As I sit in the monumental church at Santuário do Bom Jesus do Monte, towering across the landscape, 6km from Braga, Félicia Atkinson and Violeta Azevedo stand to take a bow at the close of their intimate and hushed performance, and the rush of the applause melds into the sound of a storm of truly Biblical proportions outside, with thunder, lightning and a month’s worth of rain in a day. Semibreve has begun.
Rain doesn’t stop play
The extreme weather would ordinarily be a challenge for some, but not here. The venue is packed to the arched rafters. Indeed, Semibreve is a festival unique in many ways, and wet feet are the least of their concerns for this, the opening night. The sensitive and considered curation brings audiences into spaces where music opens up the architecture.
The next day moves between the grandiose Theatro Circo by day and the industrial concrete stature of Gnration at night. Seated in the theatre listening to Joseph Kamaru aka KMRU is an otherworldly bodily experience, as an industrial strength granular hum vibrates throughout the space, Kamara manipulating a Soma Lyra synth and effects pedals. The temporal slip of time at points echoes Coil’s Time Machines, offering us a bottomless abyss, almost hallucinogenic.
Disintegration and splintering through sound
With only a few minutes’ breathing space, we are then invited into the incense coated world of dread-inducing drones from Stephen O’Malley and François J Bonnet. With each alternating between guitar and table-top synths and effects, the performance is a highlight of the festival. Ground-trembling guitars disintegrate and splinter into the sonic field and I’m reminded of O’Malley’s contributions to Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Mandy film score, as well as the more undulating atmospheric works of Nurse with Wound. With no flashy lighting or smoke machines, the music wins the audience over.
Elastic Dance Music
Already busy enough that a queue has formed, one in and one out, I arrive at Gnration in time to experience the prismatic, plastic sounds of Gábor Lázár. Staring into his laptop, emotionless, his music turns the space inside out, as a hyperactive lighting engineer and smoke machine operator combine forces to illustrate his elastic dance music, offering the sensory environment of a darkened rave in this compressed space.
Wonderous in its flickering, surging energy, it’s then over to Chicago’s Jana Rush to lead the crowd in an evocative freeform rhythmic session. It’s a masterful exercise in broken, disorienting dance music, creating an euphoric atmosphere, as opposing tempos go to battle in the darkness. After Lázár’s extended take on flexed out beats, it’s a joy to merge the body into the sound field and fall into Rush’s rolling basslines and diva-esque vocal samples. Rush demonstrates the longevity and developing language of footwork and its continuing lexicon, and with that, I’m off to bed.
Healing through sound
The discovery that a hacker was busily siphoning off sums of money from my bank accounts while I was at the shows rather taints the night, but thankfully the next day Malcolm Pardon’s solemn live set on a busy Saturday afternoon, in the panoramic splendour of Capela Imaculada do Seminário Menor, offers an almost spiritual experience, the lonely earthy sounds of piano and synth spiralling out across the immense space.
Back at Theatro Circo, Maxwell Sterling presents a hyperreal stylised show, featuring heavily processed synths and smeared sonic stimulation, accompanied by Stephen McLaughlin’s surreal AI visuals, which balances out well with Alva Noto’s muscular and thunderous techno maximalist workout session to close the evening.
A haunted dream music
Sunday arrives with Jan Jelinek ensconced in the Salão Medieval da Reitoria da Universidade do Minho, the audience for this sold-out show seated all around. Jelinek sits before a modular Eurorack system and a small mixer and proceeds to unravel a sonic lucid dream, a montage of environmental sounds, electronic burblings and even the tiniest glimpse of Ketty Lester’s Love Letters breaking through the surface at the close.
Still enveloped in this haunted dream, I dash through the streets of Braga, as locals step aside for a volley of dark clad figures, to ensure I’m in time for Caterina Barbieri at Theatro Circo. Dry ice and roaming lights accompany the solitary figure of Barbieri on the gigantic stage, as she air-dances with one arm, manipulating her modular synth and projecting a series of ecstatic escalating melodies into the space.
A hypnotic farewell
Semibreve 2022 draws to a close with the premiere of a new collaboration between German artist Burnt Friedman and Porto-based percussion ensemble Drumming. Friedman’s continuing fascination with the slippage of time within rhythm is explored over an intensely intricate set of organic and electronic instrumentation, lending itself to a groove that is only curtailed by the scheduling programming. There is a sense that these pulses might continue for always, long after the clapping has ceased.
Exiting into the night air, it’s finally stopped raining, and Semibreve has woven its magic again.
Originally posted in a different form and edit in The Wire, January 2023, Issue 467
2 comments
Great write-up of an amazing festival organised by a great bunch of people! 🙂
Absolutely! One of the best festivals ever in my long experience, where they know how to take care of both artists and public equally, and to great success!