Ingar Zach, owner of Sofa Music in Norway, has made a percussion record Before Nightfall One (SOFA 567). He did it with two members of Speak Percussion, an Australian group, and when he met Eugene Ughetti and Matthias Schack-Arnott they prepared very carefully to engineer the right situation for a unique music performance in Melbourne. Part of this preparation seems to have been “finding a common ground to create…music”, and the choice of venue – The Substation, a converted railway warehouse in the Newport district – evidently got their aesthetic sparkplugs tuned up to the requisite pitch. Before Nightfall One is a single excursion which starts out with a delicious bass rumbling tone, followed by rattling, rubbing, cracking and chiming sounds. Everything has an air of mystery and obscure ancientness, and increasingly the work is filled with tense silences, shattered by tiny explosions and sharp whacks which come close to splintering blocks of wood in your face. I like the extremes of dynamics in this performance, and the noisier elements; I’d have been happy if the whole album had been one long bass rumble. From 23rd July 2018.
