Songs about loved ones, vocal meditations, musical trance, folk or post-metal jazz – this year’s Supersonic showed how music allows us to participate in rituals in many ways.
We all have our rituals. They allow us to be part of a community; to experience recurring events, structure the year, and shape identity. My ritual for the past three years has been to attend the Supersonic Festival. It’s not much in terms of its more than 20-year history, but it’s a significant event – perhaps right here and now.
For the past three years, I’ve walked the length of Birmingham – by day it’s full of young people heading to clubs, people cutting through New Street, street musicians, religious exhorters, homeless people, or people sipping another pint outside bars. At night, the city empties out, and I see it as it really is, without the social hustle and bustle. The Supersonic at the other end of town – I’m heading there with the Jewellery Quarter – is symbolically in this consumerist, gentrifying machine. This year, Digbeth is once again experiencing a change in venue ownership, and the zone for merch and food court, which used to be at XOYO, is being moved to Zellig. Also, some of the Friday gigs take place in the small Nortons pub – a cosy one where the artists on stage are always passed at the entrance. It’s here that I drink my first pint, hitting the Guinness.
Hang Linton starts, playing music at the crossroads of avant-rock, funk, and twisted psychedelia, while singing and shouting to the audience. An interesting start, but just as Supersonic is a ritual for me, concerts are rituals too. The ones that draw you in, take you out of the here and now, stop the world for a moment, or maybe happen right next to it.
Such is the case at Water Damage – a collective that, if one had to abbreviate the quintessence of what they do, could be said to play one repetitive theme. Led by Thor Harris of Swans, the band repeats a rhythmic structure with two drum kits and a bass guitar at its core in an almost minimalist approach and looping. But there is much more going on – the repetitive and sometimes spasmodic clarinet, the painted walls of sound on the guitar or, finally, more eaze’s bourdon violin evoking associations with John Cale in the Velvet Underground make this one song, because they play for almost 50 minutes one composition, lasting, seemingly never ending, stretching out in time. The meditative rhythm, the stratified backgrounds, the trance – a unique experience.
Similarly, trance-like is Moin, whom I see for the second time this year. In the O2 Institute, their music spreads wonderfully. Valentina Magaletti’s percussive marchiness blends well with the electronic and guitar passages of Tom Halstead and Joe Andrews. A very emotional, immersive concert that drags the avant-rock output into new dimensions, somewhere between post-punk and modern dub. Their music is dreamy, quite different from what Zu, again at Nortons, present after them. The Italian trio plays polyrhythmic, fractured music in which the rhythm section, supported by dense saxophone phrases, takes the lead. The alert playing of Massimo Pupillo and Jacopo Battaglia is brilliantly punctuated by the baritone saxophone of Luca T. Mai. Post-jazz nervousness, math-rock precision, metal heaviness. Their concert makes such an electrifying impression that I don’t need anything else that day.
Saturday opens for me with Smote and One Leg One Eye. I saw both projects at Supersonic a year ago, and they made a colossal impression on me. Together they play powerfully, expressively, and singularly. Similarly, creating a mantra like Water Damage, but whereas the Americans played rhythmically, vertically, in a loop, the Brits play spatially and horizontally. Their piece unspools slowly and sounds like it goes on forever. It’s a ritual of logging out of the world, using trance and an intense wall of sound.
More gigs on Saturday result in a more varied sets. Meatdripper, I’ve wanted to see since I noted them a year ago. “I’d watch Supersonic,” I thought, and this youthful, unbridled response to Black Sabbath lavers somewhere between post-punk, psychedelia, and hallucinogenic grooves. After them, already at XOYO, the Irish Rún, who present a heavy post-post-rock, slightly industrial, broken vision of folk – I really like their debut album, the live show lacks a bit of lightness, instead following it track by track.
They are followed by Witch Club Satan, who, more than a concert, present an occult performance bordering on black metal, a pagan ritual, in which, as the titular witches, they captivate the crowd on a journey. It is a unique ritual. The whole thing is gradually developed by the drama and costumes of the female artists, although at times it verges dangerously on kitsch.
This impression is broken by the brilliant Death Goals, who literally took my breath away. The queercore duo play rapturously, raw and sharp, singing about identity, courting social activism, playing convincingly their music reduced to guitar and drums, full of youthful exuberance and expression. There is less prodding and performance here and more sincerity and direct communication, which, for me, is the best summary of the second day.
I start the last day with Poor Creature, a band that doesn’t attack, spinning minor-key parts on keyboards – combined with rather monotonous percussion, they sound like a musical troupe led by a sad melody. Divide & Dissolve attack with a wall of sound, and literally, as the music is dense and heavy from behind a wall of amplifiers.
I, however, chose Jennifer Reid on the roof of the XOYO. There is no music here, only the voice. Reid’s latest album, The Ballad of the Gatekeeper, combines unreleased traditional songs with new compositions. The album tackles contemporary themes – the climate crisis, the experience of pandemics – and treats folk as a tool for community dialogue. Reid says folk is the ‘great equaliser’, a medium for mutual understanding and supporting communities in the face of contemporary challenges. On the rooftop, she sings, looking towards the people, and at one point, some of them sing along with her; we are in this together. This is how a community is formed. Here for a moment, we have our ritual.
The community experience is also the Cinder Well concert – a revelation, such songs are hard to listen to standing up, and I buy it from start to finish. The American sings personal songs: the setlist includes “August,” a song for a loved one who has passed away. She is sincere, direct, and poignant in this. Similarly, Richard Dawson, whose songs comment cleverly on reality, are personal outtakes, metaphors, and sometimes a social picture of England or the world. Having seen him solo a year ago, he is now accompanied on drums by Andrew Cheetham, who brilliantly adds an expressive undercurrent to the music. The unassuming musician becomes a rocker; his music has vigour, a frenzy.
The last day shows how important the word is in ritual. In Reid’s case, it’s folklore passed down orally, in Cinder Well folk songs, in Dawson’s perspective, lyrics as a reworking of reality.
Abdullah Miniawy was last in the UK ten years ago; a year ago, I saw him in Paris with Cri du Caire. I was impressed by his voice, which carried around the hall of the Paris Philharmonie at the time. In the cosy hall, XOYO presents Peacock Dreams – unique material about spiritual restlessness and memory on the verge of poetry, prayer. It is also a musical ritual. Above all, she draws attention with her voice – loud, confident, wailing. The singing carries on against the backdrop of two trombones – at times sounding raw, acoustic, sometimes with reverb, sometimes as rhythmic instruments. Polyphonic, reduced to a minimum, the performance, so different from the rest of the concertos, is extremely poignant, yet sonically original.
Also different in its own way, and ritualistic, is the Funeral Folk concert by Sarah Parkman – a violinist, singer, and composer rooted in the Swedish folk tradition – and Maria W. Horn, a creator of contemporary experimental music. The two artists, after years of separate explorations, have returned to common sources: the Christian heritage and sacred music present in their families. The album is a meeting of different worlds – sacred songs, minimalist sound structures, folk melodies from Ångermanland, and black metal. Live, it takes on an overtone – when they shout or sing, heavy guitar riffs carry across the O2 Institute, and the lightness of folk intertwines with the heaviness of metal and passing. This is where the ritual is felt most strongly – the one about passing away, highlighted in ‘Evighetens Sommar’, a song whose lyrics about passing, death, and hope for rebirth talk about the coming autumn, then winter, but also spring and the eponymous summer. A poetic meditation on the cycle of nature, in which dying turns out to be a transition to a more lasting, spiritual existence. Afterwards, ‘Till Margaretha’ – a metal wall and choral singing – spreads across the room. We are heading into the darkness, and the trio leads us there in an almost cinematic drama.
There is something unique about these two concerts – the poignancy of the story, the tension, the dramatic call for attention to the world, the encouragement to look closely at what is happening around us.
There is something more. Miniawy, when he finishes and his colleagues leave the stage, encourages the audience to voice-murmuring, to join in the music, as it were, to crown his performance with a communal sing-along. The same thing happens with Funeral Folk. When the artists, dressed in traditional Swedish costumes, finish their concert, in the last minutes of ‘Memento Mori’, they encourage the audience to sing along, prolonging the story that flows from the stage into the world. They hide themselves slowly into the shadows, but leave us with ourselves, also creating a ritual. Understood both as a festival and what comes after it.
