I saw her perform last night and it was fairly incredible. Here is the blurb from the Lampo website that tells you a little bit about her:
https://lampo.org/archive/sarah-davachi-2018/
So it was a packed house of maybe 250 or so (amazing how this Lampo organization has grown over the years. I've been going to their shows for about 12 years now and they have been able to cultivate their audience to great effect. For this kind of esoteric, avant-electronic music, for an audience like that...pretty amazing!).
So Sarah Davach's thing is drones. She is fond of using minimal instrumentation and getting down to the bare essence of things. Last night she had two other players with her, a violinist and a viola da gamba(ist) which I cant ever remember hearing in such an isolated framework. It sounds like a more "reedy" cello. Davachi herself played a Reed Organ and added subtle electronics via a Mac Book.
It was one long piece, about 45 minutes long and, as I said up above, incredible. Like others (the Necks come to mind) it started off very sparse and minimal with just the two string players doing slow, gentle, barely audible swipes on their respective instruments. At some point, Davachi must have triggered the electronics as their was some new, more synthetic sounding high pitched tones added to the mix. She finally came in with the reed organ adding to the already well established drone making it quite full sounding.
During shows like these, I tend to lose all sense of time so I'm guessing about halfway though the Reed Organ must have diverged somehow from the drone and started to develop some semblance of a serpentine melody. At first I thought it was the Viola Da Gamba but observing his bowing, he wasnt playing a melody, instead firmly locked in building upon the already formidable wall of acoustic sounds that were developing. The melody itself was quite Medeval/early music sounding (not surprised at this after further investigating Davachi's interests in Early Music) and acted as a little bit of a grounding mechanism above the malestrom. The overall effect was fascinating.
The piece ended, as it began with the general dynamic eventually winding down into gently bowed threads of sound...till silence and huge applause.
When I got home I figured I check out iTunes to see if she had anything up there...to my surprise and delight there were about eight items so I downloaded her most recent (Let Night Come On Bells End The Day) which is just her playing electric organ and Mellotron.
yes...Mellotron...
Thus...Darah Davachi is.....Prog
best
Michael
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by thedunno
Bookmarks