I was at Instal, a festival of experimental electronic and contemporary classical music yesterday and it was fantastic. seven hours and I wasn’t bored for a single moment. it was kind of like a cross between a music festival and an art gallery with new artists starting their sets in different parts of the venue moments after each other. nice mix of stuff as well although we managed to avoid most of the classical stuff which sounded least interesting to me. we did catch the Symphony for 100 Metronomes though, or rather, since we were a little late, the Symphony for 5 Metronomes. I was more interested in watching other peoples’ reactions to watching the last 2 metronomes click-click-clacking for ten minutes but then Koji Asano started his set and everyone got bored of watching metronomes. Koji Asano was probably my highlight of the event, loud but really textured and I could hear so much going on. Philip Jeck was another highlight, looking like a dusty old history teacher but bringing out the beauty of his old deteriorated records. Local acts Rhomboi and Defaalt gave different tones to the event with echoing throbbing guitar and interactive graphics respectively.

Headliners Icebreaker International were in a class of their own though. Funny, intriguing and vaguely mad in person, we left our interview just as confused as when we arrived, our heads full of economics and well-spun tales. Live, they were definitely the most acccessible act with their flowing electro-pop and NATOarts business suits. sadly they got cut short by a technical problem – a sad note on which to end such a well-organised event. I ended up stumbling home in the frost at 1am where I saw a fox watching me from the roadside. I then had seemingly endless strange electronic music soundtracked dreams and woke to a group of economists discussing world trade on the radio. my head’s been a bit odd since.

Posted: 12|10|01 at 9:26 pm. Filed under: events, live reviews.
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