember, you will walk out of the Hertz after 12pm with the feeling of having experienced something truly special.
Then you don’t need anything anymore, and you can absorb nothing for a while. Too bad for Alabaster DePlume, whose jokes are no longer in the Great Hall. The British saxophonist/poet/performer covers an interesting area between jazz, folk and poetry, but in his large band, in which label mate Jeff Parker also strums somewhat awkwardly, he likes to hear himself talk too much. Although that fifteen minutes of sax, with especially bass and guitar accompaniment, is wonderful. Elusive, that Alabaster DePlume, and that’s exactly what we’re hoping for in the coming days. Music that surprises, moves, comforts, annoys and disrupts.