“RESPRAY is fresh and
surprising in its form, mixing
live voice with soundtracks
and live treatments. Ralph
Hoyte’s delivery has a
mesmeric impact as vowels
and utterings flutter around
the narratives like mad birds
and frightened moths. His
collaboration with Stephen
Ives is remarkable in a loop
of interactions that create  
collisions between the poets
voice and the static of a
complex and improvised
reservoir of sounds.”   (Simon
Persighetti (Exeter tEXt Festival)
Doppelganger said [scroll down a bit
on the blog to get to Friday, June 23,
2006] or see the below]
Friday, June 23, 2006

To be frank, two blokes and a laptop in
a church doing 'performance poetry'
on a Thursday lunchtime isn't usually
my cup of tea - so yesterday I went to
see 'Respray' partly out of curiosity,
but mainly to support fellow member of
the west country bloggerratti Farmer
Glitch - Tell ya what though, didn't look
at my watch once.
The set up is that Ralph Hoyte, the
poetry half of the deal, stands in front
of the congregation (he's better at
poetry than web design by the
way)(cheeky bugger! OK, I give in...)
and delivers... well.... I'll come to that
bit. Behind him, next to the pulpit, lurks
Farmer and his sonic altar, bearing a
shiny Mactop surrounded by a sea of
cables. I thought Farmer would have
all the tracks pretty much laid down,
but he fondles the sonic
accompaniement to each piece into life
there and then.
For example, for the first piece, you
know when they used to send a group
of musicians round your school and
they'd tell the story of 'Peter and The
Wolf' in assembly? During that, each
character gets like a little motif or
theme tune: 'Oh, here comes the bird -
over to Jez on the.... can you
remember what it's called? .....that's
right.... Jez is playing the piccolo.... can
you hear the bird?' - well it's like that.
Well, actually, it's nothing like that. In
this introduction, a rumination on the
nature of humanity I think (I dunno...
it's a poem), every time humanity gets
a mention, Farmer instead uses a bit
of techno-shamanic wizardry to
summon a hysterical, wailing banshee
to come crashing down from the
ancient vaulted ceiling.
For the next bit, Farmer's sonic
stewardship gradually guides a dark
primal view of nature (all 'hills
hunkering down darkly' and so on) into
something really quite pastoral and
poetic, before we're off again as Ralph
rapidly barks out a succession of
letters alongside Farmer's insistent
beats. (I tried to follow the letters but
lost it - I dunno, coulda been Welsh,
there were a lot of double D's and L's
in there) and then we're into the most
powerful, energetic rendition of, I kid
you not, Wordsworth's 'Daffodils' I've
ever heard.
Throughout, Ralph keeps up the
banter, whilst Farmer keeps up the
beats. From Ralph we get everything
from tortured wailing to street talk, to
cosy chats about arts funding and the
particular type of software they're
using. Farmer throws in everything
from the choral and orchestral to deep
dub beats and gritty, grimy grooves. It
works well in a church, but I dunno -
next time I reckon candles?
Even though we get some
jokey larks with Guinevere
and Lancelot running off
together in a Ford Cortina,
the whole thing seemed to
speak of an England of deep
roots and dark and ominous
places - a magical, untamed,
fecund landscape. Whatever,
when Ralph suddenly
boomed out :'I am Merlin!' at
the end, for a moment, I
believed him.....

Magic stuff... really enjoyed
it....

posted by doppelganger @
7:49 PM   8 comments