Whale Watching Tour

For such an ambitious project, the Whale Watching Tour’s timing really couldn’t be worse. Piecing together a joint performance from the biggest hitters of Iceland’s Bedroom Community label was already likely to be a challenge - presenting Sam Amidon’s distinctly American folk songs alongside the lupine ferocity of Ben Frost’s recent output without diminishing the impact of either must be a formidable balancing act. The fact that a chunk of the tour’s home country blew its top only a week before they were due to begin, sending a cloud of ash spiraling across the Northern hemisphere, seems a particularly cruel twist of fate. It’s a stroke of luck that this evening’s show is even happening at all. That they’ve taken over the space that only two nights ago played host to the second television appearance for Messrs. Brown, Clegg and Cameron adds a further surreal bent to proceedings.

The orchestral grandeur of Frost’s opener immediately silences any concerns about integration; Amidon’s softly plucked guitar and the menacing trills that Nico Muhly effortlessly rattles out of his grand piano provide the perfect human foil to the tightly controlled tsunami of static bathing the room. Alongside string section and trombone backing from the four additional musicians the effect is to slightly thaw the glacial starkness of Frost’s original pieces, letting light and warmth flood their darkened corners. The same is true of the octet’s mid-set performance of ‘Híbakúsja’. Live, its disarmingly gentle opening bars prove even greater contrast to the slabs of noise and pulsing sub-bass that rend its structure apart like an earthquake - or, indeed, a volcanic eruption. To borrow from Chris Power’s review of By The Throat on this here site, that Frost has described the visual texture of his music as 'like the glow from a lava flow' seems both accurate and terrifyingly apt.

Arriving immediately after the opener’s elemental force, Muhly’s playful solo turn on ‘Skip Town’ brightens the mood considerably. Flirting with arrhythmia and shifting in and out of phase like Reich, it exudes a cosmopolitan energy half a world away from the feral power that came before. Obviously in his element onstage, throughout the evening he plays the role of an endearingly irreverent compere, telling stories and informally conducting his mini-orchestra through his arrangements. His scores for Amidon’s traditional folk songs are particularly striking, toying with modernity – the lilting pulses that drive ‘Way To Go, Lily’ again recall Steve Reich - while remaining sympathetic to their timeless origins. His additions to Valgeir Sigurðsson’s intricate electronica are no less impressive, conscious of the source material’s intent but always willing to push the boundaries.

And it’s exactly these aspects that make Muhly such an intriguing and appealing composer. His music – not to mention his easygoing onstage nature – sits in opposition to the typical perception of ‘properly’ composed music as being po-faced and self-conscious. He seems willing to borrow liberally from any facet of the musical canon, and in doing so manages to put together pieces that are both ambiguous and unusually resonant. As such, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that his efforts are largely responsible for the surprisingly coherent feel of tonight’s set – his arrangements draw together the common strands of each individual artist’s music and emphasise similarities, rather than highlight differences. Main set closer ‘The Only Tune’ is the best example, deconstructing Amidon’s sung murder ballad into ever more powerful shapes over 15 short minutes, as it morphs from orchestral dissonance to subdued, folksy strum via crushing walls of distortion.

After such a powerful closing statement all eight seem conscious that an encore is hardly necessary, so they throw one out with abandon, racing through Amidon’s ‘How Come That Blood’ before juddering to a halt. A swift bow and they disappear, and it seems hard to believe that over an hour and a half has passed.